Toward a reassessment of Gordon in Fiji

events that are linked together by a single person. An understanding of the individual's personality, his motivation, the origin of his thinking, and the depth of his understanding of his actions all need to be explored as far as is possible to achieve a true insight into the central figure. By these criteria Sir Arthur Hamilton Gordon has been poorly treated by his biographer and others that have written about him. Historians of Fiji and the Western Pacific in general must consider him to be one of the central protagonists of British colonial policy in the late 1870s and early 1880s, but a careful reading of his biography and other commentary about him in this period does not provide any clear focus on the man and his ideas. His personality is generally agreed upon: from an early age Gordon ex pressed 'an excessive desire to be eminent'1 and much of his later career was characterized by disappointment and frustration when his eminence was not noted and given its due.2 He was supremely confident of his abilities, es pecially his 'instinct... for understanding natives',3 and when expressing his uncertainty about the future of Fiji he was plagued by the thought of being replaced by a governor who did not possess his talents or share his views.4 He believed that he was an instrument of divine purpose and that God placed him in his successive positions, yet, without apparently seeing the contradiction, he made use of his highly placed friends in England to help him achieve what he sought. A minute in the Colonial Office made by one of Gordon's opponents judges him 'an exceedingly vain Governor' and a 'pretentious prig',5 and one could be excused for agreeing with those senti ments, but in Gordon's case the line between vanity and a fair assessment of his abilities is finely drawn. He had a well developed sense of mission, a