No-one with a general knowledge of the Pacific today can fail to be struck by the differences between western and eastern Polynesia. Superficially, people appear to be more “westernized” in the east; this perception might be challenged in various ways, but it is true that there is little continuity between indigenous forms of social organization and hierarchy and almost no perpetuation of traditional ceremonies or of life crisis activities on anything but the most restricted domestic scale. What is particularly notable is the fact that throughout French Polynesia the traditional aristocracy is virtually invisible — in most places claims to chiefly status would be rarely if ever enunciated — while in Fiji, Tonga, and Samoa, on the other hand, indigenous rank systems have not only survived but been extended and entrenched under colonial rule, while chiefly elites are influential if not securely dominant in national politics.

This difference obviously owes a good deal to the colonial history itself; Tonga was under British tutelage rather than formal administration; in Fiji the indirect rule approach did much to codify and rigidify customary hierarchies and land-holding, as has often been noted. The French assimilationist approach, on the other hand, virtually swept the Tahitian aristocracy aside and refrained from any elaborate investigation or administrative use of customary social organization; the Americans in Hawaii and the Chileans in Rapanui behaved in a similar fashion. It is notable, however, that the divergence in response and development is conspicuous at quite an early point, even before the French annexed the Marquesas in 1842 and white settlers moved into Fiji in large numbers in the 1860s, prior to secession in 1874. In one case, what is manifest is decline — severe depopulation, a breakdown of traditional hierarchical forms and ceremonial activities. In the other, in Fiji, what is conspicuous is an effloresence of political and military activity and a period of great expansiveness and dynamism, particularly so far as the Bauan confederation is concerned.

In the Fijian case, it is important to note that the key valuables for transactions today, as in the nineteenth century, namely whale teeth, were probably in the most limited circulation prior to the visits of European traders (although this point is not mentioned by most ethnographers who simply regard the teeth as the paradigmatic traditional valuable). It is popularly stated in Fiji that the “original” tabua were not whale teeth, but were made of some kind of ironwood; this may well be true, although some teeth very likely came into Fiji via Tonga where whales were occasionally stranded. There was very little significant contact between Fijians and whites before 1800 — though an epidemic of dysentery occurred as a result of a shipwreck — but after 1801 sandalwood was discovered and sought after intensively in the period up to about 1814, when it had essentially been exhausted. William Lockerby, who resided in the islands in 1808-9 and who interpreted and facilitated trade, prepared a sort of guide to traders, including navigational directions, some Fijian vocabulary, and notes on reliable and not so reliable chiefs:

the Articles of Traid to pleas the Natives are Ivory Iron Work such as Tools the best plan is to carry a forge with you & make the tools to sute them knives & scisors Beads they are very fond of — White shels & Cloth the two latter are to be got At the Islands to windward of MyGoro [Koro] should you tutch their however Ivory is the Most Vallable Article Made in the form of a Whales Tooth and those of them that is possessd of any of them lays them up as graet riches as porshens for their Daughters & Making peace with their offended Supirurs etc. ([1972]:184).

Lockerby’s assumption here is that ivory in some other form would be obtained and cut to resemble whale teeth; later, when whaling was being conducted extensively in the Pacific, mainly by American ships from New England ports and some English vessels, it was easier to obtain the actual whale teeth. After sandalwood became exhausted, trade contracted for a few years but soon developed again around different products for the Manila and Canton markets — bêche-de-mer and tortoiseshell. But because the routes of these vessels often did not intersect with those of the whalers, the teeth were obtained through rather circuitous paths. Whale ships frequently called at the island of Rotuma to the northwest of Fiji for provisions, and although the Rotumans did not themselves use whale teeth as valuables, they took these to exchange with the traders active in Fiji (“This island is a great resort for whalers from whom the natives obtain their whales’ teeth”). Trade took place both directly and through white middlemen resident on Rotuma. Tobacco, which was conveniently light and compact in relation to its value, was given in return; it was said to be “worth almost its ‘weight in gold’ at this place” (Cheever MS:23 June 1834). At about the same time Tahiti similarly became a port through which teeth were effectively transhipped:

I understand that Vandervort gave a great price for a few whales teeth here … The people here natives and all have found out that teeth are valuable & ask a monstrous price for them — one large tooth that might weigh say 2 lbs. they wanted a dollar for — the Emerald was well supplied with that article of trade which are in great demand among Feejee-men (ibid.:5 August 1834).

