The Part-Europeans of Fiji

Abstract

From man's beginning there has been a steady cross cultural contact - a mixing of ethnic groups to form new groups which, in so far as they are aware of themselves as being 'different' from their parent groups and all others, are new ethnic formations.Hughes & Hughes p156 : 1952 It has been a continuing process which, as man has become increasingly complex in his social organisation, has been overlaid with bounds of economic, religious, social, political and psychological stricture, until this area where men have had less practice and more caution in understanding each other, has become invested with the complexities and misunderstandings of fringe thinking. We are heirs to this. Ethnic and cultural mixture and admixture have been bequeathed to us from earliest times. The expansion of the Incas, the invasions of Britain by Scandinavians, the invasions of India from the north, Arab expansion in Africa, the peopling of the Pacific from the hearth area of southern China are isolated examples.