History

The Dutch navigator Abel Tasman sighted some of the Fiji Islands in the 1640s, and Capt. James Cook visited one of the southernmost islands in 1774. After the mutiny on HMS Bounty off Tonga in April 1789, Capt. William Bligh and his loyal crewmen sailed their longboat between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu, where they barely escaped capture by Fijians in speedy druas (speedy war canoes). The passage between Viti Levu and Vanua Levu still is named Bligh Water.

European sandalwood, copra, and bêche-de-mer (sea cucumber) traders settled on Ovalau in the early 1820s and established the first urban-type town in Fiji at Levuka, but for many years the real power lay on Bau, a tiny island just off the eastern coast of Viti Levu. With the help of a Swedish mercenary named Charlie Savage, who supplied the guns, High Chief Tanoa of Bau extended his control over most of western Fiji. Bau's influence grew even more under his son and successor, Cakobau, who rose to the height of power in the 1840s. Cakobau never ruled over all the islands, however, for Enele Ma'afu, a member of Tonga's royal family, invaded the Lau Group in 1848 and exerted control over eastern Fiji. Ma'afu made the conquered Fijian chiefs marry Tongan women, which helps explain why many of Fiji's high chiefs today appear as much Polynesian as Melanesian.

Ma'afu also brought along Wesleyan missionaries from Tonga, thus giving the Methodist church a foothold in Fiji (it still is the predominate denomination here). Although Cakobau converted to Christianity, many lesser chiefs, especially those in the mountains, saw the Wesleyan missionaries as a threat to their power and refused to convert or even to allow the missionaries to establish outposts in their villages. Some mountaineers made a meal of the Rev. Thomas Baker when he tried to convert them in 1867.

Fiji Becomes A Colony -- Cakobau's slide from power began July 4, 1849, when John Brown Williams, the American consul, celebrated the birth of his own nation. A cannon went off and started a fire that burned Williams's house. The Fijians promptly looted the burning building. Williams blamed Cakobau and demanded $5,000 in damages. Within a few years the U.S. claims against the chief totaled more than $40,000, an enormous sum in those days. In the late 1850s, with Ma'afu gaining power in the east, and disorder growing elsewhere in Fiji, Cakobau offered to cede the islands to Great Britain if Queen Victoria would pay the Americans. The British pondered his offer for 4 years before turning him down.

The early European settlers bought about 10 percent of the islands from the Fijians, sometimes fraudulently and often for whiskey and guns (this freehold property is a sore point with some modern Fijians, who would like to have it back). Claims and counterclaims to land ownership swept Fiji to the brink of race war. To avoid anarchy, the Europeans established a national government at Levuka and named Cakobau king of Fiji. Three years later they forced Cakobau to cede the islands to Great Britain. With no price tag attached, the British accepted. The Deed of Cession making Fiji a British colony was signed on October 10, 1874, at Nasovi village near Levuka.

Britain sent Sir Arthur Gordon as the colony's first governor. He allowed the Fijian chiefs to govern their villages and districts as they had done before and to advise him through a Great Council of Chiefs. He declared that native Fijian lands could not be sold, only leased. That decision has to this day helped to protect the Fijians, their land, and their customs, but it has helped fuel bitter animosity on the part of the land-deprived Indians.

Gordon prohibited the planters from using Fijians as laborers (not that many of them had the slightest inclination to work for someone else). When the planters switched to sugarcane in the 1870s, Sir Arthur convinced them to import indentured servants from India. The first 463 East Indians arrived on May 14, 1879.

The Count Confounded -- In 1917 Count Felix von Luckner arrived at Wakaya Island off eastern Viti Levu in search of a replacement for his infamous World War I German raider, the Seeadler, which had gone aground in the Cook Islands after shelling Papeete on Tahiti. A local constable became suspicious of the armed foreigners and notified the district police inspector. Only Europeans -- not Fijians or Indians -- could use firearms, so the inspector took a band of unarmed Fijians to Wakaya. Thinking he was up against a much larger armed force, von Luckner unwittingly surrendered.

Fiji Becomes Independent -- One of the highest-ranking Fijian chiefs, Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna, rose to prominence after World War I. (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, which governs all communally-owned Fijian land. He used the position as a platform to educate his people and to lay the foundation for the independent state of Fiji. As much as anyone, he was the father of modern, independent Fiji.

The road to independence was anything but smooth. The Indo-Fijians were highly organized, in 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 1969, however, and on October 10, 1970 -- exactly 96 years after Cakobau signed the Deed of Cession -- the Dominion of Fiji became an independent member of the British Commonwealth of Nations.

Rambo's Coup -- Under the 1970 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 the late Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the country's first prime minister.

Then, in a general election held in April 1987, a coalition of Indians and liberal Fijians voted Ratu Mara and his Alliance party out of power. Although a Fijian became prime minister, he named more Indians than Fijians to his cabinet. Shortly after the election, members of the predominantly Fijian army stormed into Parliament and overthrew the new government. It was the South Pacific's first military coup, and although peaceful, it took nearly everyone by surprise.

The coup leader was Col. Sitiveni Rabuka (pronounced "Ram-bu-ka"), whom local wags quickly nicknamed Rambo. A Fijian of nonchiefly lineage, Rabuka immediately became a hero to his "commoner" fellow Fijians. He abrogated the 1970 constitution, declared Fiji to be an independent republic, and set up an interim government with himself as minister of home affairs and army commander. In 1990 he promulgated a new constitution guaranteeing Fijians a parliamentary majority -- thereby rankling the Indians. Rabuka's pro-Fijian party won the initial election, but he barely hung onto power in 1994 by forming a coalition with the European, Chinese, and mixed-race general-elector parliamentarians.

The 2000 Insurrection -- Rabuka also appointed a three-person Constitutional Review Commission, which proposed the present constitution. Ratified in 1998, it led to general elections in 1999. Supported by many Fijians, Labor Party leader Mahendra Chaudhry won an outright majority of parliament and became Fiji's first Indian prime minister.

His tenure was short-lived, however. In May 2000 a disgruntled Fijian businessman named George Speight led a gang of armed henchmen into parliament. Demanding the appointment of an all-Fijian government, they held Chaudhry and several members of parliament hostage for 56 days. While negotiating with Speight with one hand, the army with the other disbanded the constitution and appointed an interim government headed by Fijian economist Laisenia Qarase. Speight released his hostages after being promised amnesty, but the army arrested him 2 weeks later and charged him with treason. Convicted by a civilian court, his death sentence was later commuted to life in prison. A number of other participants were convicted and sent to jail.

Fiji's supreme court then ruled that the 1998 constitution was still in effect and ordered fresh parliamentary elections in 2001, when caretaker leader Qarase became the legal prime minister of a Fijian-dominated government. Chaudhry was returned to parliament as leader of the opposition.

Qarase proposed a "Reconciliation, Tolerance, and Unity" bill, which opponents -- including the army -- claimed would grant amnesty to Speight and other participants in the 2000 insurrection. The proposed legislation was the most contentious issue in the general elections of May 2006, which returned Qarase's Fijian party to power.