To be clear, although it was already known by fishermen, this archipelago was not occupied by locals and was first settled by the European countries that deemed it a worthy endeavour (although mostly using slaves of course).

European colonisation isn't rosy, but there is a lot of misinformation out there and things happened widely differently in different places. It's really far from being a simple "subjugate the locals and appropriate their lands" story everywhere.

So in this limited case no one was actually living there before.