Tristan da Cunha

Tristan da Cunha is a group of islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. They are part of a British Overseas Territory being governed alongside Ascension and Saint Helena as a single territory. The islands of Tristan da Cunha are largely uninhabited.

The islands were uninhabited until 1810 and in 1816 they were annexed by the United Kingdom. In 1834 they became part of the British Crown Colony Saint Helena and Dependencies with the name being changed to Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha in 2009.

A Bahá’í visited Tristan da Cunha in the 1950s however a Bahá’í community has not been established.

History

In 1953 the Ten Year Crusade was launched by Shoghi Effendi which was an international teaching plan aiming to establish Bahá’í communities across the world. Early in the Crusade an English Bahá’í offered to pioneer to Tristan da Cunha however Shoghi Effendi advised against doing so as the area was not a goal territory of the Crusade.

In 1956 Shoghi Effendi conveyed that as the majority of the goal territories had been settled a pioneer to Tristan de Cunha would be acceptable. At some point in the 1950's Walter Kleist, a German Bahá’í living in South Africa, became the first Bahá’í to visit the islands when a ship he was on briefly stopped there and he donated a copy of Bahá’u’lláh and the New Era to a library.