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History of Rotuma, Fijian Islands. Includes some social history, discussion of missions, land disputes, and genealogical information.
"... The aim of the publication has been to present various facets of Rotuma's culture and the changes faced by the Rotuman people today. With three exceptions, the authors are all Rotuman, telling their own tales of Rotuma's uniqueness in depth for the first time. They relate aspects of Rotuma's geography and history as well as the influence of the missions and colonial attempts to govern land tenure. The marriage and mamasa ceremonies are described in detail, and the different dance forms and certain chants. A major section focuses on the network of kinship links which forms the basis of Rotuma's social and political system. Almost all of the authors are concerned indirectly with the process of change affecting Rotuman society, and three chapters describe the physical manifestation of this: the emigration of Rotumans to Fiji, the need for childen to leave the island for higher education, and the communities established away from home ..." -- Foreword p. ix.
A history of the people from Rotuma Island (Fiji) from legendary times (based on oral history, archaeological, and linguistic evidence), through the era of British colonial domination, until the end of the twentieth century. The book is divided into four sections. The first section presents information about Rotuma's geography; its early history as derived from myths, legends, language affinities, and the limited archaeological work done on the island; the nature of Rotuma's culture and society at the time of European intrusion in the early nineteenth century; and the forms of creative and artistic expression. The second section deals with the impact of explorers, whalers, beachcombers, and returning Rotuman sailors, as well as missionaries who visited or stayed on Rotuma for varying lengths of time. The time period covered by this section is from 1791, when the Pandora, captained by Edward Edwards, made a brief visit, to 1879, when a war between Methodist and Catholic factions culminated in an offer of cession to Great Britain. Section three provides an account of Rotuma's colonial experience, beginning with the events leading to cession; the shape of political and economic experience under colonial rule; and the health and welfare implications of colonial policies. The final section covers the Rotuman experience from the time Fiji gained independence from Great Britain in 1970 until the end of the twentieth century. This section begins with an account of changes on the island of Rotuma, followed by a consideration of the somewhat problematic relationship between Rotuma and Fiji, concluding with a look at the global Rotuman community - a community in the process of formation.
Disturbing History focuses on Fiji’s people and their agency in responding to and engaging the multifarious forms of authority and power that were manifest in the colony from 1874 to 1914. By concentrating on the lives of ordinary Fijians, the book presents alternate ways of reconstructing the island’s past. Couched in the traditions of social, subaltern, and people’s histories, the study is an excavation of a large mass of material that tells the often moving stories of lives that have largely been overlooked by historians. These challenge conventional historical accounts that tend to celebrate the nation, represent Fiji’s colonial experience as ordered and peaceful, or British tutelage as benevolent. In its contribution to postcolonial theory, Disturbing History reveals resistance as a constant but partial and untidy mix of other constituents such as collaboration, consent, appropriation, and opportunism, which together form the colonial landscape. In turn, colonialism in Fiji is shown as a force shaped in struggle, fractured and often fragile, with a presence and application in the daily lives of people that was often chaotic, imperfect, and susceptible to subversion. The book divides the period of study into two broad categories: organized resistance and everyday forms of resistance. The first examines the Colo War (1876), the Tuka Movement (1878–1891), the Seaqaqa War (1894), the Movement for Federation with New Zealand (1901–1903), the Viti Kabani Movement (1913–1917), and the various organized labor protests. The second half of the book addresses resistance manifested in the villages and plantations, including tax and land boycotts, violence and retributive justice, avoidance protest, petitioning, and women’s resistance. In their entirety these forms reveal a complex web of relationships between powerful and subordinate groups and among subordinate groups themselves. The author concludes that resistance cannot be framed as a totality but as a multilayered and multidimensional reality. In the wake of Fiji’s present volatile climate, this book will aid readers in understanding the continuities and disjunctures in Fiji’s interethnic and intraethnic relations.
This collection relates the history of three churches in the Pacific, the Methodist Church in Rotuma, the Kiribati Protestant Church, and the Maamafo'ou Movement, a break-away group from the Free Wesleyan Church in Tonga.
After more than a century of silence, the true story of one of history's most notorious mutinies is revealed in Joan Druett's riveting "nautical murder mystery" (USA Today). On May 25, 1841, the Massachusetts whaleship Sharon set out for the whaling ground of the northwestern Pacific. A year later, while most of the crew was out hunting, Captain Howes Norris was brutally murdered. When the men in the whaleboats returned, they found four crew members on board, three of whom were covered in blood, the other screaming from atop the mast. Single-handedly, the third officer launched a surprise attack to recapture the Sharon, killing two of the attackers and subduing the other. An American investigation into the murder was never conducted--even when the Sharon returned home three years later, with only four of the original twenty-nine crew on board. Joan Druett, a historian who's been called a female Patrick O'Brian by the Wall Street Journal, dramatically re-creates the mystery of the ill-fated whaleship and reveals a voyage filled with savagery under the command of one of the most ruthless captains to sail the high seas.