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ABSTRACT
While Fiji was a British colony, in the early twentieth century, education to Indigenous Fijians was delivered by missions including the Methodist Overseas Mission of Australasia. As argued here, education delivery was influenced by policies for African Americans. Policies from Tuskegee Institute in the American South were transposed to Nausori, where i taukei (people of the land) and Indo-Fijians were encouraged into industrial mission schemes, away from traditional communal lifestyles. This article illustrates how contemporary educational philosophies for and by Black men and women were part of a broader education network that acted as a locus of colonial reform. While some in the colonial hierarchy considered his emphasis on agricultural training appropriate to their vision of Native Fijian advancement, concurrently, Fijians themselves – passing through the mission system promoted competing forms of modernisation. They used missionary education, including influences of Washington’s approach, to speak back to British power and authority.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Lorenzo Veracini, ‘Emphatically Not a White Man’s Colony’, Journal of Pacific History 43, no. 2 (2008): 192.
2 Ibid., 202.
3 Ibid., 189.
4 Ibid., 189.
5 Andrea M. Slater, ‘W. E. B. Du Bois’ Transnationalism: Building a Collective Identity among the American Negro and Asian Indian’, Phylon 51, no. 1 (2014): 146.
6 Tracy Banivanua-Mar and Nadia Rhook, ‘Counter Networks of Empires: Reading Unexpected People in Unexpected Places’, Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 19, no. 2 (2018): n.p.; Tony Ballantyne, Entanglements of Empire: Missionaries, Maori and the Question of Body (Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2015).
7 Anne Perez Hattori, ‘Colonialism, Capitalism and Nationalism in the US Navy’s Expulsion of Guam’s Spanish Catholic Priests, 1898–1900’, Journal of Pacific History 44, no. 3 (2009): 281–302.
8 Kenneth Smith, ‘The American “Civilising Mission”: The Tuskegee Institute and its Involvement in African Colonialism’ (MA diss., Pennsylvania State University, 2015), 1.
9 Samuel Chapman Armstrong, https://www.hamptonu.edu/about/armstrong.cfm (accessed September 30, 2021).
10 Alfred Young, ‘The Educational Philosophy of Booker T. Washington: A Perspective for Black Liberation’, Phylon 37, no. 3 (1976): 227.
11 Ibid
12 Booker T. Washington, Up from Slavery, https://www.gutenberg.org/files/2376-h/2376-h.htm (accessed May 30, 2021).
13 Christopher Tounsel, ‘“Negro Canaan”: Cotton, Tuskegee, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan’, Journal of African American History 105, no. 1 (2020): 29; V. P. Franklin, ‘Pan-African Connections, Transnational Education, Collective Cultural Capital, and Opportunities Industrialisation Centres International’, Journal of African American History 96, no. 1 (2011): 44–61.
14 Franklin, ‘Pan African Connections’, 44.
15 C. Whitehead, Education in Fiji: Policy, Problems and Progress in Primary and Secondary Education, 1939–1973 (Canberra: ANU Press, 1981), 11.
16 Rutledge M. Dennis, ‘Du Bois and the Role of the Educated Elite’, Journal of Negro Education 46, no. 4 (1977): 388.
17 Robert J. Norrell, ‘Booker T. Washington: Understanding the Wizard of Tuskegee’, Journal of Blacks in Higher Education no. 46 (2004–2005): 106–14, at 106.
18 Ibid., 96.
19 Du Bois’s depiction of Washington has been potent in collective memory of the educationalist. Rebecca Carroll, ed., Uncle Tom or New Negro? African Americans Reflect on Booker T. Washington and Up from Slavery 100 Years Later (New York: Harlem Moon, 2006), 3.
20 Louis R. Harlan, ‘Booker T. Washington and the White Man’s Burden’, American Historical Review 71, no. 2 (1966): 441–2.
21 West, Michael O. “The Tuskegee model of development in Africa: another dimension of the African/African-American connection.” Diplomatic History 16, no. 3 (1992): 371-387.
