[Image: Ratu Sir Lala Sukuna at the 80th anniversary of the signing of Deed of Cession, Suva, 1954. This image is part of the Colonial Office photographic collection held at The National Archives. Part of CO 1069/652. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons]

Download PDF: BDEEP Series B Volume 10 – Fiji [2MB]

Volume Details: First published by The Stationery Office in 2006, with a Second Impression in 2008. Electronic version reproduced with permission of the editor under an Open Government Licence.

Editor Details: BRIJ V LAL is Professor, Division of Pacific and Asian History and Centre for the Contemporary Pacific, at the Australian National University. He was a member of the Fiji Constitution Review Commission whose report formed the basis of Fiji’s 1997 constitution. His publications include Broken Waves: a History of the Fiji Islands in the 20th Century (1992), A Vision for Change: AD Patel and the Politics of Fiji (1997), and Bittersweet: The Indo-Fijian Experience (2004).

Selection from Introduction:

This volume of documents attempts to present as full an account as possible of the political dilemmas facing both Suva and London in deciding the future course of Fiji’s constitutional evolution, and chronicles the ideas, issues, assumptions, understandings and internal debates that determined policy. […] The documents portray the concerns and priorities of the United Kingdom government, informed closely as they were by regular reports from Fiji. There was broad agreement among top policy makers but by no means complete consensus on all major issues of dispute. On the contrary, these records show how widely divergent sometimes the views were and how, over time, they were developed through several exchanges into a coherent policy.” (p.xxxv)