State of Abemama

The State of Abemama, also referred to as the Kingdom of Abemama, was a 19th-century sovereign state that encompassed Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka in the Gilbert Islands, which are now part of Kiribati. It also controlled Nonouti from December 1883 to January 1884.

In the late 18th century, Tuangaona, a family of warriors from Abemama, made Abemama, Kuria and Aranuka its tributaries. Karotu laid the foundations for a unified state by consolidating his power over the three atolls. In the 1840s, his son, Tewaia, became the first in a line of hereditary monarchs known as uea in Gilbertese and kings or high chiefs in English. From 1850 to 1891, the high chiefs Baiteke and Binoka transformed the State of Abemama into a stratified, centralized autocracy. They stymied European influence by closing their borders and controlling all trade in and out of their territory. Baiteke and Binoka became infamous in the Gilberts, and the latter appeared in Robert Louis Stevenson's In The South Seas (1896) after he hosted the novelist on Abemama. The British annexed the Gilbert Islands in 1892, a year after Binoka died, bringing an end to the State of Abemama.