Rapa Rapa

Rapa Rapa is an island in the Polynesian Sea that is part of Urcea. It is located immediately to the west of Truk.

Etymology
"Rapa Rapa" is the indigenous Polynesian name for the island. The term, which employs the Polynesian linguistic characteristic of, means "small island".

Prehistoric settlement and isolation
Rapa Rapa was settled by prehistoric Polynesian people with a range of dates proposed beginning around 1000 BC with the upper limit being around 600 BC, when nearby Truk was settled. Whenever it was settled, the island coalesced generally into about five distinct villages, all of which survive today.

Arrival of Truk
In the late 13th century, Rapa Rapa's long isolation and irrelevance came to an end with the rise of the Emirate of Truk. The new expansionist Emirate unified their home island region but also launched major expeditions to outlying islands in the Polynesian Sea, including Rapa Rapa. According to the traditional story, the villages of the small island of Rapa Rapa sighted a large flotilla of Truk ships off their shore and immediately welcomed the powerful foreigners onto shore. The Truk people taught the people of Rapa Rapa their newfound religion, and the general of the force named a paramount chief from among the villages. From the 1260s until the conquest of Truk in the 1670s, Rapa Rapa was an outlying dependency of the Emirate of Truk, paying occasional tribute and recognizing paramount chiefs chosen by the Emir. In this period, Rapa Rapa became almost entirely Muslim. The Trukite ascendancy over the island inaugurated a four-century long period of peace and relative prosperity on the island, though a lack of natural resources prevented significant economic activity beyond subsistence fishing.

Second isolation period
The destruction of the Emirate of Truk in 1675-76 brought Rapa Rapa's immediate political association to an end. Too far from the main new Daxian colony in Truk and too small to attract much notice, the island once again became largely isolated. Limited evidence suggests that the system of paramount chiefs may have continued into the 1700s, using a system of election among all the chiefs. By the time Occidental explorers reached the island in 1772, the unified political system had dissolved and the island was characterized by intermittent skirmishing and raiding between the villages. By this period, the people of Rapa Rapa had developed a martial culture following what appears to have been decades of unending struggle. Accordingly, the people of Rapa Rapa were extremely hostile to outside explorers arriving between 1772 and the arrival of Urcea in the 1860s. During this period, seven different Occidental exploratory vessels came to or anchored off the island, each time being greeted with extreme hostility.