'You are not a White Woman!'

During her trial for assault in Fiji in 1915, Stella Spencer was accused of improperly associating with and even making love to native Fijians, in such a way as to prejudice the order of the colony. The background to the trial was Spencer's work on behalf of the populist Fijian leader of the Viti Company, Apolosi Nawai. As well as using the trial in an attempt to vilify Nawai as a crook, the European colonists asserted a harsh racial division with regard to sexual conduct between the races. Sexual intercourse symbolised a diminution of white prestige. This article tells the story of Apolosi Nawai and Stella Spencer from contemporaneous reports, the Fijian National Archives and the Colonial Office Archives     

Land,Life and Labour: Indo‐Fijian Claims to Citizenship in a Changing Fiji

Since the coup of May 2000 an estimated 24,000 Indo‐Fijians have left Fiji, the majority of them moving to Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the US. Those who remain in Fiji have faced increasing marginalisation as the government of Prime Minister Qarase has proposed significant reforms to both the administration of land and Constitutional arrangements of political representation. The situation has been further compounded through Qarase's recently proposed ‘Unity Bill’, which would grant amnesty to some of those responsible for the 2000 coup. These reforms are all part of an effort to ensure the ‘paramountcy’ of indigenous Fijians as well as to limit Indo‐Fijian participation in Fijian national politics. In this paper, I employ Greenhouse's concept of ‘empirical citizenship’ to analyse Indo‐Fijian responses to their political marginalisation in Fiji. After considering how national identities and sentiments of belonging are expressed in Indo‐Fijian discourse through the symbolic inter‐connection of the land and the Indo‐Fijian body, I argue that even if Indo‐Fijians are openly willing to recognize indigenous Fijian supremacy in national politics and the project of nation‐making, assertions of their right to live and labour on Fijian land constitute claims to ‘citizenship’ that are highly contestable in Fiji's current political climate.     

History,Hermeneutics and Fijian Ethnic ‘Paramountcy’

The historical context in which Fiji's Deed of Cession was formulated satisfied the necessary conditions for British annexation and included safeguards for Fijian land rights. Both Fijian and English texts implied that the incoming government would respect Fijian custom. For over 60 years, Fijians benefited from a special administrative status in territorial government, restrictions on land alienation and privileged access to departments of the colonial executive. But Fijian commoners were disadvantaged in education, and resisted payment of head taxes. The tax crisis exposed the inability of chiefs to grapple with reform of local government. Faced with electoral competition in the post-war period, Fijian leadership took refuge in a racial view of political legitimacy, derived from an interpretation of the Deed as a ‘charter’ of Fijian rights.

After independence, Fijian need for reassurances about preferential treatment in a parliamentary democracy was fuelled by commoner dissatisfaction with Alliance administration and by a political party formed by the Council of Chiefs. This faction provided a considered ideology for a racial view of ethnic ‘sovereignty’ in a plural society by ignoring the issue of citizenship and over-emphasising the role of the monarch in the language of the Deed. Other commentaries have also favoured an anachronistic interpretation of the political legacy of the Deed, but none of the post-1987 regimes has adopted its terms in Fijian municipal law. Such a suggestion has been made, however, as a defence of commoner rights against Fijian government agencies on the model of the Waitangi Tribunal.     

Drinking to Mana and Ethnicity: Trajectories of Yaqona Practice and Symbolism in Eastern Fiji

This paper sets out a transformational history of yaqona use in Fiji from first contact with Europeans to present times. Trying to transcend the familiar history/structure dichotomy, two relatively separate trajectories of Fijian practice are identified, both incorporating enduring cultural premises, both logically and historically transformative. In the older of these trajectories, yaqona drinking is transformed ritually to promote or block the circulation of mana in embodied Fijian ‘lands’. In the younger pathway, by contrast, secular variants of yaqona ceremonial are invented to ethnic effect as one particular transformation of a modern structure that, against the grain of ritual practice, tends to detach ethnic Fijians from ancestral powers. It is suggested that, whilst, in appropriate spaces, contemporary ethnic objectifications of yaqona are formulated in opposition to other ethnic presences as expressions of ‘authentic’ Fijian‐ness, the underlying ritual transformations of yaqona produce a range of Fijian states that exceed this authenticity and challenge the otherwise hegemonic claims of ethnicity.     

