This community of just a few thousand Pacific islanders concentrated mostly around Motuiriki Island remained largely undeveloped and untroubled by the outside world until 1643 when Abel Tasman, a seafarer working for the Dutch East India Company, came across Vanua Levu, the second largest of Fĳji’s islands, and the north of Taveuni. With Fĳji now on European maps various missions made it here and began to increase the influence of outsiders on the lives of the islanders.

In 1830 the first Christian missionaries arrived from Tahiti followed by the first Methodist missionaries five years later. Another five years later, the Americans arrived for the first time in an expedition captained by Charles Wilkes. It was not though until 10 October 1874 that Fĳji finally fell under the control of a foreign power, Britain, having evaded the increasingly aggressive advances of the US and its navy.

A year later the capital of Fĳji was moved from Levuka to Suva as the country began to develop rapidly under the directions of London. In 1904 Fĳji’s first legislative council was formed and largely controlled by the European settlers with indirect rules attributed to local chiefs. In 1916 the movement of Indians was finally stopped and then two years later the population was further curtailed as Spanish flu swept Fĳji killing 14 per cent of the population within 16 days.

Fĳji’s difficult assimilation of the local Indian population began brightly in 1929 when they were enfranchised and permitted to stand for the legislative council. The visit of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, the same year she was coroneted, saw the legislative council expanded and the number of elected seats increased; however, it was not until 1970 that Fĳji gained full independence from Britain.