This is indicative of the manner in which quite localized developments in exchange and in transactions between islanders and Europeans had broad ramifications that had effects on other islands great distances away.

To turn more specifically to transactions associated with tabua in Fiji, and their implications, it must be appreciated that the conduct and organization of trade was essentially upon Fijian terms to which foreigners were obliged to adapt. This was apparent even at the level of language use: the owner of a ship could presume in his instructions to the captain to stress that “it should be your first object to acquire a knowledge of their language” (Phillips MS). So far as transactions and the organization of collecting bêche-de-mer was concerned, the cooperation of chiefs was indispensable. Tabua were used, not so much in payment for bêche-de-mer as in ritualized presentations to chiefs made routinely upon arrival at a place and at certain other times. Trade was a two-level process: periodic high-value gifts to chiefs were a precondition for any economic engagement at all, while bêche-de-mer and tortoiseshell were reciprocated more directly to producers, and usually with guns, associated supplies (such as powder) and iron implements.

Although it is difficult to estimate in any precise way the total number of muskets and other goods which were imported, lists from certain ships are available. Eagleston’s trade, consisting of guns and many other “notions” (smaller articles such as beads) had cost $3000; this included one lot of four hundred muskets, but it is not clear whether these were the only ones on board (Eagleston MS:250, 289). It appears to have been not uncommon to carry four to six hundred pounds (weight) of whales’ teeth, which, at about two pounds each, represented two to three hundred tabua. The profits from the sandalwood trade had been very high and even for the later period Eagleston frequently noted the “small cost” of what was received — “I bought nine head of beautiful tortoiseshell weighing thirty pounds; worth in the States $360. I paid for same three muskets that cost $1.25 each” (ibid.:282). However, the volume of what was given to Fijians was also very considerable, and the consequences of the introduction of huge quantities of guns and other goods have occasioned debate. In most discussions so far tabua have been neglected; the emphasis of most earlier writers and a few recent scholars has been the consequences of imports of guns, while some others have stressed continuity despite contact and the persistence of “paths of the land”.

Whales’ teeth probably substituted for the range of uses of prior forms of tabua; as was noted, this was a very wide range of ceremonial contexts, including installations to chiefly titles, at mortuary ceremonies and presentations of children to their maternal kin; from the start they were certainly used, as Lockerby noted, in marriage, which was indissociable from regional political relations. Tabua were also used to request and acknowledge assistance in political trouble and war, and thus figured prominently in exchanges between chiefs and those referred to as the “teeth” or the “edge” of the land — the warrior-subjects who stood in a protective but privileged relationship to the sacred titleholders. In 1834 George Cheever witnessed a ceremony after a battle between Bau and Rewa where a Bauan man of chiefly rank had been killed. The warriors brought the body “ornamented with a white flag” to Rewa and after performing a chant seated themselves respectfully while the “king” presented them with spears, “about 100 fathom of Tapper”, and presented a tabua to the man who had actually killed the chief. After receiving their gifts the warriors reasserted their loyalty in a ritual manner by striking their clubs in the ground (Cheever MS:21 May 1834). Ordinary relations of this type would no doubt have been consolidated by the capacity of chiefs — who were virtually the sole recipients of whales’ teeth from traders — to draw on new supplies of valuables.

