History of Fiji
[1] Fiji was settled first by the Lapita culture, around 1,500–1,000 years BC, followed by a large influx of people with predominantly Melanesian genetics about the time of the beginning of the Common Era.
It is believed that the Lapita people or the ancestors of the Polynesians settled the islands first but not much is known of what became of them after the Melanesians arrived; they may have had some influence on the new culture, and archaeological evidence shows that they would have then moved on to Samoa, Tonga and even Hawai'i.
Trade between Fiji and neighbouring archipelagos long before European contact is evidenced by the canoes made from native Fijian trees found in Tonga and Tongan words being part of the language of the Lau group of islands.
Distinctive village architecture evolved consisting of communal and individual bure and vale housing with an advanced system of ramparts and moats usually being constructed around the more important settlements.
Authors such as Deryck Scarr,[10] for example, have perpetuated 19th century claims of "freshly killed corpses piled up for eating" and ceremonial mass human sacrifice on the construction of new houses and boats.
[14] Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first known European visitor to Fiji, sighting the northern island of Vanua Levu and the North Taveuni archipelago in 1643 while looking for Terra Australis incognita, or the Great Southern Continent.
Wilkes wrote that "all the chiefs seemed to look upon Christianity as a change in which they had much to lose and little to gain", but they would endure the preachings of the missionaries because they "bring vessels to their place and give them opportunities of obtaining many desirable articles".
[20] Christianised Fijians, in addition to forsaking their spiritual beliefs, were pressured into cutting their hair short, adopting the sulu form of dress from Tonga and fundamentally changing their marriage and funeral traditions.
[21] The strengthening demands of Western imperial and capital representatives upon coastal Fijians to relinquish their culture, land and resources at this time inevitably led to an increase in the intensity of conflict.
His father was Ratu Tanoa Visawaqa, the Vunivalu (a chiefly title meaning Warlord, often translated also as Paramount Chief) who had previously defeated the much larger Burebasaga confederacy and succeeded in subduing much of western Fiji.
[23] Around this time the United States also became interested in asserting their power in the region and they threatened intervention following a number of incidents involving their consul in the Fiji islands, John Brown Williams.
Cakobau was retained as a largely symbolic representative of the Fijian people and was allowed to take the ironic title of "Tui Viti" ("King of Fiji"), but the overarching control now lay with foreign powers.
After the collapse of the confederacy, Ma'afu had established a stable administration in the Lau Islands that gave favourable land leases to the planters and Lomaloma became an important trading centre to rival Levuka.
[29] In June 1871, George Austin Woods, an ex-lieutenant of the Royal Navy, managed to influence Cakobau and organise a group of like-minded settlers and chiefs into forming a governing administration.
Even the British consul to Fiji at the time, Edward Bernard March, sided with these groups against the Cakobau administration despite the fact almost all the power lay with the white settlers within the government.
In 1871, the killing of two settlers named Spiers and Mackintosh near the Ba River (Fiji) in the north-west of the island prompted a large punitive expedition of white farmers, imported slave labourers and coastal Fijians to be organised.
[45] A notorious incident of the blackbirding trade was the 1871 voyage of the brig Carl, organised by Dr James Patrick Murray,[46] to recruit labourers to work in the plantations of Fiji.
[50] Captain Martin of the Wild Duck stole people from Espiritu Santo,[51] while other ships such as the Lapwing, Kate Grant, Harriet Armytage and the Frolic also participated in the kidnapping trade.
[56] The Governor of Fiji, Sir Arthur Gordon, endorsed not only the procuring of Kanaka labour but became an active organiser in the plan to expand it to include mass importation of indentured coolie workers from India.
[71] Warnings from the Royal Navy stationed in the area that buying these people was illegal were largely given without enforcement and the British consul in Fiji, Edward Bernard March, regularly turned a blind eye to this type of labour trade.
The murder of Bishop John Coleridge Patteson of the Melanesian Mission at Nukapu in the Reef Islands had provoked public outrage, which was compounded by the massacre by crew members of more than 150 Fijians on board the brig Carl.
In early 1875, colonial administrator Edgar Leopold Layard had met with thousands of highland clansmen at Navuso in Viti Levu to formalise their subjugation to British rule and the Christian religion.
With almost all aspects of indigenous Fijian social life being controlled by British authorities, a number of charismatic individuals preaching dissent and return to pre-colonial culture were able to forge a following amongst the disenfranchised.
[82] Three years later in the highlands of Vanua Levu, where locals had re-engaged in traditional religion, the Governor of Fiji, John Bates Thurston, ordered in the Armed Native Constabulary to destroy the towns and the religious relics.
The refusal of Indo-Fijians to play an active role in the war efforts become part of the ideological construction employed by Fijian ethno-nationalists to justify interethnic tensions in the post-war years.
Post-independence politics came to be dominated by Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and the Alliance Party, which commanded the support of the traditional Fijian chiefs, along with leading elements of the European and part-European communities, and some Indo-Fijians.
The year 2000 brought along another coup, instigated by George Speight, which effectively toppled the government of Mahendra Chaudhry, who in 1997 had become the country's first Indo-Fijian Prime Minister following the adoption of the new constitution.
The High Court ordered the reinstatement of the constitution, and in September 2001, to restore democracy, a general election was held which was won by interim Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase's Soqosoqo Duavata ni Lewenivanua party.
The standoff dragged on for eight weeks – during which time Chaudhry was removed from office by the then-President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara because of his inability to govern – before the Fijian military seized power and brokered a negotiated end to the situation, then arrested Speight when he violated its terms.
Peters reported the talks as "positive" but after returning to Fiji Commodore Bainimarama announced that the military were to take over most of Suva and fire into the harbour "in anticipation of any foreign intervention".