Missing or Misdiagnosed? General Paralysis of the Insane,Yaws, and Syphilis in Fiji, 1884–1940

ABSTRACT

General Paralysis of the Insane (GPI) was a deadly disease, once common in Fiji’s lunatic asylum and, by the early 20th century, thought to be caused by syphilis. The conundrum is that the majority of GPI sufferers in the asylum were Indigenous Fijians, considered to have immunity to syphilis. This immunity was probably through the prevalence of yaws amongst Indigenous Fijians. Yaws had symptoms similar to GPI and syphilis with which it was easily confused. Yaws and syphilis also invoked divergent scientific and moral discourses, with implications for how medical and scientific knowledge about the aetiology of GPI and associated moral discourses were transferred to Fiji. This paper discusses European nosology and diagnosis of GPI, yaws and syphilis, asking if GPI was misdiagnosed in Fiji, or if reports of GPI among Fijians and the effects of yaws on the nervous system are missing from tropical medicine orthodoxy.     

The trial of consul pritchard

Abstract

William Pritchard, Fiji's first British consul, quickly became a pivotal figure after his arrival in 1858, negotiating an offer of cession, establishing a court, stabilising relations among the resident populations, and resisting Tongan threats to the power of Cakobau, the leading chief. In 1859 the Fijian chiefs gave him ‘supreme authority to govern Fiji’. His resistance to the Tongan faction put him at odds with Wesleyan missionaries, who influenced Col. William Smythe, who was sent by the British government to investigate the offer of cession. Smythe recommended against cession and campaigned for the government to send a commission to investigate Pritchard's conduct, charging him with financial irregularities and interfering in Fijian native affairs. Pritchard was dismissed from office, but records reveal the commission to have been a travesty. Pritchard influenced events in Fiji at a crucial time, and his reputation and career deserve reassessment.     

Averting ‘Irresponsible Nationalism’

ABSTRACT

Historians of politics in colonial Fiji highlight the contrast between Indian leaders' challenge to European dominance and Fijian chiefs' alignment with European political leaders in defence of colonial rule and against a perceived ‘Indian threat’. While this was the major political divide, its emphasis has neglected a moment of disaffection on the part of the leading chiefs that perhaps had the potential to provoke a challenge to the colonial order. The upset of the established pattern of political relations between Fijian leaders and the colonial government on the eve of the Pacific War, involving some unity with Indian leaders in the Legislative Council, influenced a Fijian policy change that shaped the development of Indigenous Fijian leadership and its quest for state power as British rule drew to an end. This paper suggests that Ratu Sukuna's Fijian Administration, established at the end of the war, be understood not simply as the last, and paradoxically the strongest, stage of colonial indirect rule, but more significantly as both an institutionalised expression and containment of a Fijian nationalist potential, initially energised by a tension in government – Fijian relations that, in part, reflected a white racialism in both official and unofficial attitudes and practices.     

Tales of Two Fijis: early 1960s Japanese travel writing by Kanetaka Kaoru and Kita Morio

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses impressions of Fiji in 1961, recorded by two well-known Japanese travel writers: travel journalist Kanetaka Kaoru and writer Kita Morio. Their comments on ethnic Fijians' attitudes to work and on encounters with a variety of Indigenous Fijians, including ratu (hereditary chiefs), made the observed people ‘others' informing the travellers' views on post-war colonial Fiji in an era when little was known about Fiji in Japan. Differing views on colonialism underpinned the two authors' views. At the time, Kita and Kanetaka revised but replicated the assumptions of pre-war Japanese writing about Nanyō (the South Seas) and of Western travelogues on the Pacific Islands. While Kita passed blunt and prejudiced judgements, he demonstrated an awareness of colonialism's adverse effects and of concerns also felt by the colonial administration about the place of Indigenous Fijians in the modern world. Kanetaka, seemingly without awareness of her latent prejudice, praised Fiji as a near-perfect colony that benefitted from colonialism.     