The use of tabua in more singular cases of political upheaval is exemplified by two cases, both involving violent conflict within élite families. In the early 1830s bad relations developed between Tabaiwalu, then the paramount chief of Rewa, and his son Koroitamana; ill-feeling was generated, as was typical, by rivalries between co-wives and their sons; the latter were, of course, potential and competing successors to the title. The conflict gradually escalated until Koroitamana, confident that he would be supported by a number of high-ranking men and warriors, assassinated his father. However, the chief’s principal wife, Adi Dreketi, successfully deceived the people of the town, leading them to believe that her husband was still alive but very weak and that he wanted his son killed. A meeting took place at which the general opinion was reputedly that Koroitamana’s conduct had been justifiable and provoked, but many also “feared the wrath of the king, in case he should recover”. Hearing of the uncertainty, the “queen” settled matters by taking “some whales’ teeth and other valuables and presented them herself to the chiefs, saying they were sent by the king to purchase the death of his son”. Whether the general belief actually was that the king was still alive is not clear; in any event, it was not long before Koroitamana was clubbed (Thomas 1986).

A case which had much wider ramifications for the polities of central and eastern Fiji in the 1830s was the “coup” —Fijians do make the analogy with the military takeovers of 1987 — against Tanoa, the paramount chief at Bau. There are various interpretations of precisely why dissent within Bau came to a head, which need not be reviewed here; a faction based around his half-brothers seized power, and Tanoa was fortunate to escape assassination himself, but was exiled to Somosomo between 1832 and 1836. From this base, and subsequently from Rewa, he began to build up his support amongst the people subject to Bau, but the process which was perhaps more crucial for his return to power was recovering the internal support of the Bauan clans. This was effected by his son, Seru (subsequently known as Cakobau), particularly through a steady stream of gifts of tabua to the Lasakau group, who played a crucial role in a brief but decisive fight which actually displaced the rebel side (Waterhouse 1866; for further discussion and references, see Thomas 1986).

This remarkable capacity of the Fijian system — or at least of the chiefs of the first half of the nineteenth century — to absorb and put to use a new set of trading relations and imports might be taken to attest to a general theoretical principle about the capacity of local systems to appropriate introduced goods. While I have elsewhere argued that it is certainly important to recognize the processes of selective indigenous recognition and use of foreign contact, and to insist upon the historically particular character of the form of appropriation, here, however, it seems more important to emphasize the singularity of the Fijian system, which, as we have noted, is distinguished by the possibility of a wide range of conversions between services, valuables, debts, assistance and, not least, spouses. The fact that, paradigmatically, the whale’s tooth stood for a woman meant that it was a signifier for and a means to an open-ended kin path of debt and exchange. As in any other system, marriage created a broader set of relations, but in the Fijian case these had distinctive political potential.

Moreover, and equally importantly, there was no contradiction between this positive process of deploying imports for political purposes and the production of what was to be extracted. The resources which the traders wanted were mostly not significant for Fijians. There is no suggestion that bêche-de-mer was eaten by Fijians; if so, it could only have been marginal to a diversified subsistence base. Curiously, tortoiseshell, which was used extensively in some Pacific material cultures, did not feature much in Fijian ornaments or regalia and sandalwood also was either not used at all or very insignificant. Although the preparation of bêche-de-mer did involve substantial commitments of labour, the activities were not unlike the collective efforts associated with certain projects such as canoe building, warfare, or preparing for ceremonies in areas away from one’s home village. Fijians did not, in any case, agree to work continuously if there were other things that they wanted to do, and in some cases traders could do nothing but feel frustrated for some days or weeks when something exciting like fighting or a large ceremony took their workers away. It was also, of course, necessary to provision trading vessels but their relatively limited demands were met by different groups over quite a wide area — the scatter of islands in central Fiji, the Lau group and the coasts of Viti Levu and Vanua Levu — and could easily be accommodated. This was so because the ceremonial economy in Fiji was already developed to an enormous extent: there were many forms of intensive irrigated horticulture and food was routinely produced to be offered up for ceremonial exchange — in some areas specifically for barter through specialized production networks. When accounts are read of feasts at which many thousands of yams or taro and dozens or occasionally hundreds of pigs and turtles were presented, it is not difficult to imagine the smaller needs of ships being relatively easily dealt with.

