1858: Ma’afu the most powerful man in Fiji

Heneli Ma’afu was son of Josiah Tupo’u, the previous Kanokupulo. It is often suggested that George Tupou, King of Tonga sent Ma’afu to Fiji to make a kingdom for himself in in 1947 because he was a potential rival whose high birth and cleverness could make him a leader for the Kings energies. However there is no evidence that Tuopu did send Ma’afu to Fiji. Ma’afu played no particularly prominent role in Fiji until 1853, when Tupou – at the request of missionaries – appointed Ma’afu and (Sefania Lualua) jointly to govern the unruly Tongans in Fiji.

I.C . CAMPBELL, Island Kingdom: Tonga Ancient and Modern. Canterbury University Press. 1992. ISBN 0-098812-14-0

24 May 1738: John Wesley’s conversion, while reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans was a foretaste of religious revivals at Vewa, Ono, Lakemba and Mbua Bay 100 years later

24 May 1738 was day and hour of John Wesley’s conversion, while reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.  “It came, somewhat unexpectedly it would appear, at 8.45 on the evening of 24 May 1738 at a meeting in London of which he has left a definite record in his Journal: In the evening, I went very unwillingly to a Society in Aldersgate where one was reading Luther’s preface to the Epistle to the Romans.
I felt my heart strangely warmed: About a quarter before nine, while he was describing the change that God works in the heart through faith in Christ, I felt my heart strangely warmed. I felt I did trust in Christ, Christ alone, for salvation; and an assurance was given me that he had taken away my sins, even mine, and saved me from the law of sin and death. I began to pray with all my might for those who had in a more especial manner despitefully used me and persecuted me. I then testified openly to all what I now first felt in my heart.
This was the day and hour of John Wesley’s conversion: Those who have made a study of his life and watched the development of his religious thought and feeling up to this time will not, perhaps, be able to see so much of the cataclysmic in this supernatural illumination as he and his followers did. The light which shone so brightly and warmly in his soul at that meeting had been smouldering for years, and was ready to burst into a blaze as soon as. the truth which he had been half blindly seeking was revealed to him through the words of Luther. He saw because, by that time, he was ready to see.
Sudden conversion a pattern of the culture: His experience at that little meeting was as much the final stage in a process of progressive illumination as it was a sudden revelation. But on the other hand it would, be a mistake to underrate the importance , of the crisis. It made a profound impression on his followers. They, like him, were accustomed to look back to a definite day on which their souls  found rest in the consciousness of a, change of heart. About the period of spiritual preparation when their souls were in labour for the coming of the great event they say comparatively little. It was the day and hour of.conversion or new birth on which they placed nearly all the emphasis.
Religious revivals in England under the preaching of Wesley: The accounts of the religious revivals in England under the preaching of Wesley and Whitefield must be read in the light that is thrown upon them by a study of the Romantic Revival. There were some strange happenings at these meetings, especially among the poor and uneducated violent emotions and brain storms j and it is clear from what he wrote at various places in his Journal that Wesley expected and welcomed these outward manifestations of inward conflict. Just as the missionaries looked for them in the religious revivals at Vewa, Ono, Lakemba and Mbua Bay. The more wicked the conscience-stricken one, the more violent did they expect the disturbance to be before a genuine conversion could be effected. Did he turn red or black in the face, bellow and roll upon the floor in agony, so much the better: sore travail of the soul was the prelude to spiritual newbirth. The result was a sharp cleavage in the ranks of the Church of England. Wesley saw this, but held on his course, passing from one innovation to another without any serious thought of severing his connexion with the Established Church”.
The Journal Of Thomas Williams, Missionary In Fiji, 1840-1853 By G. C. Henderson, M.a. (Oxon.) Emeritus Professor Of History, Adelaide University Author Of Sir George Grey : Founder Of Empire In Southern Lands, Fiji And The Fijians 18s5-1856 In Two Volumes Vol. I Australia Angus & Robertson Ltd,1931.  The manuscript is in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, in two folios, containing 874 pages and about 250,000 words.

the 28th of September, 1857 William Pritchard appointed Consul only 30-40 Europeans in Fiji

IN December, 1856, my father sailed from Samoa for England, leaving me as Acting Consul. On the 28th of September, 1857, I was appointed H. M. Consul at Fiji, though I still served in Samoa until the middle of 1858. Prior to my appointment there had not been a British Consul resident in Fiji, for though the group was included in my father’s consular district, his residence was at Samoa.

At this period there were not living in Fiji more than thirty or forty Europeans and Americans, and but few vessels trading were there.

Bad  behaviour on all sides: The unenviable character of the natives, their cannibalism, their frequent outrages upon the few whites already settled amongst them, and their constant intertribal wars, deterred the colonial traders from visiting them ; the reported difficult navigation of the group led shipmasters to give it a wide berth ; and indeed the character attributed to the whites themselves, represented them all  most unjustly I afterwards found  as little better than the Fijians.

Polynesian Reminiscences; Ob, Life In The South Pacific Islands. By W. T. Pritchard, F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L.

1829: birth of first Fiji Consul, W. T. Pritchard, son of George Pritchard counseller to Queen Pomare, later, British Consul to Tahiti

First Fiji Consul, W. T. Pritchard, was the son of Missionaries (London Missionary Society) and born in Tahiti, of English parents. ”I hardly knew whether to call England or Tahiti my fatherland. When, as a boy, playing at my mother’s feet, I heard her talk of ” Old England ” as every daughter of England speaks of her native land, I used to feel proud, and flattered myself that I too was English”.
Date of birth: “Such is the case in my study of the mid-19th century British Consul, William Pritchard, who was born in Tahiti in 1829 and served in Samoa and Fiji before being fired, following a Commission of Inquiry that I show to have been little more than a kangaroo court”. On Writing a Biography of William Pritchard Andrew E. Robson,
Favourite of Tahiti Queen: William Pritchard himself wrote “But when patted on the head by Queen Pomare and called her little favourite, carried about on the backs of her attendants, and every juvenile whim quickly humoured, I forgot all the pretty little stories of the far-off land, and thought only of the present of the actual before and around me; then, there was no place like Tahiti, and I have a lingering fancy that in my childish vanity there was the thought that after all it was perhaps better to be bom a Tahitian than an Englishman”.

Sent to England to study: But when, at the age of ten, I was … sent to the home of my parents, England soon became the fatherland ; and as years rolled on Tahiti was remembered only as the lovely little spot where I was bom where I played and romped under the shade of breadfruit-trees and orange groves, and along the sandy beaches and over the reefs of the seashore, without thought of Latin grammars or Greek hexameters, of puzzling circles and triangles, or mysterious signs and quantities. When at last as a schoolboy I learnt that Tahiti was no longer the Tahiti of my childhood, that from the Tahiti of Queen Pomara it had become the Tahiti of Louis Philippe, I hardly cared to remember even that much..”.

On Writing a Biography of William Pritchard Andrew E. Robson, and
Polynesian Reminiscences; Ob, Life In The South Pacific Islands. By W. T. Pritchard, F.R.G.S., F.A.S.L., F Ormerl Y H.M. Consul At Samoa Fiji. Preface By I) Berthold Seemann (R. Seemann). London : Chapman And Hall, 1932, Piccadilly. J. B. Taylor And Co. http://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=krOxFi-KHVAC&oi=fnd&pg=PA320&dq=Polynesian+Reminiscences:+Life+in+the+South+Pacific+Island+(First+Published+in+London+1866+ed.)&ots=l4FMvmBzh1&sig=vScUWL_vw_23ncTgnqhVFAHVinI#PPA357,M