To collect this sum the Americans sent a squadron, which suddenly seized some of the best islands as security and even threatened to bombard and destroy the settlements unless the contribution was paid to the American representatives by a given date. The Americans had been among the first white men to settle in Fiji with missionaries. Selecting or seizing under one pretext or another the best plots of land on the islands and laying out cotton and coffee plantations they hired whole crowds of natives, whom they bound by contracts the savages did not understand, or obtained through contractors who dealt in live chattels. Conflicts between such planters and the natives, whom they regarded as slaves, were inevitable, and a conflict of that kind served as pretext for the American demand for compensation. Despite its prosperity Fiji till then had been in the habit of making payments in kind, as was customary in Europe till the Middle Ages.
The natives did not use money, and their trade was entirely done by barter; goods were exchanged for goods, and the few public or government levies were collected in country produce. What were the Fijians and their King Thakombau to do when the Americans categorically demanded $45,000 under threat of dire consequences in case of nonpayment. For the Fijians the figure itself was incomprehensible, not to speak of the money, which they had never seen in such quantities. Thakombau consulted with the other chiefs, and decided to turn to the Queen of England. At first he asked her to take the islands under her protection, and later on asked her simply to annex them. But the English treated this petition cautiously and were in no hurry to rescue the semi-savage monarch from his difficulties. Instead of a direct reply they fitted out a special expedition, in 1860, to investigate the Fiji Islands, in order to decide whether it was worth spending money on satisfying the American creditors and annexing the islands to the British dominions.
Meanwhile the American government continued to insist on payment, took possession, as security, of some of the best positions, and having observed the prosperity of the people, raised its demand from $45,000 to $90,000, and threatened to raise it still further if Thakombau did not pay promptly. So, pressed on all sides, poor Thakombau, who was ignorant of European methods of arranging credit transactions, began, on the advice of European settlers, to seek money from Melbourne merchants on any terms, even if he had to yield his whole kingdom to private persons. And so in Melbourne, in response to Thakombau’s appeal, a trading Company was formed.
This Company, which took the name of the Polynesian Company, concluded an agreement with the Fiji rulers on terms very favourable to itself. Undertaking to meet the debt to the American government and engaging to pay it by certain fixed dates, the Company under its first agreement obtained 100,000, and later 200,000 acres, of the best land at its own selection, with freedom for all time from all taxes and duties for its factories, operations, and colonies, and for a prolonged period the exclusive right to establish banks in Fiji with the privilege of unlimited issue of bank-notes. Since the signing of that contract, finally concluded in 1868, the Fijians were confronted, side by side with their own government under Thakombau, by another power-the influential trading Company with great landed possessions on all the islands and a decisive influence in the government.
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
