Following Gordon's example, the British governed "Fiji for the Fijians" -- and the European planters, of course -- leaving the Indians to struggle for their civil rights. The government exercised jurisdiction over all Europeans in the colony and assigned district officers the "D. There was a large gulf between the appointed civil servants sent from Britain and the locals. Ratu means "chief" in Fijian. Born of high chiefly lineage, Ratu Sukuna was educated at Oxford, served in World War I, and worked his way up through the colonial bureaucracy to the post of chairman of the Native Land Trust Board.
Although dealing in that position primarily with disputes over land and chiefly titles, he used it as a platform to educate his people and to lay the foundation for the independent state of Fiji. As much as anyone, Sukuna was the father of modern, independent Fiji. They built the airstrip at Nadi, and several coastal gun emplacements still stand along the coast.
Thousands of Fijians fought with great distinction as scouts and infantrymen in the Solomon Islands campaigns. Their knowledge of tropical jungles and their skill at the ambush made them much feared by the Japanese.
The Fijians were, said one war correspondent, "death with velvet gloves. Although many Indo-Fijians at first volunteered to join, they also demanded pay equal to that of the European members of the Fiji Military Forces.
When the colonial administrators refused, they disbanded their platoon. Their military contribution was one officer and 70 enlisted men of a reserve transport section, and they were promised that they would not have to go overseas. Many Fijians to this day begrudge the Indo-Fijians for not doing more to aid the war effort. Ratu Sukuna continued to push the colony toward independence until his death in , and although Fiji made halting steps in that direction during the s, the road was rocky.
The Indo-Fijians by then were highly organized, in both political parties and trade unions, and they objected to a constitution that would institutionalize Fijian control of the government and Fijian ownership of most of the new nation's land. Key compromises were made in , however, and on October 10, -- exactly 96 years after Cakobau signed the Deed of Cession -- the Dominion of Fiji became an independent member of the British Commonwealth of Nations. Under the constitution, Fiji had a Westminster-style Parliament consisting of an elected House of Representatives and a Senate composed of Fijian chiefs.
For the first 17 years of independence, the Fijians maintained a majority -- albeit a tenuous one -- in the House of Representatives and control of the government under the leadership of Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the country's first prime minister. Then, in a general election held in April , a coalition of Indians and liberal Fijians voted Ratu Mara and his Alliance party out of power. Timoci Bavadra, a Fijian, took over as prime minister, but his cabinet was composed of more Indians than Fijians.
Animosity immediately flared between some Fijians and Indians. Within little more than a month of the election, members of the predominantly Fijian army stormed into Parliament and arrested Dr. Bavadra and his cabinet. It was the South Pacific's first military coup, and although peaceful, it took nearly everyone by complete surprise. The coup leader was Col. Sitiveni Rabuka pronounced "Ram- bu -ka" , whom local wags quickly nicknamed "Rambo. A Fijian of non-chiefly lineage, he immediately became a hero to his "commoner" fellow Fijians.
Rabuka at first installed a caretaker government, but in September he staged another bloodless coup. A few weeks later he abrogated the constitution, declared Fiji to be an independent republic, and set up a new interim government with himself as minister of home affairs and army commander. In the interim government promulgated a new constitution guaranteeing Fijians a parliamentary majority -- and rankling the Indians. Rabuka's pro-Fijian party won the initial election, but he barely hung onto power in fresh elections in by forming a coalition with the European, Chinese, and mixed-race general-elector parliamentarians.
Rabuka also appointed a three-person Constitutional Review Commission, which proposed the constitution that parliament adopted in It created a parliamentary house of 65 seats, with 19 held by Fijians, 17 by Indians, 3 by general-electors, 1 by a Rotuman, and 25 open to all races.
