Contexts - Rough Guide to Fiji - page 313

system in order to rule more efficiently. In 1876 the Great Council of Chiefs , or Bose Levu
Vakaturaga , was established to advise the colonial government on Fijian matters, with Queen
Victoria recognized as the most powerful chief.
Indenture and development
Immediately after cession Cakobau and his two sons made a stately visit to Sydney. They
returned carrying measles , and swiftly passed it on to chiefs from all around Fiji who had
come to learn about their adventures overseas. Within two months almost a third of the Fiji-
an population had died from the outbreak. Faced with this crisis, those opposed to cession
and Christianity reverted to their heathen ways. A longer-lasting effect of the outbreak was a
decimated workforce, and one unwilling to toil in the plantations to add to the coffers of em-
pire. In response Sir Arthur Gordon proposed to bring in indentured labourers from India -
a move that would have lasting consequences for the evolution of Fijian society.
The first shipment of Indian labourers arrived aboard the Leonadis in Levuka in 1879.
Between then and 1920 when the scheme was abolished, 60,553 Indians, mostly men, arrived
in Fiji. Their working contract or “ girmit ” (from the word “agreement”) was to last for five
years, after which time the labourer could return home. Life was harsh on the sugar and copra
plantations, but having endured five years of serfdom, the majority preferred to stay on in
Fiji working as farm hands or clerks and eventually setting up trading stores or leasing small
tracts of farmland with the savings they had made; many had also broken caste rules by in-
termarrying, making life back in India impossible. Word of these new opportunities soon
reached India and by 1904, Indian merchants , mostly Gujarats and Punjabis of all castes
and religions, began to arrive.
The largest employer and backbone of the Fijian economy was the Australian-owned Co-
lonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR), established in 1880. But once the indenture pro-
gramme ceased in 1920, a series of strikes for better living and working conditions of the
existing Indian labourers eventually forced CSR to transform its huge plantations into small-
holdings, leased by aspirational Indians. By the 1930s indigenous Fijians were becoming re-
sentful of the wealth and status accrued by the Indians and began to refuse to renew their
leases. Pressure was exerted by CSR but it was Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna , high chief and Ox-
ford graduate, who persuaded his people to work with the Indians. To protect indigenous in-
terests, the Native Land Trust Ordinance (later to become the present-day Native Land Trust
Board) was established to negotiate land tenure leases on the behalf of Fijian landowners.
A small but economically influential group, the Fijian Chinese , began to arrive from China
in the 1850s: the first community was in Levuka. Chinese immigrants were the first to open
shops in rural Fiji.