22 Ibid., 375.
23 Andrew Zimmerman, Alabama in Africa: Booker T. Washington, the German Empire, and the Globalization of the New South (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), 175-204.
24 W. Manning Marable, ‘Booker Washington and African Nationalism’, Phylon 35, no. 4 (1974): 405.
25 Ibid., 406.
26 Anthony Adler, ‘The Capture and Curation of the Cannibal “Vendovi”: Reality and Representation of a Pacific Frontier’, Journal of Pacific History 49, no. 3 (2014): 257–8; R. A. Derrick, A History of Fiji (Suva: Fiji Government Press, 1950), 91–2.
27 Nancy Shoemaker, Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles: Americans in Nineteenth Century Fiji (Irhaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019), 3.
28 Hazel M. McFerson, ‘“Part-Black Americans” in the South Pacific’, Phylon 43, no. 2 (1982): 177–80.
29 David Routledge, Matanitu: The Struggle for Power in Early Fiji (Suva: University of the South Pacific, 1985), 17, 66–88.
30 W. D. McIntyre, ‘Anglo-American Rivalry in the Pacific: The British Annexation of the Fiji Islands in 1874’, Pacific Historical Review 29, no. 4 (1960): 362.
31 Ibid., 361–2.
32 See Derrick, A History of Fiji, 249.
33 Shoemaker, Pursuing Respect in the Cannibal Isles, 2.
34 Barnes, cited in Elisabeth Engel, ‘The Ecumenical Origins of Pan-Africanism: Africa and the “Southern Negro” in the International Missionary Council’s Global Vision of Christian Indigenisation in the 1920s’, Journal of Global History (2018): 211.
35 Trygve Throntveit, ‘The Fable of the Fourteen Points: Woodrow Wilson and National Self-Determination’, Diplomatic History 35, no. 3 (2011): 446.
36 Maurice S. Evans, ‘International Conference on the Negro’, Journal of the Royal African Society 11, no. 44 (1912): 416–29.
37 Engel, ‘The Ecumenical Origins of Pan-Africanism’, 210–11.
38 Christine Weir, ‘The Work of Mission: Race, Labour and Christian Humanitarianism in the South-West Pacific’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2003), 223.
39 E. H. Berman, ‘Tuskegee – in – Africa’, Journal of Negro Education 41, no. 2 (1972): 100.
40 Ibid.; Christine Weir, ‘“White Man’s Burden”, “White Man’s Privilege”: Christian Humanism and Racial Determinism in Oceania, 1890–1930’, in Foreign Bodies: Oceania and the Science of Race, 1750–1940, ed. Bronwen Douglas and Chris Ballard (ANU Press, 2008), 298.
41 Christine Weir, ‘The Work of Mission: Race, Labour and Christian Humanitarianism in the South-West Pacific’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2003), 319.
42 Marable, ‘Booker Washington and African Nationalism’, 403.
43 Kirstie Close-Barry, A Mission Divided: Race, Culture and Colonialism in Fiji’s Methodist Mission (Canberra, ACT: ANU Press, 2015), 17.
44 For examples, see Sanjay Ramesh, ‘Indo-Fijian Counter Hegemony in Fiji: A Historical Structural Approach’, Pacific Dynamics: Journal of Interdisciplinary Research 1, no. 1 (2017): 66–85.
45 Satish Chand, ‘The Political Economy of Fiji: Past, Present and Prospects’, The Round Table: Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs 104, no. 2 (2015): 199–208, at 202.
46 ‘Nausori Mill, Rewa River’, Clarence and Richmond Examiner and New England Advertiser, August 29, 1885, 3; ‘The Colonial Sugar Refining Co, Nausori Fiji’, Mackay Mercury, February 5, 1891, 3.
47 ‘Nausori Mill, Rewa River’, 3.
