Fiji and the Fijians: Two Modes of Missionary Discourse

Abstract

Contrary to a common view originally held amongst anthropologists and historians, missionary writers of the nineteenth century did not all represent non-European peoples from a uniform viewpoint. This paper illustrates this by analysing some of the differences between the first and second volumes of the widely read Fiji and the Fijians (1858), written respectively by the Reverend James Calvert and the Reverend Thomas Williams. Calvert, like many other missionary writers, mixed descriptions of the horrors (such as cannibalism), chaos, and depravity of Fijian life with optimistic comments about the potential and actuality of change. Calvert's representation is illustrated by his treatment of the death of the chief Rabici and the subsequent ritual strangling of his widows and other women. Comparison of his account with those of four other missionaries, and of the beachcomber Jackson, shows how Calvert chose to emphasize difference, distance, and the sensational. By contrast, Williams's more general description of such practices demonstrates how he used a fundamentally scientific descriptive paradigm to represent Fijian society as a functioning, internally coherent society, in some ways analogous to his own, though one that would benefit from Christianity.