The Qawa incident in 1968 and other cases of ‘spirit possession’: Religious Syncretism in Fiji

Abstract

Government medical officers investigating an outbreak among adolescent Indian schoolgirls in Fiji diagnosed mass hysteria and identified the trigger girl. Their school was temporarily closed and parents were advised to keep their daughters quietly at home. The Hindu parents were not satisfied with reassurances, since they believed that their children had been possessed by hostile Fijian spirits of a sacred pool on the edge of the school playground that had been damaged by an Indian bulldozer operator who later died. The girls were taken to Hindu healers and to a Muslim healer with Fijian‐derived powers. The local Fijian chief performed a Fijian ceremony of appeasement at the pool. A Hindu pujari prayed to the Hindu elephant god and, following Fijian ritual, poured yaqona (kava) into the pool and asked the spirits for forgiveness. Finally a Hindu pandit prayed to Hindu gods to exorcise the evil spirits, conducting the public Om Shanti ceremony. All the girls who attended the final ceremony recovered. The Indian and Fijian communities combined their beliefs and rituals to appease the spirits and, as far as they were concerned, to cause the girls to recover and to remove the troubles from the school and to prevent further troubles from occurring.     

Wartime Emergency and the Displacement of Indians in Fiji: Cost and Compensation

From 1939, under wartime regulations, land was resumed for military purposes in Fiji. Among the lands taken were plots leased by Indian tenant farmers from Fijians, mainly in western Viti Levu. In some cases this caused loss of livelihood and even destitution, as Indo-Fijian historian Brij V. Lal has shown in his book Broken Waves . Unlike Lal, this author argues that in spite of individual cases of suffering, Indians received adequate government compensation, comparable to other displaced occupiers. The real loss for some was that the resumption of cultivated land still with long unexpired terms was in part an opportunity, if not a pretext, for transferring these to the new Native Land Trust Board to be reserved exclusively for Fijians. This was in contravention of Colonial Office policy on the type of land suitable for reservation. Many Indians saw their former lands reserved, but remaining uncultivated for years.     

Nationalism versus constitutionalism in Fiji*

Abstract. Since Fiji became an independent state in 1970 it has experienced three coups against elected governments. On each occasion, intervention has been justified on the grounds that the rights and interests of indigenous Fijians have been under threat from a government controlled by Indo‐Fijians, the country's second largest ethnic group. This is despite the fact that the constitutions under which these governments were elected contained extensive provisions for the protection of indigenous rights and interests precisely to meet such concerns. Since the coup of May 2000, the 1997 constitution has been resurrected through the legal process and fresh elections held. Although this represented a formal victory for the forces of constitutionalism, the election itself resulted in the return to office of the post‐coup interim administration that had been appointed by the military and which had pledged to uphold the primacy of Fijian interests against other claims. The story of nationalism versus constitutionalism in Fiji is one in which all the efforts of institutional designers seem to have been consistently trumped by the successful manipulation of ethnic identity, especially (although not exclusively) by Fijian nationalists. But it also suggests that there is more to the problems of stability in Fiji than the fact of ethnic difference. In addition, the article critically assesses arguments which favour the development of a new form of constitutionalism which dispenses with the liberal ‘rule of uniformity’ in favour of principles and practices that give explicit recognition to cultural difference.     

