At the time of the British annexation the islands were suffering from commercial depression, following a fall in the price of cotton after the American Civil War. Coffee, tea, cinchona and sugar were tried in turn, with limited success. The coffee was attacked by the leaf disease; the tea could not compete with that grown by the cheap labour of the East; the sugar machinery was too antiquated to withstand the fall in prices consequent on the European sugar bounties. In 1878 the first coolies were imported from India and the cultivation of sugar began to pass into the hands of large companies working with modern machinery. With the introduction of coolies the Fijians began to fall behind in the development of their country. Many of the coolies chose to remain in the colony after the termination of their indentures, and began to displace the European country traders. With a regular and plentiful supply of Indian coolies, the recruiting of kanaka labourers practically ceased. The settlement of European land claims, and the measures taken for the protection of native institutions, caused lively dissatisfaction among the colonists, who laid the blame of the commercial depression at the door of the government; but with returning prosperity this feeling began to disappear. In 1900 the government of New Zealand made overtures to absorb Fiji. The Aborigines Society protested to the colonial office, and the imperial government refused to sanction the proposal.
See Smyth, Ten Months in the Fiji Islands (London, 1864); B. Seemann, Flora Vitiensis (London, 1865); and Viti: Account of a Government Mission in the Vitian or Fijian Islands (1860-1861); W.T. Pritchard, Polynesian Reminiscences (London, 1866); H. Forbes, Two Years in Fiji (London, 1875); Commodore Goodenough, Journal (London, 1876); H.N. Moseley, Notes of a Naturalist in the “Challenger” (London, 1879); Sir A.H. Gordon, Story of a Little War (Edinburgh, privately printed, 1879); J.W. Anderson, Fiji and New Caledonia (London, 1880); C.F. Gordon-Cumming, At Home in Fiji (Edinburgh, 1881); John Horne, A Year in Fiji (London, 1881); H.S. Cooper, Our New Colony, Fiji (London, 1882); S.E. Scholes, Fiji and the Friendly Islands (London, 1882); Princes Albert Victor and George of Wales, Cruise of H. M. S. “Bacchante” (London, 1886); A. Agassiz, The Islands and Coral Reefs of Fiji (Cambridge, Mass., U.S., 1899); H.B. Guppy, Observations of a Naturalist in the Pacific (1896-1899), vol. i.; Vanua Levu, Fiji (Phys. Geog. and Geology) (London, 1903); Lorimer Fison, Tales from Old Fiji (folk-lore, &c.) (London, 1904); B. Thomson, The Fijians (London, 1908).
FILANDER, the name by which the Aru Island wallaby (Macropus brunii) was first described. It occurs in a translation of C. de Bruyn’s Travels (ii. 101) published in 1737.
FILANGIERI, CARLO (1784-1867), prince of Satriano, Neapolitan soldier and statesman, was the son of Gaetano Filangieri (1752-1788), a celebrated philosopher and jurist. At the age of fifteen he decided on a military career, and having obtained an introduction to Napoleon Bonaparte, then first consul, was admitted to the Military Academy at Paris. In 1803 he received a commission in an infantry regiment, and took part in the campaign of 1805 under General Davoust, first in the Low Countries, and later at Ulm, Maria Zell and Austerlitz, where he fought with distinction, was wounded several times and promoted. He returned to Naples as captain on Masséna’s staff to fight the Bourbons and the Austrians in 1806, and subsequently went to Spain, where he followed Jerome Bonaparte in his retreat from Madrid. In consequence of a fatal duel he was sent back to Naples; there he served under Joachim Murat with the rank of general, and fought against the Anglo-Sicilian forces in Calabria and at Messina. On the fall of Napoleon he took part in Murat’s campaign against Eugène Beauharnais, and later in that against Austria, and was severely wounded at the battle of the Panaro (1815). On the restoration of the Bourbon king Ferdinand IV. (I.), Filangieri retained his rank and command, but found the army utterly disorganized and impregnated with Carbonarism. In the disturbances of 1820 he adhered to the Constitutionalist party, and fought under General Pepe (q.v.) against the Austrians. On the reestablishment of the autocracy he was dismissed from the service, and retired to Calabria where he had inherited the princely title and estates of Satriano. In 1831 he was recalled by Ferdinand II. and entrusted with various military reforms. On the outbreak of the troubles of 1848 Filangieri advised the king to grant the constitution, which he did in February 1848, but when the Sicilians formally seceded from the Neapolitan kingdom Filangieri was given the command of an armed force with which to reduce the island to obedience. On the 3rd of September he landed near Messina, and after very severe fighting captured the city. He then advanced southwards, besieged and took Catania, where his troops committed many atrocities, and by May 1849 he had conquered the whole of Sicily, though not without much bloodshed. He remained in Sicily as governor until 1855, when he retired into private life, as he could not carry out the reforms he desired owing to the hostility of Giovanni Cassisi, the minister for Sicily. On the death of Ferdinand II. (22nd of May 1859) the new king Francis II. appointed Filangieri premier and minister of war. He promoted good relations with France, then fighting with Piedmont against the Austrians in Lombardy, and strongly urged on the king the necessity of an alliance with Piedmont and a constitution as the only means whereby the dynasty might be saved. These proposals being rejected, Filangieri resigned office. In May 1860, Francis at last promulgated the constitution, but it was too late, for Garibaldi was in Sicily and Naples was seething with rebellion. On the advice of Liborio Romano, the new prefect of police, Filangieri was ordered to leave Naples. He went to Marseilles with his wife and subsequently to Florence, where at the instance of General La Marmora he undertook to write an account of the Italian army. Although he adhered to the new government he refused to accept any dignity at its hands, and died at his villa of San Giorgio a Cremano near Naples on the 9th of October 1867.
Filangieri was a very distinguished soldier, and a man of great ability; although he changed sides several times he became really attached to the Bourbon dynasty, which he hoped to save by freeing it from its reactionary tendencies and infusing a new spirit into it. His conduct in Sicily was severe and harsh, but he was not without feelings of humanity, and he was an honest man and a good administrator.
His biography has been written by his daughter Teresa Filangieri Fieschi-Ravaschieri, Il Generale Carlo Filangieri (Milan, 1902), an interesting, although somewhat too laudatory volume based on the general’s own unpublished memoirs; for the Sicilian expedition see V. Finocchiaro, La Rivoluzione siciliana del 1848-49 (Catania, 1906, with bibliography), in which Filangieri is bitterly attacked; see also under [Naples]; [Ferdinand IV.]; [Francis I.]; [Ferdinand II.]; [Francis II.]
(L. V.*)