48 Theories of depopulation and racial decline had also impacted the London Missionary Society (LMS) activities in Hawaii, where Armstrong, the head of Hampton (where Washington was trained), had been raised by LMS parents. For more details on the Hawaiian situation, see Barbara Brookes, ‘“Return of the Native”: Two Routes Back for a “Dying Race”’, in Pacific Futures: Past and Present, ed. Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018), 209.
49 Veracini, ‘Emphatically Not a White Man’s Colony’, 194; see also Close-Barry, A Mission Divided, particularly chapters 1 and 4.
50 Nicholas Thomas, ‘Sanitation and Seeing: The Creation of State Power in Early Colonial Fiji’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 32, no. 1 (1990): 149.
51 A. J. Small, Journal, n.d., ML MSs 3267/1, item 4, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
52 Booker T. Washington, Working with the Hands: Being a Sequel to ‘Up from Slavery’ Covering the Author’s Experiences in Industrial Training at Tuskegee (New York: Doubleday, Page and Company, 1904), https://www.gutenberg.org/files/64504/64504-h/64504-h.htm (accessed February 13, 2022).
53 Ibid.
54 ‘Advance Davuilevu’, Australian Christian Commonwealth, August 31, 1906, 5.
55 ‘The Davuilevu Industrial Institute’, The Methodist, April 1, 1916, 8.
56 Small, Journal, n.d., ML MSS, 3267/1, item 4, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
57 See Close-Barry, A Mission Divided.
58 Small, Journal, November 10, 1909, ML MSS 3267/1, item 5 Mitchell Library, Sydney.
59 Timothy J. MacNaught, Fijian Colonial Experience: A Study of the Neotraditional Order under British Colonial Rule prior to World War Two (Canberra, ACT: ANU Press, 2016), 28–9.
60 Victoria Lukere, ‘Mothers of the Taukei: Fijian Women and the Decrease of the Race’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 1997), 1.
61 J. W. Burton, The Fiji of Today (London: C. H. Kelly, 1910), 241.
62 Ibid., 245.
63 Clive Whitehead, ‘The Historiography of British Imperial Education Policy, Part II: Africa and the Rest of the Colonial Empire’, History of Education 34, no. 4 (2005): 441; Carmen White, ‘Moving Up the Ranks: Chiefly Status, Prestige, and Schooling in Colonial Fiji’, History of Education Quarterly 46, no. 4 (2006): 535.
64 J. M. Barrington, ‘The Transfer for Educational Ideas: Notions of Adaptation’, Journal of Comparative and International Education 13, no. 1 (1983): 64.
65 Robert Nicole, Disturbing History: Resistance in Early Colonial Fiji (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2011), 80.
66 Robert Norton, ‘The Historical Trajectory of Fijian Power’, State, Society and Governance in Melanesia (ANU Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, ‘State, Society and Governance in Melanesia’, Discussion Paper, 2009/6), 3–5.
67 Ibid., 3.
68 F. J. West, ‘Sir Lala Sukuna and the Establishment of the Fijian Administration’, Pacific Historical Review 36, no. 1 (1967): 101.
69 Close-Barry, A Mission Divided, 82; Deryck Scarr, Ratu Sukuna: Soldier, Statesman, Man of Two Worlds (London: Macmillan Education, 1980), 71.
70 Brian Morris, ‘The Chilembwe Rebellion’, Society of Malawi Journal 68, no. 1 (2015): 21.
71 Marable, ‘Booker Washington and African Nationalism’, 404.
72 Morris, ‘The Chilembwe Rebellion’, 21.
73 Roderick J. MacDonald, ‘The Socio-Political Significance of Educational Initiatives in Malawi, 1899–1939’, TransAfrican Journal of History 2, no. 2 (1972): 71.
74 R. Tangri, ‘Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915’, African Historical Studies 4, no. 2 (1971): 306.
75 ‘“Fiji for the Fijians”: The Viti Company’, Daily Telegraph, March 11, 1915, 9.
