Fiji

Crossroads of the Pacific, from Lapita voyagers to a republic of two peoples

Fiji was settled around 1000 BCE by Austronesian Lapita voyagers whose descendants built powerful, sea-going chiefdoms across more than 300 islands. European contact began with Abel Tasman in 1643 and deepened through the sandalwood and bêche-de-mer trades, drawing the warlord-chief Seru Epenisa Cakobau toward Britain, to whom Fiji was ceded on 10 October 1874. To work its sugar plantations the colonial government imported more than 60,000 indentured labourers from India between 1879 and 1916, the girmitiyas, creating a large Indo-Fijian community and an enduring communal divide. Independent since 10 October 1970, Fiji has been shaken by a cycle of coups rooted in indigenous-Fijian and Indo-Fijian tension, returning to elected government under the 2013 constitution and emerging as a leading Pacific voice on climate change.