A group of coral atolls, the Phoenix Islands are part of the island country of Kiribati. The atolls are located in the west-central Pacific Ocean, 1,650 miles (2,650 kilometers) southwest of Hawaii. The group comprises Rawaki (Phoenix), Manra (Sydney), McKean, Nikumaroro (Gardner), Birnie, Orona (Hull), (Canton), and Enderbury atolls. They have a total land area of approximately 11 square miles (29 square kilometers). All are uninhabited except for , where a small Kiribati government presence accounts for a population of fewer than 50 people.
The islands are low, coral atolls with sand and sandstone. Vegetation is largely grass and shrubs, with a few coconut palms as a remnant of former plantations. Birds are abundant, and McKean is protected as a bird sanctuary. Crabs, lizards, turtles, and rats also live on the islands, and marine life abounds around their reefs.
Archaeological ruins on Manra suggest brief settlement or extended visits by early Polynesians, but the shortage of fresh water limited habitation. Whaling ships reached the islands in the early 1800s. From 1859 to 1870 an American company mined guano (bird excrement)—as a source of phosphates for use in fertilizers and explosives—on McKean. Great Britain claimed the islands later in the 19th century and leased them to the Pacific Islands Company, which planted coconuts on Nikumaroro in the 1880s and ’90s. The lease passed to the Samoan Shipping and Trading Company in 1916. Each attempt at commercial development was short-lived.
In 1937 Great Britain annexed the Phoenix Islands to the British colony of the Gilbert and Ellice islands (now Kiribati and Tuvalu, respectively). and Enderbury islands, which were also claimed by the United States, came under joint British and American administration through an agreement reached in 1939.
The British colonial administration in 1938 encouraged residents of the overcrowded southern Gilbert Islands to settle in new colonies on Manra, Nikumaroro, and Orona. Wells provided water that was possible to drink but that was too salty to be of good quality. World War II interrupted communications and shipping to the colonies. The resettlement scheme was formally declared a failure, and by 1963 the entire population was either returned to the Gilbert Islands or resettled in the Solomon Islands, which had a shortage of workers.
The United States constructed an airbase on , the only inhabited atoll of the Phoenix group, during World War II and tracked missiles from that island until the 1970s. The United States, which had also built facilities on Enderbury and Orona islands, relinquished all claims to the Phoenix Islands or its former facilities there when the island group became part of the newly independent Kiribati in 1979.