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Reign of Cakobau 5 June 1871 –10 October 1874 | |
Monarch | Seru Epenisa Cakobau |
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Nominated by | Levukan settlers |
Seat | Levuka |
History of Fiji |
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Early history |
Modern history |
Coup of 2000 |
Proposed Reconciliation Commission |
Crisis of 2005–2006 |
Coup of 2006 |
The first three-quarters of the 19th century were marked by tribal warfare, incursions from neighbouring Tonga, and the increasing encroachment of foreign powers. This period also saw the rise of a warlord by the name of Seru Epenisa Cakobau, who forged the first nation-state covering all of modern Fiji (except the island of Rotuma) in 1871, before ceding it to the United Kingdom in 1874.
In the early 1820s, Levuka was established as the first modern town in Fiji, on the island of Ovalau. The intervention of European traders and missionaries, of whom the first arrived from Tahiti in 1830, led to increasingly serious wars among the native Fijian confederacies. Supplied with weapons by Swedish mercenary Charlie Savage, Ratu Tanoa Visawaqa, the Vunivalu (a chiefly title meaning Warlord, often translated also as Paramount Chief) of Bau Island, defeated the much larger Burebasaga Confederacy and succeeded in subduing much of western Fiji.
His successor, Seru Epenisa Cakobau, fought to consolidate Bauan domination throughout the 1850s and 1860s, and started calling himself the Tui Viti, or King of Fiji. He faced opposition from local chiefs who saw him at best as first among equals, and also from the Tongan Prince Enele Ma'afu, who had established himself on the Island of Lakeba in the Lau archipelago in 1848.
A Christian, Ma'afu brought Wesleyan missionaries from Tonga, and the Methodist Church gained its first foothold in Fiji. Most chiefs in the west regarded the Wesleyan missionaries, aligned as they were seen to be with Ma'afu, as a threat to their power, refused conversion, and resisted missionary attempts to set up outposts in their villages.
Cakobau's claimed position was also undermined by international developments. The United States threatened intervention following a number of incidents involving their consul, John Brown Williams. His trading store had been looted by Fijian natives following an intentional fire, caused by what was said to be stray cannon fire during a Fourth of July celebration in 1849. When his Nukulau Island house was subjected to an arson attack in 1855, the commander of the United States naval frigate USS John Adams demanded compensation amounting to 5000 pounds for Williams from Cakobau, as the Tui Viti.
This initial claim was supplemented by further claims totalling 45,000 pounds. Cakobau was faced with a dilemma. To disclaim responsibility for the debt, he would have to deny his self-proclaimed and still far-from-universally accepted sovereignty. To admit responsibility, he would have to undertake to pay the debt, or else face punishment from the United States Navy. He chose the latter course, hoping that the United States was only bluffing.
Reality began to catch up with Cakobau in 1858, when the USS Vandalia sailed into Levuka. Unable to pay his debt, and faced with increasing encroachments onto Viti Levu's south coast from Ma'afu, Cakobau approached the British consul with an offer to cede the islands to the United Kingdom, if only they would assume responsibility for his debt in return for 5,000 square kilometres of land.
His insistence on being allowed to retain his questionable title of Tui Viti proved unacceptable to the British government, which turned his offer down after four years of consideration in 1862. This followed a report from Colonel W.J. Smythe, who had come to the conclusion, after interviewing every Paramount Chief in Fiji, that Cakobau's title was self-assumed and by no means universally accepted by his fellow chiefs, and that he did not have the authority to cede the islands.
Cakobau next turned to the Australian-based Polynesia Company. The rising price of cotton in the wake of the American Civil War (1861–1865) had interested the Polynesia Company in acquiring land in Fiji for planting. In return for 5,000 km², the company agreed to pay Cakobau's debt. Australian settlers landed on 575 km2 (222 sq mi) of land in Viti Levu, near what was then a Fijian village called Suva, in 1868.
The Polynesia Company settlers were joined by a further several thousand planters throughout the 1860s and 1870s. Often fraudulently, they obtained Fijian land, often in exchange for weapons or alcohol. Competing land claims followed, with no unified government to settle the disputes. Frustrations peaked following the collapse of cotton prices and the destruction of the crop by hurricanes in 1870.
