Mainstream to millpond? the Fijian political experience 1897-1940
Date
1975
Authors
Macnaught, Timothy J.
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Abstract
The prestige of the Fijian community in
independent Fiji should surprise those who have been
introduced to the country by the development writers of
the 1960s or who insist on bringing to Fiji their
perceptions of other colonized peoples. The thesis argues
that there has been no fundamental shift of power in recent
years to Fijians: they have never really lost its substance,
namely, a strong leadership supported by effective social
structures and traditional sanctions or emotions. It is
true historically that the Fijian Administration encouraged
parochial loyalties; the issues of district politics seem
minute or out of proportion. At the same time the machinery
and the leadership were there at each level of village,
district and province for effective co-operation towards
common goals and for a united front at national level
through the Council of Chiefs.
It is argued that the Gordon-Thurston system
of Fijian administration consolidated in the 19th century
retained just sufficient momentum of its own to withstand
a half century of official misgivings with those 'communal'
aspects of Fijian life that seemed to be hindering the
emergence of a new class of sturdy individualists - a
kind of Fijian who never was and never would be. The
desire of Fijians for education and for expansion into
the commercial economy, and their changing concepts of
status were not easily accommodated by a society adjusted
to comfortable subsistence, nor were they satisfied by the eve of World War II. The familiar contemporary problems
of developing countries were lurking in the shadows but at least Fijians had the security of their lands and an
alternative design for living that, for all its problems,
still seems capable of enviable results and further
development.
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