A year later, with support from many Fijians who were unsettled over the country's poor economy, rising crime, and deteriorating roads, labor union leader Mahendra Chaudhry's party won an outright majority of parliament, and he became Fiji's first Indian prime minister. He pointed to Papua New Guinea or the Solomon Islands as the place from where the earliest Fijians came, as the pottery fragments were typical of the early Lapita period in Papua New Guinea and the Solomons, but not readily found on Lapita pottery in Fiji.
Nunn suspects and announced on 9 November that a black obsidian rock discovered near Natadola in southwest Viti Levu had originated in the Kutau-Bao obsidian mine onTalasea Peninsula on the island of New Britain, in Papua New Guinea, some kilometers away. Although carried throughout the Western Pacific by the Lapita people, as it is not often found in Fiji. The obsidian, which showed signs of being "worked", probably arrived soon after the initial Lapita settlement in Bourewa circa BC, Nunn observed.
He theorized that it was kept by the Lapita settlers as a talisman, a reminder of where they had come from. Fiji Television reported on 20 March that an ancient Fijian village, believed to have been occupied by chiefs sometime between and , had been discovered atKuku, in Nausori. Its heavily fortified battle fort contained unique features not seen elsewhere in Fiji. Archeologist Sepeti Matararaba of the Fiji Museum expressed astonishment at some of the discoveries at the site, which included an iron axe used by white traders in exchange for Fijian artifacts.
Local villages were reported to be rebuilding the site with a view to opening it up to tourists in July According to oral tradition, the indigenous Fijians of today are descendants of the chief Lutunasobasoba and those who arrived with him on the Kaunitoni canoe.
Landing at what is now Vuda, the settlers moved inland to the Nakauvadra mountains. Though this oral tradition has not been independently substantiated, the Fijian government officially promotes it, and many tribes today claim to be descended from the children of Lutunasobasoba. Namata a Fijian publication during the early colony days of Fiji, noted a separate occupation of the Fiji Isles.
The publication noted that "Ratu" now believed to have settled in "Vereta" in tailevu, came via the "Rogovoka" settling first in the islands in the East than moved toward Viti-Levu with descendants and journers moving inland and around the north and south-west coast. The European discoveries of the Fiji group were accidental. The first of these discoveries was made in by the Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman and English navigators, including Captain James Cook who sailed through in , and made further explorations in the 18th century.
Major credit for the discovery and recording of the islands went to Captain William Bligh who sailed through Fiji after the mutiny on the Bounty in The first Europeans to land and live among the Fijians were shipwrecked sailors and runaway convicts from the Australian penal settlements.
Sandalwood traders and missionaries came by the mid 19th century. Cannibalism practiced in Fiji at that time quickly disappeared as missionaries gained influence. When Ratu Seru Cakobau accepted Christianity in , the rest of the country soon followed and tribal warfare came to an end.
From to Indians came as indentured labourers to work on the sugar plantations. After the indentured system was abolished, many stayed on as independent farmers and businessmen. Today they comprise Culture Fiji was first settled about three and a half thousand years ago. The original inhabitants are now called "Lapita people" after a distinctive type of fine pottery they produced, remnants of which have been found in practically all the islands of the Pacific, east of New Guinea, though not in eastern Polynesia.
Linguistic evidence suggests that they came from northern or central Vanuatu, or possibly the eastern Solomons. Before long they had moved further on, colonizing Rotuma to the north, and Tonga and Samoa to the east. From there, vast distances were crossed to complete the settlement of the Pacific to Hawaii in the north, Rapanui Easter Island in the east and Aotearoa New Zealand in the south.
Unlike the islands of Polynesia which showed a continuous steadily evolving culture from initial occupation, Fiji appears to have undergone at least two periods of rapid culture change in prehistoric times. This may have been due to the arrival of fresh waves of immigrants, presumably from the west.
Prehistorians have noted that a massive 12th century volcanic eruption in southern Vanuatu coincides with the disappearance there of a certain pottery style, and its sudden emergence in Fiji. It is hardly surprising then, that the Fijian culture is an intricate network and that generalisations are fraught with danger.
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