Cook Islands

The Cook Islands is an island country in Polynesia, part of Oceania, in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of 15 islands whose total land area is approximately 236.7 square kilometres (91 sq mi). The Cook Islands Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) covers 1,960,027 square kilometres (756,771 sq mi) of ocean. Avarua on the main island of Rarotonga is the capital.

The Cook Islands is self-governing while in free association with New Zealand. Since the start of the 21st century, the Cook Islands conducts its own independent foreign and defence policy, and also has its own customs regulations. Like most members of the Pacific Islands Forum, it has no armed forces, but the Cook Islands Police Service owns a Guardian Class Patrol Boat, CIPPB Te Kukupa II, provided by Australia, for policing its waters. In recent decades, the Cook Islands has adopted an increasingly assertive and distinct foreign policy, and a Cook Islander, Henry Puna, served as Secretary General of the Pacific Islands Forum from 2021 to 2024. Most Cook Islanders have New Zealand citizenship, plus the status of Cook Islands nationals, which is not given to other New Zealand citizens. The Cook Islands has been an active member of the Pacific Community, formerly the South Pacific Commission, since 1980.

The Cook Islands' main population centres are on Rarotonga (10,863 in 2021), also the location of Rarotonga International Airport, the main international gateway to the country. The census of 2021 put the total population at 14,987. There is also a larger population of Cook Islanders in New Zealand and Australia: in the 2018 New Zealand census, 80,532 people said they were Cook Islanders, or of Cook Islands descent. The last Australian census recorded 28,000 Cook Islanders living in Australia, many with Australian citizenship. With over 168,000 visitors to the islands in 2018, tourism is the country's main industry and leading element of its economy, ahead of offshore banking, pearls, and marine and fruit exports.

The Cook Islands comprise 15 islands that have had individual names in indigenous languages, including Cook Islands Māori and Pukapukan throughout the time they have been inhabited. The first name given by Europeans was Gente Hermosa (beautiful people) by Spanish explorers to Rakahanga in 1606.

The islands as a whole are named after the English captain and explorer James Cook, who visited during the 1770s and named Manuae "Hervey Island" after Augustus Hervey, 3rd Earl of Bristol. The southern island group became known as the "Hervey Islands" after this. In the 1820s, Russian Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern referred to the southern islands as the "Cook Islands" in his Atlas de l'Ocean Pacifique. The entire territory (including the northern island group) was not known as the "Cook Islands" until after its annexation by New Zealand in the early 20th century. In 1901, the New Zealand parliament passed the Cook and other Islands Government Act, demonstrating that the name "Cook Islands" only referred to some of the islands. This situation had changed by the passage of the Cook Islands Act 1915, which defined the Cooks' area and included all presently included islands.

The islands' official name in Cook Islands Māori is Kūki 'Āirani, a transliteration of the English name.

The Cook Islands were first settled around AD 1000 by Polynesian people who are thought to have migrated from Tahiti, an island 1,154 kilometres (717 mi; 623 nmi) to the northeast of the main island of Rarotonga.

The first European contact with the islands took place in 1595 when the Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira sighted the island of Pukapuka, which he named San Bernardo (Saint Bernard). Pedro Fernandes de Queirós, a Portuguese captain at the service of the Spanish Crown, made the first European landing in the islands when he set foot on Rakahanga in 1606, calling the island Gente Hermosa (Beautiful People).