Dr. Bryant Allen submitted this thesis as partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Master of Arts in Geography at Massey University in 1969. In 1976 he completed a PhD at the Australian National University titled Information flow and innovation diffusion in the East Sepik district, Papua New Guinea.

Dr. Allen carried out research in the Cook Islands in the 1960s and in Papua New Guinea from the 1970s to the present. His main interests are in the sustainability of agricultural systems and rural development. He has studied a number of PNG agricultural systems and has defined, mapped and described all PNG agricultural systems with Mike Bourke and Robin Hide. He has used the agricultural systems databases, to identify poor and disadvantaged areas in PNG, and has worked on food security and on the social and economic aspects of road maintenance. He is a co-author of the PNG Rural Development Handbook. He now works as a consultant for AusAID, FAO and the World Bank.

Foreward
Preface
Contents
List of Tables
List of Figures
List of Plates
Glossary of Terms

Introduction, p.1
Chapter I: The Mangaian Environment, p.3
Mangaia, p.3
Mangaian ecological conceptions, p.4
Soils, p.8
Climate, p.12
Mangaian crops, p.14
Ecological zones and land use, p.19

Chapter II: The Mangaian Society, p.28
Major population trends, 1821-1966, p.28
District populations, p.36
Social organisation, p.44
Land tenure, p.48
The village, p.53
Changing social status, p.57

Chapter III: Traditional Agriculture and the Cultivation of Food Crops, p.79
Present patterns of cultivation, p.65
Animals, p.76

Chapter IV: The Development of Commercial Agriculture
Initial moves towards surplus agricultural production, p.79
The introduction of cash crops, p.82
Increased contacts with the advanced economy, p.85
Post 1945 advances in commercial agriculture, p.92
Technological aid and a new market, p.92
Conclusions, p.96

Chapter V: The Extent of Commercialisation in 1967, p.101
Pineapple production, p.101
Sources of income, p.106
Technology, p.118
Patterns of labour, p.129
The use of credit, p.138
The occupational status of agriculture, p.143
Commercialisation and the perception of problems, p.154
Entrepreneurial activity, p.154
Conclusion, p.161

Conclusion, p.164

Appendices

This collection of slides and photographs was taken by Robert Norton on his first research trip to Fiji, which took place during the 1966 Legislative Council elections campaigning.

The general Legislative Council elections were held in late 1966, just over a year after the first constitutional conference in London, and five years after the British government announced its plan to prepare Fiji for self-government.

The indigenous Fijian leaders were initially very anxious about this objective, viewing it as a threat to the protection they believed the Fijians had enjoyed under the colonial government’s policies, based in part, on the government’s interpretation of the Deed of Cession by which nearly 100 years before the leading chiefs had entrusted the islands to the British crown.

The Fiji Indians who in the 1960s were 51% of the population, and generally more advanced economically than the Fijians (43% of the population), looked favourably on the prospect of an end to colonial rule and their principal leaders called for a common franchise to replace communal (ethnic) political representation. The very influential but tiny European minority, concerned to preserve their longstanding privileged political representation, stood with the Fijians against radical constitutional change.

The 1966 elections were the first in which broadly-based political parties competed for a substantial power in the colonial parliament. The 1965 constitutional conference had changed the parliament (legislative council) from a council dominated by colonial officials appointed by the governor, to one dominated by elected representatives: 14 Indigenous Fijians, (2 elected by the Great Council of Chiefs), 12 Indians, 10 General electors (Europeans, Part-Europeans, Pacific islanders other than Fijians, and Chinese). The new constitution completed the expansion of the vote to a universal franchise, begun in 1963. Only four seats were reserved for colonial officials.

Most of the electorates remained ethnically defined, and all the seats remained ethnically reserved.

But overlaying the many communal electorates, were now three very large Cross Voting electorates covering the entire colony. They were multi-ethnic, made up from the communal electorates, and each had three reserved seats: Fijian, Indian, and General. The electors were entitled to four votes - one in their communal electorate, and three in their cross-voting electorate. Voting was not compulsory, and to cast a valid vote an elector need tick only the communal seat ballot paper if they wished. Communal seats numbered 9 Fijian, 9 Indian, and 7 General; there were 3 Fijian, 3 Indian, and 3 General cross-voting seats. Indigenous Fijians enjoyed additional representation by the two Council of Chiefs members of the parliament.

The intention of introducing the cross-voting electorates was to give people experience in supporting candidates of different ethnic identities from their own - a step, the British said, toward an eventual common franchise without reserved seats. It was hoped that political parties would each field candidates of different ethnicity, and that these would campaign together - the communal candidates assisting the campaigning of their cross-voting partners.

Some of the slides and photos illustrate this joint campaigning in western Viti Levu, by Fijian, Indian, and General candidates of the Alliance Party. All the pictures were taken on Viti Levu, Fiji’s major island.

The Alliance Party, whose main component body was the indigenous Fijian Association, won 22 seats (12 Fijian, 3 Indian, 7 General). The Federation Party (later the National Federation Party) secured only the 9 communal Indian seats; the party fielded only one non-Indian candidate, Fijian cane farmer Penaia Rokovuni (photos 48-54). Three General candidates were elected as independents.

References

Robert Norton 'Race and Politics in Fiji', University of Queensland Press, 1977, revised edition 1990

Roderick Alley 'The Emergence of Party Politics'. In 'Politics in Fiji' edited by Brij Lal, Allen & Unwin, 1986. Pp28-51