The Republic of the Marshall Islands since 1990

Rioting that followed clashes between police and strikers in Suva in December 1959 was interpreted by the authorities and the European minority as being motivated by anti-European feeling. But the racial interpretation of the strike tells us more about the authorities' own fears of solidarity between Indians and Fijians than it does about the strikers actual motivations, which were simply to advance an economic demand. The racialisation of the dispute came afterwards, in the suppression of the strike, and the reassertion of traditional Fijian authority vested in the Council of Chiefs, whose appeal to Fijians was made in specifically anti-Indian terms. The return to traditional authority prevented moves to modernise Fijian society.