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'What I have sought to do in my work is to give voiceless people a voice, place and purpose, the sense of dignity and inner strength that comes from never giving up no matter how difficult the circumstances. History belongs as much to the vanquished as to the victors.' — Brij V. Lal. 'Professor Brij Lal is the finest historian of the Indian indentured experience and the Indian diaspora. His Girmitiyas is a classic.' — Emeritus Professor Clem Seecharan, London Metropolitan University. 'Brij Lal is a highly respected, versatile and imaginative scholar who has made a lasting contribution to the historiography of the Pacific.' — Dr Rod Alley, Victoria University of Wellington. 'Professor Brij Lal's life is a remarkable journey of a scholar and an intellectual whose writings are truly transformative; a man of moral clarity and courage who also has deep pain at being cut off from his homeland.' — Professor Michael Wesley, Dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University. 'Brij Lal is a singular scholar, whose work has spanned disciplines – from history, political commentary, encyclopedia, biography and "faction". Brij is without doubt the most eminent scholar in the humanities and social sciences Fiji has ever produced. He also remains one of the most significant public intellectuals of his country, despite having been banned from entering it in 2009.' — Emeritus Professor Clive Moore, University of Queensland. 'Brij Lal is an accomplished and versatile historian and true son of Fiji. Above all, there is affirmation here of the enduring worth of good literature and the value of good education that Lal received and wants others to experience. The world needs more Lals who speak out against ruling opinions and dare to stray into the pastures of independent thought.' — Professor Doug Munro, historian and biographer, Wellington, and Adjunct Professor at the University of Queensland

To read this evocative book is to be thrust into a Fiji that has, for the moment, been snuffed out by military might: a Fiji of political parties, parliamentary politics, elections, manifestoes, campaigns, democractic defence of interests, party manoeuvres, and constitutional protection of rights and freedoms. It is a comprehensive and eloquent re-telling of the story of Fiji politics from independence in 1970 to 1999 through the perspective of Fiji's greatest living statesman, Jai Ram Reddy, by one of the world's most distinguished scholars of its history and politics.

Five December 2006 may well go down in the annals of modern Fijian history as the date when the country dramatically changed course — a turning point when the country finally turned. What the future holds for that ill-fated island nation state is not at all clear, nor likely to be for some time, but it is now surely beyond dispute that the 20th century, with its assumptions and understandings about the nature and structure of Fiji's political culture, effectively ended not in 2000, but in 2006 when Commodore Bainimarama executed his military coup. The break with the past is decisive and irreversible. An improbable coup has largely succeeded. The old order is dead — or at least in terminal illness — and a new one is promised to 'take the country forward'. That promise for now remains just that: a promise. Everyone accepts that a racebased electoral system is counterproductive for a multi-ethnic democratic society, that gender inequality is indefensible, that all citizens should have equal rights, that citizenship should be race neutral. Change in a society, as in any living organism, is inevitable, constant, though it is more easily asserted than effected. But the larger question is change for what purpose? To what end, at what pace, on whose terms, under what conditions, through what means, at what price? This is the conundrum at the heart of the current political debate in Fiji. I will not attempt to answer these questions here. My purpose is not to speculate about what Fiji's future might look like under Bainimarama, but to understand the constellation of forces that served to consolidate the Commodore's coup. This, I hope, may provide us with some pointers for the future. (First paragraph of first page).

Five December 2006 may well go down in the annals of modern Fijian history as the date when the country dramatically changed course — a turning point when the country finally turned. What the future holds for that ill-fated island nation state is not at all clear, nor likely to be for some time, but it is now surely beyond dispute that the 20th century, with its assumptions and understandings about the nature and structure of Fiji's political culture, effectively ended not in 2000, but in 2006 when Commodore Bainimarama executed his military coup. The break with the past is decisive and irreversible. An improbable coup has largely succeeded. The old order is dead — or at least in terminal illness — and a new one is promised to 'take the country forward'. That promise for now remains just that: a promise. Everyone accepts that a racebased electoral system is counterproductive for a multi-ethnic democratic society, that gender inequality is indefensible, that all citizens should have equal rights, that citizenship should be race neutral. Change in a society, as in any living organism, is inevitable, constant, though it is more easily asserted than effected. But the larger question is change for what purpose? To what end, at what pace, on whose terms, under what conditions, through what means, at what price? This is the conundrum at the heart of the current political debate in Fiji. I will not attempt to answer these questions here. My purpose is not to speculate about what Fiji's future might look like under Bainimarama, but to understand the constellation of forces that served to consolidate the Commodore's coup. This, I hope, may provide us with some pointers for the future. (First paragraph of first page).