Pre-cession government in Fiji

Abstract

THE Fijian people, although they are of basically Melanesian stock, have been subjected to Polynesian influences particularly on the leadership system within their social organization, which made possible political developments in the nineteenth century that could not otherwise have occurred. Between the time of the first contact with Europeans at the end of the eighteenth century, and the conversion of the people to Christianity in the fifth decade of the nineteenth, the greater part of the group came within the control of a small number of chiefs who extended their sphere of influence, first by 'federating' with less important neighbouring chiefs, and then by conquering their more powerful rivals. The process of conquest, by which effective political power in central Fiji was consolidated under the chief of Bau, was made possible by the introduction of the musket by the first Europeans.