This is not to say that there were not problematic longer-term ecological consequences; for instance, Ward has pointed out that the quantity of firewood required to smoke and cure the bêche-de-mer was enormous and must have reduced coastal forests around Bau and those other parts of Vanua Levu which supplied the “fish” considerably. Over-collection diminished supplies of bêche-de-mer, while sandalwood was virtually obliterated in a short period. However, from a shorter-term perspective — usually the only one in which economies have a rationality — there was a good deal of compatibility between the interests of traders and the Fijians. The indigenous ceremonial economy did not depend upon goods which were being extracted to any excessive extent, while what was introduced was of considerable cultural and political use.

The contrast with the Marquesas is marked. While sandalwood was extracted early, by the 1820s and 1830s, the trade essentially consisted in exports of pork and other food in return for guns and related supplies. However, as we have seen, the Marquesan system did not function through value conversions in a manner at all similar to Fiji. Although there was a certain amount of internal barter, this was not the basis for relations of prestigious social value; inequalities were instead worked through and expressed in competitive presentations of food; these were connected closely with matters of the greatest ritual consequence, such as the commemoration of powerful shamans and chiefs. The estimation of individuals and groups was intimately connected with the capacity to stage such events, and to consume what was received.

More fundamentally, there was a direct contradiction between what ships wanted to take away and the basis of the Marquesan competitive feasting system. Pork was not only a crucial element of this political “fighting with food” but was also of ritual importance: certain animals were raised specifically for commemorative feasts for many ordinary people, as well as renowned chiefs and shamans. And there may not have been much scope for diverting beasts from feasting to trade: the evidence is not good, but it seems that there were never particularly considerable numbers of pigs in the islands. Supplying ships would thus certainly have undermined the other competitive and religious activities.

There are many travel books and official and missionary letters which convey a sense of disillusionment and apathy amongst Marquesans after the French annexation, and in especially intense and tragic terms in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Rather than repeating verbose and patronizing accounts of cultural despair, it is worth trying to specify precisely what it was about colonial contact in this case — in addition to the drastic character of disease and depopulation — which engendered such acute social and cultural decline. It may be that the conjunction of the form and purposes of indigenous exchange, together with traders’ demands, made it impossible to conduct certain ritual activities properly and at the same time diminished the status of the prominent people who had formerly focused their energies upon organizing such events. The dispersed and ineffective character of resistance at the time of French annexation is linked with the undermining of indigenous institutions, and to some extent to the character of those institutions, prior to contact.

While the account presented here is sketchy, its aim is to establish the possibility for a kind of processual, comparative analysis. This aims to avoid focusing exclusively either on static constructs of indigenous systems, supposedly occupying some imaginary time that is at once pre-colonial yet accessible to our vision, or on the other hand on colonial histories in which it is assumed that colonizers play the dominant role. Of course it would be foolish to understate the military and economic superiority of colonizers, but what I have tried to show here is that quite divergent paths of colonial history can be understood to have arisen partly on the basis of differences between the indigenous systems. I am not trying to advance a general argument that substitution-oriented exchange regimes in Oceania always fared better than non-substitution regimes; it is clear in some cases, such as New Georgia, that the violence of colonialism could obliterate indigenous dynamism if, for whatever reason, administrators opted for a repressive strategy. Contingencies are always significant; under other circumstances, there might have been a less destructive accommodation between indigenous society and external trade in the Marquesas, but it so happened that what were perceived to be military imperatives led the islanders to give away a supply of protein at a time of disease and intermittent famine — when they needed that food most. That is all too reminiscent of later colonial histories in other parts of the world.