Colony of Fiji

A colony acquired to settle a debt, and governed on a theory that permanently reshaped its population. Cakobau, the most powerful Fijian chief, faced an American claim for damages he could not pay and a planter community pressing for annexation; after an earlier British refusal, cession was accepted in October 1874. Governor Arthur Gordon then made two decisions that define the country. He prohibited the sale of native land outright, so that the overwhelming majority of Fiji remained in communal indigenous ownership and still does - a protection almost unique among British colonies. And he refused to allow Fijian labour on the sugar estates, holding that it would destroy village society, which meant the planters needed workers from elsewhere. Around sixty thousand indentured labourers came from India between 1879 and 1916 under the girmit system, and their descendants grew to roughly half the population while barred from owning the land they worked. A measles epidemic in 1875, carried back by Cakobau's returning party, killed perhaps a quarter of Fijians in months. Indirect rule through chiefs was formalised in a separate Fijian administration. Independence came in 1970. The colony's two decisions still structure every constitutional crisis since. Suva replaced Levuka as the capital in 1882. The colony included Rotuma from 1881. Fijian land is held by mataqali, the extended family units registered under Gordon's system. The last indentured contracts ended in 1920. Cakobau's cession document is kept in Suva. Girmit, the word the indentured used for their agreement, is a Fijian Hindi rendering of the English word agreement.

• Type: Polity
• Government: Colonial administration