From Warriors to Soldiers: Militarizing Fijian Identity during the Second World War

During the Second World War, colonial conceptions of Indigenous Fijians as naturally warlike were reframed and deployed in a modern military context in ways that were shaped by diverse British and Fijian aims. In this article, I apply Bernard Cohn's concept of the 'investigative modality' to examine a host of official reports, telegrams, and histories that reveal how British military and colonial authorities, informed by particular understandings of race, sought to refigure and make use of Fijians as military assets. Fijians, in turn, applied their own cultural conceptions - particularly that of reciprocity - to this process of militarization to make claims upon colonial power by constituting themselves as 'favoured' subjects who had served the British Crown during the war. This analysis shows how the militarization of Fijians during the Second World War was shaped by both British and Fijian discourses and practices for divergent British and Fijian ends.