In 5 June 1871, John Bates Thurston, the British honorary consul, forged a "marriage of convenience" between Cakobau and the settlers, and persuaded the Fijian chiefs to accept a constitutional monarchy with Cakobau as king, but with real power in the hands of a cabinet and Legislature dominated by settlers. The Legislative Assembly met for the first time in Levuka in November 1871.
The new arrangements proved no more workable than the old. Within months, government overspending had led to the accumulation of another unmanageable debt. In 1872, following continuing economic and social unrest, Thurston approached the British government, at Cakobau's request, with another offer to cede the islands. The British were much more sympathetic to annexing Fiji this time than they had been almost two decades earlier.
The murder of Bishop John Coleridge Patteson of the Melanesian Mission at Nukapu in the Reef Islands had provoked public outrage, which was compounded by the massacre by crew members of more than 150 Fijians on board the brig Carl. Two British commissioners were sent to Fiji to investigate the possibility of an annexation. The question was complicated by manoeuvrings for power between Cakobau and his old rival, Ma'afu, with both men vacillating for many months.
On 21 March 1874, Cakobau made a final offer, which the British accepted. On 23 September, Sir Hercules Robinson, soon to be appointed the British Governor of Fiji, arrived on HMS Dido and received Cakobau with a royal 21-gun salute. After some vacillation, Cakobau agreed to renounce his Tui Viti title.
The formal cession took place on 10 October 1874, when Cakobau, Ma'afu, and some of the senior Chiefs of Fiji signed two copies of the Deed of Cession. Thus the Colony of Fiji was founded; 96 years of British rule followed.
RatuSeru Epenisa Cakobau was a Fijian chief, monarch, and warlord (Vunivalu) who united part of Fiji's warring tribes under his leadership, establishing a united Fijian kingdom. He was born on Natauloa, Nairai Island in Lomaiviti but spent his youth on Vanuaso, Gau, Lomaiviti, later returning to Bau to re-establish his Father's Ratu Tanoa Visawaqa reign. Ratu Epenisa Seru Visawaqa was given the name "Cakobau" meaning destroyer of Bau, in reference to his grandfathers' (Nailatikau) effort to first claim the tile from the people of Butoni and Lovoni, returned with most of his warriors from Vanuaso, Gau, Lomaiviti to coup the leadership in Bau then and later takeover his father's title; known after his father as the 6th "Vunivalu" or Warlord of Bau.
Ratu is an Austronesian title used by male Fijians of chiefly rank. An equivalent title, adi, is used by females of chiefly rank. In the Malay language, the title ratu is also the traditional honorific title to refer to the ruling king or queen in Javanese culture. Thus in Java, a royal palace is called "keraton", constructed from the circumfix ke- -an and Ratu, to describe the residence of the ratu.
Nukulau Island is a small islet belonging to Fiji. It is close to Suva, Fiji's capital, which lies about ten kilometers to the west. It is an island rich in history, which has played a pivotal role in Fiji's demographic and political development over the past 160 years.
The House of Chiefs in Fiji consists of the Fijian nobility, composed of about seventy chiefs of various ranks, majority of which are related. It is not a formal political body and is not the same as the former Great Council of Chiefs, which was a political body with a prescribed constitutional role, although the membership of the two bodies did overlap to a great extent.
ʻEnele Maʻafuʻotuʻitonga, commonly known as Maʻafu, was a Pacific islander who held important titles in two countries in the Pacific. He was a traditional Tongan Prince and a Fijian chief nominated and installed by the Tovata chiefs of Lakeba and Vanua Balavu as 'Tui Lau' in 1869. This title was ratified by a wider council of Fijian chiefs and subsequently formalised under British colonial administration. In 1847, Maʻafu went to Fiji in an expedition to Vanua Balavu to investigate the killing of a preacher.
Levuka is a town on the eastern coast of the Fijian island of Ovalau, in Lomaiviti Province, in the Eastern Division of Fiji. Prior to 1877, it was the capital of Fiji. At the census in 2007, the last to date, Levuka town had a population of 1,131, about half of Ovalau's 8,360 inhabitants. It is the economic hub and the largest of 24 settlements on the island. Having been nominated decades prior, Levuka was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in June 2013, in recognition of the port town's exceptional testimony to the late colonial port towns in the Pacific.
