Fiji

The Pacific state whose population was deliberately rewritten, and which has been arguing about the consequences ever since. Fiji sits where Melanesia and Polynesia meet, and its chiefly confederations were consolidated under Cakobau in the nineteenth century amid sandalwood traders, missionaries and debt to American claimants. Cakobau ceded the islands to Britain in 1874 largely to escape that debt. Governor Gordon then made a decision that shaped everything after: he prohibited the sale of native land, which is why some eighty-seven per cent of Fiji is still held communally by indigenous clans, and he refused to use Fijian labour on the sugar estates, importing indentured workers from India instead. About sixty thousand girmitiyas arrived between 1879 and 1916, and their descendants became roughly half the population - landless, commercially important, and politically constrained by a land system they could not enter. Independence came on 10 October 1970 with a constitution designed around that division. Coups followed in 1987, 2000 and 2006, each turning on whether an Indo-Fijian-supported government could hold power. Large emigration has since reduced the Indo-Fijian share to about a third. Suva is the largest city in the South Pacific outside Australia and New Zealand. The University of the South Pacific serves twelve countries from there. Fiji water and tourism have replaced sugar. Viti Levu and Vanua Levu hold most of the population among some three hundred islands. Fijian, English and Fiji Hindi are all official. Kava, drunk ceremonially, is central to formal occasions. Rugby sevens is the national sport and won the country its first Olympic gold in 2016.

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