Fiji has experienced four military coups and a military mutiny since 1987, mainly as a result of tension between the majority indigenous Fijian population and an economically powerful Indian minority. Smaller minorities, including Banabans, Rotumans, Chinese, Melanesians and other Pacific islanders are largely politically invisible, and socially and economically excluded. In January 2013, Fiji’s government rejected a draft constitution drawn up by an independent commission, and submitted it to be re-written by the Attorney-General’s office. This intervention threatens to significantly undermine the people’s confidence in the process, the final document and a democratic future for Fiji. Against the backdrop of these upheavals, this report provides insight into the underlying causes and consequences of ethnic tensions in Fiji, based on evidence drawn from extensive interviews across the diversity of Fiji’s ethnic groups. This report urges the government, civil society and religious and ethnic community leaders to promote understanding, tolerance and dialogue between groups. It also provides specific recommendations on tackling ethnic discrimination and exclusion.

The main purpose of the British Documents on the End of Empire Project (BDEEP) is to publish documents from British official archives on the ending of colonial and associated rule and on the context in which this took place. The Republic of the Fiji Islands, is an island nation in the South Pacific Ocean, east of Vanuatu, west of Tonga and south of Tuvalu. The country occupies an archipelago of about 322 islands, of which 106 are permanently inhabited; in addition, there are some 522 islets. The islands came under British control as a colony in 1874. It was granted independence in 1970. This publication sets out the documentary progress to independence. The book, divided into seven chapters, contains documents covering the political and economic background to Fiji's constitutional evolution; the aspirations and national interests of Fijians; the London constitutional conference and its aftermath, July 1965 - September 1967; the Alliance government, January 1968 - September 1969 and finally documents leading towards independence and the achievement of independence. The book is based overwhelmingly on hitherto unpublished Colonial Office records which documents Fiji's progress over a ten-year period leading to indpendence in 1970.

Each number comprises the annual report of a different colony for a particular year.

The cannibal kings of Fiji are gone, but their spirit lives on. Cannibalism in Fiji and the gruesome "earth ovens" are gone; the kai vavalagi, "the men from over the horizon," changed that, bringing their own brands of justice tempered by the musket, disease, and dissoluteness. There were giants in those days, Fijians and Westerners alike. This gripping and unique history of Fiji by Stanley Brown, a well-known Fiji "old-timer" and historian, is woven around the lives of eleven Western "giants," Europeans and Americans who had the greatest impact on each epoch. Not all these Westerners lived to tell the tale. This stirring narrative is replete with hair-raising accounts of battles and brutality. One incident of supreme savagery was reported by Lockerby, a famous trader, who reported that more than three hundred fifty old men, women and children were butchered after a battle: "As the canoes sallied back tot he mainland coast in the evening, the reddening sky silhouetted the bodies of children hanging from the mastheads." The earth–ovens were well–fueled that evening. But time and the tides of civilization tame the savage beast, and today Fiji is busy developing its economy, but the old accounts and stories still ring true.