The Tabiteuea people claim that their island was the first to be created. Creation took place at Tabiteuea South. They also believed that a tree called, The Tree of Kings was grown there and one of its roots emerged at Samoa to become Te Kain Tikuaba. The tree of Kings was inhabited by many spirits who often argued as to who was to be the chief of the island. Nareau the Creator forbade anyone to become chief, so everyone remains equal, and the name Tabiteuea means the chiefs are forbidden. There was also the story of one migrant from Samoa, who married Nei Batiauea who had left the Tree of Kings. After meeting, and being married in the ocean, they landed on Tarawa and became its first inhabitants. There were also other migrations of spirits from Tabiteuea to the rest of the Gilbert Islands.

A particularly dirty piece of colonial high jinks took place on 8 April 1841, when 80 officers and enlisted men from the USS Peacock let themselves loose on Utiroa village, Tabiteuea Island. They believed the locals had killed one of their number the day before and, in the best traditions of the Seventh Cavalry, they burned 300 houses and left the community meeting house, or maneaba, entirely in ashes' as punishment. The 'official' figure of islander dead was only 12, but the commander, presumably pleased with his day's work, described their effort as a 'salutary lesson'. It's not clear from the record whether the islanders learned their lesson and suddenly started liking the invaders.

Missionaries set up shop in the 1850s, and began saving 'Gilbertese' souls by banning their naughty dances and telling them to stop fornicating and indulging in other forms of pleasure. The Americans and British were interested in the region, the Reverend Hiram Bingham was a Yankee and the first missionary to live there. But by 1917 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, agreed to withdraw in the face of successful proselytising by the London Missionary Society and aggressive land grabs by the Crown. In 1892 the Brits proclaimed the group a British protectorate, and established headquarters at Tarawa four years later. They annexed Banaba in 1900 after they discovered phosphate there, and proceeded to mine the trots out of the island. Because Banaba was eventually ruined, the topsoil was spread over fields in Australia and New Zealand, Banaban`s were moved at the end of WWII to Rabi Island in Fiji, where the main community still resides.

By early 1916 the British had legitimised their land grab of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands by the all important Order-in-Council and by getting local chiefs to sign on the dotted line. Other islands joined the gang, including Teraina, Tabuaeran, Kiritimati, or Christmas in English, where Captain James Cook, ate his steamed pudding on Christmas Day. The Tokelau Group, which went to New Zealand administrators in 1925 and Banaba. The uninhabited Phoenix Islands, two of which were administered jointly with the USA, joined the list in 1937. Other islands in present day Kiribati were exploited by foreign companies for phosphate or coconut products, but they eventually came into the fold.

Once the Japanese let loose the seagulls of war in the Pacific, Kiribati would inevitably be drawn in. The Japanese bombed Banaba then landed on Tarawa and Butaritari shortly after they attacked Pearl Harbour. But by November 1943 the Americans had thrown them out of most of present day Kiribati in a series of take-no-prisoners, pitched battles. After Banaba was reoccupied, the Japanese were found to have massacred all, but one man of the imported labour force on receiving news of the end of the war. A military tribunal later gave the death sentence to the COs. The British gave the I-Kiribati another slap in the face in 1957 and 1962 when they detonated hydrogen bombs near Kiritimati, Christmas Island, as part of their atmospheric testing at the giddy heights of the Cold War.

Islanders were given an 'advisory' role in their own government in 1963, and granted full independence on 12 July 1979. Two months later the USA relinquished all claims made under their Guano Act of 1856 to 14 islands in the Line and Phoenix groups. The Banaban's initiated a suit for compensation in the British High Court in 1975, over damage to their homeland caused by phosphate mining, claiming more than UK£7 million for back royalties. They also demanded independence from Kiribati. They were paid the grand sum of US$9.04 million in compensation, and the constitution ensures Banaban's a seat in the House of Assembly and the return of land, to those dispossessed by phosphate mining. But it did not offer them their independence.

In recent years five of the Phoenix Islands were earmarked for residential development with a grant of US$0.4m from the Asian Development Bank. The islands will be settled from overpopulated South Tarawa.