Turaga na Vunivalu na Tui Kaba, shortened as Vunivalu, is the Paramount Chief of the Kubuna Confederacy of the island of Bau in Fiji. Loosely translated the title means Warlord of Bau or "Root of War". The succession to the title does not follow primogeniture, but the candidate must be a high-ranking member of the Tui Kaba clan.
The Tui Cakau is the Paramount Chief of Cakaudrove Province in Fiji.
The Lomaiviti archipelago of Fiji consists of seven main islands and a number of smaller ones. They cover a total area of 411 square kilometres (159 sq mi), and had a population of 15,657 at the most recent census in 2017. The largest town, with a population of 1,131 in 2007, is Levuka, which was Fiji's first modern town and served as the capital from 1871 to 1877.
Bau is a small island in Fiji, off the east coast of the main island of Viti Levu. Bau rose to prominence in the mid-1800s and became Fiji's dominant power; until its cession to Britain, it has maintained its influence in politics and leadership right through to modern Fiji. Due to its sacred nature, foreigners have to apply for a permit to visit.
The monarchy of Fiji arose in the 19th century, when native ruler Seru Epenisa Cakobau consolidated control of the Fijian Islands in 1871 and declared himself king, or paramount chief, of Fiji. Three years later, he voluntarily ceded sovereignty of the islands to Britain, making Fiji a crown colony within the British Empire.
Sir John Bates Thurston was a British colonial official who served Fiji in a variety of capacities, including Premier of the Kingdom of Viti and later as colonial Governor.
Namalata is a village and island in Fiji. It is located in the southern portion of the Vanua Balavu island group, part of Fiji's Lau Islands. The village is a constituent of the larger Lomaloma village.
RatuTanoa Visawaqa was a Fijian Chieftain who held the title 5th Vunivalu of Bau. With Adi Savusavu, one of his nine wives, he was the father of Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau, who succeeded in unifying Fiji with the help from British missionaries and the crown into forming the contemporary Fiji today.
The Lasakau Sea Warriors were a 19th-century warrior sub-culture in the pre-colonial state of Bau, in Fiji. The sea warriors were instrumental in spreading Bau's political power throughout the South Pacific archipelagic islands. The rise of the eminent islet of Bau amongst other embryonic states was due mainly to the projection of sea power through its naval forces. Bauan chief Ratu Loaloadravu Tubuanakoro was praised by French Captain Dumont D'Urville in May 1827 for his geographic knowledge of the Fijian archipelago signifying Bau's naval influence. More far-ranging than Bau's land warriors led by the Vusaradave clan, the Lasakau clan became the leading proponents of war and tribute for the emerging island kingdom. They became known as the Bai kei Bau or 'War fence of Bau'. Sahlins made the crucial observation that," The kings of Bau based their rule not on native cultivators but on native sailors and fishers-which is to say in Fijian categories, as in political strategies, not on the land but on the sea". This was the great political transformation that catapulted Bau to power over other pre-colonial kingdoms.
Bau is the main village on Bau Island, Fiji. Once integral to the power and economy of the chiefly village, the villages of Lasakau and Soso are also located on the twenty-two acre island which became the centre of traditional power throughout the Fiji Islands in the nineteenth century.
The first Fiji expedition by the United States was in October 1855 during the civil war on the islands. In response to the alleged arson attacks on the American commercial agent in Lautoka, Viti Levu, the navy sent a warship to demand compensation for the attack from Seru Epenisa Cakobau, the Vunivalu of Bau and self-proclaimed Tui Viti.
The Kingdom of Fiji, also known as the Kingdom of Viti, was a short-lived monarchy in Fiji. It existed from 1871 to 1874, with Ratu Seru Epenisa Cakobau as King.
George Austin Woods was a British navy officer who served as premier of the Kingdom of Viti between May 1872 and 1874.
The majority of Fiji's islands were formed through volcanic activity starting around 150 million years ago. Today, some geothermic activity still occurs on the islands of Vanua Levu and Taveuni. Fiji was settled first by the Lapita culture, around 1,500–1,000 years BC, followed by a large influx of people with predominantly Melanesian genetics about the time of the beginning of the Common Era. Europeans visited Fiji from the 17th century, and, after a brief period as an independent kingdom, the British established the Colony of Fiji in 1874. Fiji was a Crown colony until 1970, when it gained independence as the Dominion of Fiji. A republic was declared in 1987, following a series of coups d'état.