The Capture and Curation of the Cannibal ‘Vendovi’: Reality and Representation of a Pacific Frontier

ABSTRACT

The United States Exploring Expedition into the Pacific launched in 1838 was marked, like the continental expansion westward, by violent encounters with Native peoples. By examining the record of the expedition's kidnapping of the Fijian Ro Veidovi, the fate of his body after death, and the ways his story came to be invoked in the official narrative of the expedition, the popular press, the ‘National Gallery’ and, more recently, the Fijian press, this paper demonstrates how violent contacts on the Pacific frontier were remembered, effaced, and reconceived. The changing story of Ro Veidovi permanently bridged distant locales in an emerging ‘Pacific World’, setting in motion transcultural negotiations that continue to this day.     

A FIJIAN PEASANTRY: GALALA AND VILLAGERS

Village societies in rural Fiji have often been studied in terms of a dichotomy between traditional village communalism and independent galala individualism. This was especially so in the 1960s, at a time when government efforts to promote individualist Fijian agriculture led to the creation of a number of resettlement schemes based on the peasant model. Social scientists hailed the galala movement as a fundamental and progressive process of change in Fijian society. However, recent evidence and the demise of regulations which institutionalised galala point to the present lack of distinction between galala and villagers. Indeed, there is considerable confusion within some villages over how galala should be defined and it seems to be much more a matter of spatial location of residence than any attitudinal or economic break with communalism.     

‘We visit the colo towns … when it is safe to go’: Indigenous Adoption of Methodist Christianity in the Wainibuka and Wainimala Valleys,Fiji, in the 1870s

ABSTRACT

The Methodist mission in Fiji was from its inception maritime in nature and was slow to move into the interior of the largest island, Viti Levu. In the 1870s, only two European missionaries ministered to most of Viti Levu, leaving the greater part of evangelism and teaching in the hands of Fijian native ministers (talatala itaukei) and particularly teachers (vakavuvuli). Using evidence from mission and secular travellers in the eastern highland areas of the Wainimala and Wainibuka valleys, this paper suggests that the measles epidemic of 1875, while horrific in its direct effects, did not lead to widespread rejection of Christianity in the valleys of eastern Colo. Rather, Methodism progressed slowly, developing in ways that maintained Fijian priorities and customary practices, and the forms of education and fundraising adopted included Indigenous modes of learning and exchange.     

‘Sharing the white man's burden’ Nazi colonial revisionism and Australia's New‐Guinea mandate

ABSTRACT

The September 2014 general elections in Fiji resulted in a decisive victory for Prime Minister Bainimarama and his FijiFirst Party. It indicated a desire for stability on the part of the electorate as well as the popularity of measures such as ‘free’ education and the removal of affirmative action programmes for Indigenous Fijians. The Social Democratic Liberal Party garnered a significant portion of the Indigenous vote through appeals to ethnic identity, but will need to broaden its base in future to have any chance of forming a government. The high voter enrolment and participation reflects a hope for more accountability as well as transparency, in contrast to the arbitrariness of the previous eight years. New oversight institutions and a more expansive bill of rights in the constitution offer some ground for cautious optimism in the face of cynicism about the gap between the government's rhetoric and its actions.     

Teachers All: Samoan, Fijian, and Queensland Melanesian Missionaries in Papua, 1884–1914

Pacific Islands mission teachers were powerful agents of culture change in Oceania, and the Christianity they taught is part of the ideological and constitutional under-pinnings of several independent Pacific Island states. Their fullest impact was felt in the period between the 1880s and 1914, when vast distances were being crossed and diverse populations reached by evangelists from half a dozen Pacific nationalities. Below the common religious motivations professed by the Islands teachers there were sharp contrasts in expectations and behaviour. This paper compares the Samoan, Fijian, and Queensland Melanesian missionaries in Papua, a colony where Islanders were concentrated in larger numbers than elsewhere. The Samoans are given the greater balance of analysis in the paper, because the 187 male Samoans outnumbered both the Fijians (110 males) and Queensland Melanesians (46), and because the Samoans' expectations diverged more sharply from those of their Euro-pean colleagues than was the case with their Fijian and Queensland Melanesian contemporaries.     

