[ANU Pacific.Institute] Vicki Luker seminar on Fiji

[Katerina Teaiwa]

School of Culture, History and Language
ANU College of Asia and the Pacific

Department of Pacific and Asian History
2014 Seminar Series

Tuesday, 3 Mar 2015, 3:00pm - 5:00pm

Seminar Room A, Coombs Building (9), Fellows Road, ANU

Chiefly polygamy in Fiji during the 1840s and 1850s:
a political and economic imperative?

Vicki Luker
School of Culture, History and Language, College of Asia and the Pacific, the Australian National University

Chiefly polygamy refers in this presentation to a chief with many, simultaneous wives. In the bigger polities of Fiji during the 1840s and 1850s, chiefly polygamy carried an added political and economic freight. Such a statement should come as no surprise ‒ and commentators at the time (mostly missionaries or their sympathisers) were aware of the political and economic dimensions of their subject matter. Yet in some respects, these dimensions were overshadowed by other preoccupations in the discussion of Fijian marriage. This presentation aims to bring these political and economic dimensions into focus by considering polygamy in the marital arrangements of five chiefs in three chiefdoms, those of Bau, Viwa and Rewa. At the very minimum, I hope to demonstrate how principal wives embodied the political and economic domains of their husbands. These reflections lead in turn to questions for further exploration elsewhere, among them, the role played by such chiefly wives in the adoption of the lotu Weseli or Wesleyan faith, which strictly insisted on monogamy for church members.


Enquiries:
Danton Leary <danton.leary at anu.edu.au<mailto:danton.leary at anu.edu.au>>





Dr Vicki Luker
Executive Editor, The Journal of Pacific History
Lecturer, School of Culture, History and Language
College of Asia and the Pacific
Australian National University ACT 0200
Australia

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