76 Jane Linden and Ian Linden, ‘John Chilembwe and the New Jerusalem’, Journal of African History 12, no. 4 (1971): 634; Morris, ‘The Chilembwe Rebellion’, 27.
77 Linden and Linden, ‘John Chilembwe and the New Jerusalem’, 636.
78 M. Catharine Newbury, ‘Ubureetwa and Thangata: Catalyst to Peasant Political Consciousness in Rwanda and Malawi’, Canadian Journal of African Studies 14, no. 1 (1980): 99; Morris, ‘The Chilembwe Rebellion’, 28.
79 Tangri, ‘Some New Aspects of the Nyasaland Native Rising of 1915’, 312.
80 ‘In Fertile Fiji’, The West Australian, Perth, January 21, 1909, 2.
81 C. Weir, ‘The Work of Mission: Race, Labour and Christian Humanitarianism in the South-West Pacific, 1870–1930’ (PhD diss., Australian National University, 2003), 238.
82 Cyril Bavin, ‘Davuilevu Industrial Institute, Fiji’, Australian Christian Commonwealth, April 7, 1916, 7.
83 Whitehead, Education in Fiji, 11.
84 James Hennessy, ‘Missions Bear Brunt of Native Education’, Pacific Islands Monthly 11, no. 12 (July 15, 1941): 32. For more on what I assume is meant with regard to the Honolulu Conference, see George H. Blakeslee, ‘Results of the Honolulu Conference on the Problems of the Pacific’, Current History 27, no. 1 (1927): 69–73.
85 R. A. Derrick, ‘Technical Education at Davuilevu’, The Methodist, Sydney, November 23, 1929, 15.
86 ‘On the Land: Unemployment in Fiji’, Sydney Morning Herald, May 27, 1924, 7.
87 ‘Farming in Fiji’, Sydney Morning Herald, April 3, 1934, 7.
88 Ibid.
89 ‘On the Land: Unemployment in Fiji’.
90 ‘Farming in Fiji’.
91 J. M. Barrington, ‘The Transfer for Educational Ideas: Notions of Adaptation’, Journal of Comparative and International Education 13, no. 1 (1983): 64.
92 J. W. Burton, ‘Fiji: Indian Education’, Sydney Morning Herald, October 25, 1924, 11.
93 Barrington, ‘The Transfer for Educational Ideas’, 64.
94 Burton, ‘Fiji: Indian Education’.
95 See Paisley, this issue.
96 Russell McGregor, ‘Assimilationists Contest Assimilation: T. G. H. Strehlow and A. P. Elkin on Aboriginal Policy’, Journal of Australian Studies 26, no. 75 (2002): 45.
97 ‘Fiji District Synod’, The Spectator, January 4, 1933, 13.
98 Ibid.
99 ‘Mission of Self-Help in Fiji: An Adventure in Agriculture’, The Spectator, November 15, 1933, 914.
100 Ibid.
101 C. O. Lelean, ‘Slogans in Fijian Education’, The Spectator, November 14, 1934, 925.
102 Ibid.
103 Ibid.
104 Suzanne Madgwick, ‘The Interrelationship of Race Relations and Education in Hawaii and Fiji’ (MA diss., University of Hawaii, 1967), 64.
105 Ibid., 101.
106 White, ‘Moving Up the Ranks’, 533.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Kirstie Close
Kirstie Close is a historian based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Her research looks at the role of Christian missions in organising Indigenous labour in colonised territories across Australasia, particularly Australia, Fiji and Papua New Guinea. She completed her PhD at Deakin University in 2014 and has since published her book A Mission Divided: Race, Culture and Colonialism with ANU Press, and written several academic articles. She has worked at multiple tertiary institutions in teaching and research capacities including Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, the Pacific Adventist University and the University of the South Pacific, and is currently working in Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne since the start of 2022. She is currently working on two research projects, one on truth telling and reconciliation at Deakin University, and another on women in business in the Torres Strait at Macquarie University.