Checking Executive Power: A Simulation Model of Unilateral Executive Behavior

Abstract

What systematic influence does the court exert on unilateral authority? Though questions relating to the expansion and the exercise of unilateral executive power remain a perennial concern in political science, existing studies of the unilateral presidency generally focus on relations between the executive and the legislature, with less attention paid to the impact of the judiciary on executive behavior. Using a system of differential equations to model executive unilateralism and judicial constraints, simulation results identified four broad patterns of unilateral executive behavior and judicial influence. Overall, presidents strategically anticipate reactions from the courts and employ unilateral actions accordingly. Although they are cognizant of the court’s ability to strike down their actions, and thereby harming their preferred policy preferences and legacies, presidents nonetheless act unilaterally, albeit at a lower level. Results add to existing studies in separation of powers and constraints on unilateral executive behavior.     

Origins of Pacific Islands labourers in Fiji

Abstract

The administration of criminal justice in the period 1875–1900 had very different effects on men and women in three separate arenas: colonial towns, plantations and areas subject to chiefly control. In the towns of Levuka and Suva, men were the main concern of the courts; women rarely came before the courts and were almost never imprisoned. On the plantations, British magistrates dealt mainly with alleged breaches of the labour ordinances, with the result that women were prosecuted on an equal basis with men. The gender balance of criminal prosecutions was also closer to equal in the Fijian Provincial Courts, but the nature of the crimes charged against women was totally different from that in the other two spheres of colonial administration, the main concern being breaches of the traditional moral code. Understanding the segmented nature of the judicial system sheds further light on the workings of indirect rule in Fiji and suggests comparisons with colonial administrations in Africa.     

All things go in pairs,or the sharks will bite: the antithetical nature of Fijian chiefship

Via an historical-cum-ethnographic analysis of the history of chiefship in the vanua (country) of Sawaieke, central Fiji, this essay argues against the prevailing view that Fijian social relations are fundamentally hierarchical. Rather social relations in general and chiefship in particular are predicated on complementary and opposing concepts of equality and hierarchy, such that neither can become, in Dumont's terms, ‘an encompassing value’. This radical opposition between equality and hierarchy, Hegelian in form, is fundamental to Fijian dualism, so it pervades Fijian daily life and informs, for example, sexual relations, kinship, chiefship and notions of the person. ‘The household’ is the basic kinship unit and while relations within households are hierarchical, relations across households are those of balanced reciprocal exchange, epitomised in the relation between cross-cousins as equals and affines. The analysis shows that Fijian chiefship — past or present — cannot, as ‘value’, encompass the pervasive antithesis between hierarchy and equality. Rather its efficacy and its continuity require that hierarchy and equality remain in tension with one another as opposing, and equally important, concepts of social relations.     

‘What the Men are Crying Out for is Leadership’: The Khartoum Police Strike of 1951 and the Battle for Administrative Control

The British administrative elite in Sudan represented the Khartoum Police Strike of 1951 as a ‘mutiny’, the result of a combination of both outside provocation and of the character failings of both Sudanese policemen and their British officers. This article will demonstrate that these convenient interpretations concealed a series of wider tensions within the colonial state itself, between modernising legal professionals and colonial administrators who cherished their personal control over the police. These tensions dictated debates about the status of the police in the build up to the strike, and the manner in which the heavily politicised enquiry into it was conducted. The Sudan Political Service employed an ‘otherisation’ of Sudanese culture to argue that the country was unsuited for a modern system of policing. Meanwhile, Sudanese policemen and other nationalists attempted to seize from the British the values of ‘civil’ policing that the colonisers preached but rarely practised. Nevertheless, in spite of the identification of the police strikers with other branches of the nationalist and labour movement, their own association with the government ensured that support for the strike was only limited.