Till then Thakombau’s government for the satisfaction of its needs had contented itself with what it obtained by various tributes in kind and by a small customs duty on imported goods. With the conclusion of this agreement, and the establishment of the powerful Polynesian Company, its financial position changed. An important part of the best land in its dominions passed over to the Company and so the taxes diminished; on the other hand, as we know, the Company had a right to the free import and export of goods, as a result of which revenue from the customs was also reduced. The natives, that is to say 99 per cent. of the population, had always been but poor contributors to the customs revenue, for they hardly used any European goods except a little cotton stuff and some metal ware; and now, when through the Polynesian Company the wealthier European inhabitants escaped the payment of customs dues, King Thakombau’s revenue became quite insignificant and he had to bestir himself to increase it.
And so Thakombau consulted his white friends as to how to escape from his difficulties, and they advised him to introduce for the first time in the country direct taxation, and, no doubt to facilitate matters for him, it was to be in the form of a money-tax. The levy was instituted in the form of a general poll-tax of £1 on each male and four shillings on each woman in the islands.
Even to the present day in the Fiji Islands, as we have already mentioned, the cultivation of the soil and direct barter prevails. Very few natives have any money. Their wealth consists entirely of various raw produce and of cattle, but not of money. Yet the new tax demanded, at fixed dates and at all costs, a sum of money which for a native with a family came to a very considerable total. Till then a native had not been accustomed to pay any personal dues to the government except in the form of labour, while the taxes had all been paid by the villages or communes to which he belonged, from the common fields out of which he, too, drew his chief income. He had only one way out of the difficulty: to obtain money from the white colonists that is, to go either to a trader or a planter who had what he needed-money.
To the first he had to sell his produce at any price, since the tax-collector demanded it by a given date, or he was even obliged to borrow money against future produce, a circumstance of which the trader naturally took advantage to secure an unscrupulous profit; or else he had to turn to a planter and sell him his labour, that is to become a labourer. But it turned out that wages on the Fiji Islands, in consequence probably of much labour being offered simultaneously, were very low, not exceeding, according to the report of the present administration, a shilling a week for an adult male, or £2.125. a year; and consequently merely to obtain the money to pay his own tax, not to mention his family’s, a Fijian had to abandon his home, his family, his own land and cultivation, and often to move far off to another island and bind himself to a planter for half a year, in order to earn the £1 needed for the payment of the new tax; while for the payment of the tax for a whole family he had to seek other means. The result of such an arrangement can easily be imagined. From his 150,000 subjects Thakombau only collected £6,000; and then an intensive demand, previously unknown, began for taxes, and a series of compulsory measures.
The local administration, previously honest, soon came to an understanding with the white planters who had begun to manage the country. The Fijians were taken to court for non-payment and sentenced, besides the payment of costs, to imprisonment for not less than half a year. The role of prison was played by the plantation of the first white man willing to pay the tax and legal costs for the prisoner. In this way the whites obtained cheap labour to any desired extent.
At first this handing over to compulsory labour was permitted for a period of six months only, but later on the venal judges found it possible to sentence men even to eighteen months’ labour and then to renew the sentence. Very soon, in a few years, the picture of the economic condition of the inhabitants. of Fiji had completely changed. Whole flourishing districts had become half-depopulated and were extremely impoverished. The whole male population, except the old and the feeble, were working away from home for the white planters to obtain money needed for the payment of the tax, or to satisfy sentences of the court.
Women in Fiji do hardly any agricultural labour, and so, m the absence of the men, the land was neglected or totally abandoned. In a few years half the population of Fiji had become slaves to, the white colonists. To improve their condition the Fijians again turned to England. A new petition appeared, to which were appended the names of many of the most notable persons and chiefs, begging to be made British subjects, and it was presented to the British consul. By this time England, thanks to its scientific expeditions, had not only studied but had even surveyed the islands and was well aware of the natural wealth of that beautiful corner of the globe. For these reasons the negotiations this time were crowned with full success, and in 1874, to the great dissatisfaction of the American planters, England officially entered into possession of the Fiji Islands, adding them to its colonies.
Thakombau died and a small pension was assigned to his heirs. The government of the islands was entrusted to Sir Hercules Robinson (Lord Rosmead), the Governor of New South Wales. During the first year of its annexation to England Fiji was without a government of its own, but Sir Hercules Robinson appointed an administrator. On taking the islands in hand the English government had a hard task to solve in fulfilling all that was expected of it.
In the first place, the natives expected the abolition of the hateful poll-tax; the white colonists (who were partly American) either regarded the British rule distrustfully or (the British section) expected from it all kinds of benefits, for instance, the recognition of their dominion over the natives and the legalization of their claims to land they had seized, and so forth. The English government, however, proved competent to deal with the problem, and its first act was to abolish for ever the poll-tax which occasioned the enslavement of the natives for the profit of a few colonists. But here Sir Hercules Robinson was confronted by a serious dilemma. It was necessary to annul the poll-tax to escape from which the Fijians had appealed to the British government, but at the same time, by the rules of English colonial policy, the colony had to pay its own way, that is to say, had to find means to meet the expenses of its administration.
Yet with the abolition of the poll-tax the whole income of Fiji (from the customs dues) did not exceed £6,000, whereas the expenses of the administration demanded at least £70,000 a year. So Robinson, having abolished the money tax, devised a labour tax, that is, imposed obligatory labour on the Fijians, but this did not bring in the £70,000 required for his Own and his assistants’ maintenance. And matters did not progress till the appointment of a new Governor, Sir A. M. Gordon (Baron Stanmore), who, to obtain from the inhabitants the money needed for his own and his assistants’ support, devised the plan of not demanding money until there should be enough of it in circulation on the islands, but of collecting produce from the natives and selling it himself.
This tragic episode in the life of the Fijians is the clearest and best indication of what money is and of its significance. Here all is expressed: the first basis of slavery-cannon, threats, murder, the seizure of land, and also the chief instrument-money, which replaces all other means. What has to be followed through the course of centuries in an historic sketch of the economic development of nations, is here, when the various forms of monetary coercion have been fully developed, concentrated into a single decade. The drama begins with the American government sending ships with loaded cannon to the shores of the land, whore inhabitants it wishes to enslave.
The pretext for the threat is monetary, but the drama begins with cannon directed against all the inhabitants: women, children, the aged, and the innocent: an occurrence now being repeated in Africa, China, and Central Asia. That was the beginning of the drama: ‘Your money or your life,’ repeated in the history of all the conquests
