1. Name(s) of nation, major islands/island groups, capital - indigenous as well as colonial names.
Major Islands: Choisuel, Guadacanal, Malaita, Makira, New Georgia and Santa Isabel
Capital: Honiara on the Guadacanal Island
2. Location and size (land and ocean). Include link to one or more good map(s).
total: 28,896 sq km
country comparison to the world: 144
land: 27,986 sq km
water: 910 sq km
Location: 8 00 S, 159 00 E
3. Population (size and composition - ethnic groups and their sizes - relative, if you prefer). Include information about the native population living elsewhere – for Hawai’i for instance that could be: “There are roughly 200,000 Kānaka Maoli or Native Hawaiians living in Hawai’i. Another 200,000 live outside of Hawai’i, primarily in US west coast states” (you can be more precise, if you want to).
Population: 597,248 (July 2013 est.)
Melanesian 94.5%, Polynesian 3%, Micronesian 1.2%, other 1.1%, unspecified 0.2% (1999 census)
4. Environment (atoll, high volcanic islands, etc), resources (minerals, tropical hardwood timber, fisheries, etc.), and economy today (subsistence agriculture, leased fishery, plantation economy, export, trade, etc.)
Terrain is mostly rugged mountains with low coral atolls
Resources: fish, forests, gold, bauxite, phosphates, lead, zinc, nickel
Agriculture products: cocoa, coconuts, palm kernels, rice, potatoes, vegetables, fruit; cattle, pigs; fish; timber
Industries: fish (tuna), mining, timber
5. Current constitutional arrangement and status (status could be: independent, territory of xx, etc.)
parliamentary democracy and a Commonwealth realm, mixed legal system of English common law and customary law.
6. Culture (brief - traditional and modern)
7. History of settlement (brief) and precolonial times (very brief), as well as of the colonial times (in some detail; remember to include type of relationship - territory, protectorate, etc. - to colonial powers/dominant foreign nations)
8....