by Raymond Burr
AS ONE of the latter-day "men from Vavalagi"—I came to live in Fiji in 1965—my interest in, and admiration for, Captain Stanley Brown's selective history of this archipelago is of a personal nature: the people, tradition and terrain of this nearly perfect island, Naitauba (where I may be said, truly, to live), are threads in the fabric of his narrative, and as such, add to my understanding of and pleasure in this sovereign nation.
But Stanley Brown has written more than just a chronicle of Bligh, Tasman, adventurers, pirates and men of goodwill who found their several ways to Fiji; he has used this documentation to discuss problems and phenomena particularly pertinent to our time.
Confrontation between the old and the new, between East and West, the principles of yin and yang-in short, the strange interlocking interdependence of good and evil-are no more pertinent to 1872 than to 1972, and it is this universal paradox to which Captain Brown addresses himself through the medium of the historical episodes of Bligh and Whippy, Cakobau and Naulivou, indeed, all those influences national and personal, local and foreign, the men of Fiji and the men from "under the sky."
And yet, and this is where Men from Under the Sky embraces a far wider audience than merely those of us with a preoccupation with history or an intimate connection with Fiji, Captain Brown has observed an extraordinary thing: perhaps uniquely in the history of the world, certainly of the South Pacific, Fiji seemingly has absorbed the advent of other, more massive civilizations, taken what it considered good or productive and-in the main-retained its own sovereignty of people and place. Surely, an example of graceful and dignified civilization for the modern problems and quandaries that beset the world today!
One more personal observation: it comes as no surprise to me that such an affirmative and positive philosophy should come from the pen of Stanley Brown. A sailor whose marlinspike seamanship is legendary in these waters, he is also historian, archeologist, engineer, naturalist and indefatigable good friend-both to me and to Fiji.
Naitauba, Lau, Fiji
THE ISLANDS of Fiji today are the acknowledged home of many racial groups. These islands have ever been an area where the blood of different races has mixed freely. The first of the island inhabitants to be known to the rest of the world were a mixture of Melanesian and Polynesian stock. The quality of the mixture was largely determined by the geographical position of a man's home island. In the highlands of the larger islands was a rugged dark-skinned race of almost pure Melanesian blood. In the windward islands, and on the coasts of the leeward islands, the people were of strong Polynesian strain. Elsewhere, there was a blood mixture of these two main groups.
Today, in addition to the indigenous Fijians, there live in the islands the people of Caucasian stock known in Fiji as "Europeans," Indians of many racial groups, and Rotumans, Chinese, and representatives of almost all other Pacific island groups. Naturally, all these migrants have caused many changes in the lives of the Fijian people, and in each other's lives. The coming of the Polynesians, mainly from Tonga, had been gradual and spread over many centuries. The other races, except for the indigenous Rotumans, have come to Fiji in the relatively short period of the 19th and 20th centuries. The Europeans were the first of these new groups, and their arrival was a sign that the islands had forever lost their immunity to change.
When the topsails of the ships of this new, strange race lifted over the horizon, the Fijians had no myth or legend to explain either the men or the country from which they came. All could see that the ships came from a place "under the sky," or vavalagi as they called it. The men manning the vessels were christened kai vavalagi or, literally, "men from vavalagi."
These men differed greatly from each other in colour, bearing and character. Although appearing from the same horizon, they hailed from such loosely related areas as the yeoman homes of England, the London slums, the ports of New England, and the penal settlements of New South Wales. The contrasts among them, therefore, are hardly surprising.
The lives of these men in Fiji were to be as unrelated as were their origins. Some robbed and killed. Others came to teach. Some lied and cheated the Fijians out of their land, while at the same time others of the same race were enduring hardships to bring medical and religious benefits to the Fijians. These chapters present a cross section of the men who were to affect the history of Fiji in the first hundred years of the discovery of the islands by the rest of the world. (A few of the first names of persons mentioned in this narrative are missing because they were unrecorded or are unavailable.)
The period also covers the rise of the chieftaincy of Bau, from that of a weak nonentity to the most powerful force in the islands. From it emerged a Fijian proverb: Sa duidui na kaivalagi ("White men are different from each other").
MAP 1 : South Pacific Region
Bligh's Bitter Fruit (1789-91)
The true story of the first arrivals in the many lovely island groups of the Pacific Ocean is one that will occupy the minds of historians 'and anthropologists for many years to come. The myths and legends of the various Polynesian, Melanesian and Micronesian peoples will be retold, compared and discussed by many erudite men who may or may not finally succeed in giving the world the true story. Some islands, such as those of Fiji, lying athwart the 180th meridian and virtually on the dividing line between Polynesia and Melanesia, seem to inspire legends that are without parallel elsewhere. Despite research to the present day, it is still uncertain how much of the Fijian stories of the first landing in Fiji of their predecessors, De gel and Lutunasobusobu, are myth or history.
The much more recent arrivals of the white men, although they fell within the period of recorded history, are scarcely better known.
Due to the prevailing winds and currents, most of the early Pacific explorers missed the Fiji Islands altogether. A study of the track charts of Pacific navigators shows them all passing around Fiji.
Abel
