A Racial Study of the Fijians

by Norman E. Gabel

HISTORY

The first western contact with Fiji was made in 1643 when Captain Abel Tasman entered Fijian waters and sighted several islands and reefs without realizing the nature of his discovery. Over a hundred years later, Captain Cook made a second contact by stopping at one of the southern Lau Islands. Real knowledge of the area began in 1792 when Captain Bligh sailed through the archipelago from the southeast to the northwest, following the famous mutiny of the Bounty. Bligh made an attempt to land, was attacked by natives, and continued through the islands with no more landings. He did, however, make a record of most of the islands he passed.

In the nineteenth century, commercial contacts began in the form of sandalwood trade. This profitable commodity brought Europeans and Americans first to the Sandalwood Coast on the west side of Vanua Levu. During this period the first systematic survey of Fijian waters was made by the U.S. Exploring Expedition in 1840. After little more than a decade the sandalwood supply was depleted to the point where trade virtually ceased.

As a result of this initial commercial contact, which was mainly around western Vanua Levu and eastern Viti Levu, some marked changes were effected in Fijian culture. After the sandalwood traders abandoned Fiji for more profitable fields, a number of deserters and ship-wrecked men remained. These beachcombers, along with firearms that had been introduced by trade or salvaged from wrecks, brought about the first striking alterations. Rival chiefs competed for the acquisition of muskets, gunpowder, and beachcombers. The latter in some instances became attached to royal households as dubious advisors and instructors in the use of guns, powder, and shot. Some of these coaches enjoyed a status resembling that of household pets.

The introduction of firearms changed the native political scene and increased the scope and destructiveness of warfare. For a time the rulers of Mbau in eastern Viti nearly monopolized the supply of muskets and white men. This established their political supremacy over rival leaders. Larger and stronger political and military alliances, some resembling small kingdoms, developed for purposes of defense or aggression. As warfare grew more frequent, new diseases entered the islands and trade in liquor advanced.

After the third decade of the nineteenth century better elements began to enter Fiji and ensuing culture contact was not so consistently deplorable. Bêche-de-mer traders and whalers began to visit the islands for trade goods and supplies. Some began to settle at the east end of Viti Levu. Missionaries came in the 1830's and the Christianization of Fiji began.

Internal conflict between rival chiefs, attacks on French, British, and American ships, with subsequent reprisals, continued and intensified. By mid-century, rivalry between the local kingdoms of Mbau and Rewa reached a peak. At this time the powerful ruler of Mbau, Thakombau, who dominated a large segment of eastern Viti Levu, had become hard pressed by his Rewa enemies. Thakombau submitted to the missionaries who had been pressing his conversion. With his support of the missionaries, the native struggles became a religious war between Christianity and paganism as well as between nativism and westernism. Thakombau's cause was rescued in 1855 when King George of Tonga brought an army of 2,000 warriors to Fiji and combined his strength with that of the kingdom of Mbau. Thenceforth Thakombau remained the paramount chief in eastern Fiji and for some twenty ensuing years ruled under the dominance of Tongan princes. Another Tongan chief, Ma'afu, arrived in 1848 and set up a political domain that rivaled the kingdom of Thakombau.

Throughout these struggles and particularly with the conversion of Thakombau and the leadership of the already Christianized Tongan chiefs, native religion, including cannibalism, rapidly declined. Meanwhile, English, Australian, and New Zealand settlers were augmenting earlier trade contacts. Plantations and trade centers developed, and in 1857 a British consul was appointed and set up at Levuka on the east coast of Viti Levu. A few years later Thakombau sought relief from the payment of indemnities to foreign powers and from internal harassments by an offer to cede his dominions to Great Britain. The initial offer was declined and the British consul was recalled in 1860.

The next ten years saw a continuation of political and military turmoil stemming from rival interests of native rulers, Tongan interlopers, and European immigrants. A second appeal to the British government resulted in an unconditional deed of cession on October 10, 1874, which marks the beginning of Fiji's status as a British Crown Colony.