28 R.C. to H.C., not numbered, 7 July 1895 - ibid., 216/1895. 29 R.C. to H.C., Ellice no. 4, 17 Jan. 1895 - ibid., 42/1895.
30 ibid.; R.C. to H.C., Ellice no. 6, 25 Jan. 1895 - ibid., 46/1895; Ellice no. 75, 1 Sept. 1895 - ibid., 367/1895. For example, the tax at Vaitupu for 1895 was £20 ($100). Contributions to the L.M.S. for 1894 had totalled $168 in addition to $141 paid to
the mission teacher. In 1895 contributions to the L.M.S. totalled $451.
31 R.C. to H.C., Ellice no. 75, 1 Sept. 1895 - loc. cit. 32 R.C. to H.C., Dec. 1893 to Sept. 1895, passim.
For the first two years of its existence the administration of the Protectorate rested on a shaky financial base. The drought in the southern Gilberts, which Thurston had reported after his trip, did not break until 1894 and it took several more months for the coconut trees to recover sufficiently to allow their exploitation for copra. As a result, only £100 of Swayne's salary for the year 1894-5 could be met from local revenue and the Treasury, despite its earlier
33 edict, was obliged to provide the balance from imperial funds.
Partly because of the lack of finance and partly because of Colonial Office instructions there was no expansion of the
establishment during Swayne's term. Others whom he employed, Corrie and Clarke in particular, were engaged only on a temporary and
ad hoc basis.
. There was no official headquarters. Swayne spent more time on Butaritari than on any other island but the arrangement was regarded as temporary. In 1895 Swayne was instructed to choose a suitable site
for his successor's headquarters. Thurston favoured Abemama because of its lagoon harbour and central location. Swayne, however,
selected Tarawa and purchased land at Betio, an islet on the south- 34
west tip of the atoll.
Although Swayne had made little progress in establishing a comprehensive central administration before he returned to Fiji in November 1895 he had laid the foundations of a system of local administration that left a great deal of responsibility with the
island governments. Wittingly or unwittingly, however, he had created a machinery that could be built upon and expanded, by those who
followed him, in a manner that was to destroy its original purpose by placing greater powers in the hands of European officers.
William Telfer Campbell, a northern Irishman with a military background and administrative experience in New Guinea, was chosen as Swayne's successor. An irritable and abrupt man, Campbell rapidly
33 H.C. to S. of S., no. 28., 2 Sept. 1893 - loc. cit.; R.C. to H.C., Gilberts no. 6, 21 Dec. 1893 - loc. cit.; S. of S. to H.C., no. 14, 28 April 1894 (with enclosure Treasury to C.O., no. 88, 11 Jan. 1894) - WPHC, Despatches from S. of S.
H.C. to S. of S., no. 28, 2 Sept. 1893 - loc. cit.; R.C. to H.C., not numbered, 1 July 1895 - loc. cit.
37
became unpopular with most Europeans living in the groups. He attacked missionaries for interfering with the island governments, traders for their unscrupulous (as he saw them) dealings and the few remaining beachcombers whom he considered to have an undesirable influence on the islanders. Campbell, self-righteous, autocratic, intolerant and forceful, was to have a lasting impact on the
government and people of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands.
As an administrator, Campbell believed in close supervision over the island governments and, where possible, direct control over their affairs. He has been seen as an anti-mission or, more specifically,
35
as an anti-Catholic administrator, but such an explanation is too simple. Campbell was not opposed to mission activity per se, but only in so far as missionaries, mission teaching or inter-mission rivalries inhibited the development of the islands in accordance with his plans. Inevitably, though, because of his personality and the nature of expatriate society in the islands, his official career in
the Protectorate, which lasted from 1896 to 1908, was marked by a series of personal feuds - with beachcombers, with missionaries, and with his own staff.
Campbell saw the effective enforcement of law and order as the first stage towards efficient local government. To this end the island administrations were encouraged to pass regulations to
supplement the Native Laws. For example, shortly after his arrival, Campbell recommended that flogging should be introduced as a deterrent punishment for drunkenness. When Thurston refused to sanction such action, Campbell had the island governments pass an appropriate
36
regulation. By the time that Campbell left the Protectorate, in
1908, a standard set of regulations had been accepted by all governments from Makin as far south as Tabiteuea and, with minor modifications,
37
by all other islands. It is of interest that of the fifty-nine
35 See, for example, Sabatier, Sous l'Equateur du Pacifique, 128-9, 227-8.
36 R.C. to H.C., no. 14, n.d., and ensuing correspondence - WPHC, Inwards Correspondence, General, 214/1896.
37 Assistant H.C. to H.C., Gilbert and Ellice no. 23, 23 March 1909 - ibid., 393/1909.
regulations no less than one-third contravened the maximum
punishments stipulated for island regulations in the Native Laws. Campbell soon discovered that, throughout the islands, few Kaubure had a clear idea as to their duties and responsibilities. They were often dominated by the pastors, served as Magistrates and/or
38
police and collected fines for personal benefit. Campbell reported one extreme case, from Butaritari, where a Kaubure had fined his wife:
... a woman had been fined £12 for dreaming of a man who was not her husband, the latter inflicted the fine, without any authority whatever, with the hope evidently
of deterring his wife from dreaming of other men. Another woman who had been informed of the dream and had repeated it was also fined a similar sum.39
Campbell showed little hesitation in dismissing inefficient Kaubure or in inflicting fines upon them individually or as a group. In the southern Gilbert Islands the bodies of Kaubure were reduced to more workable size. At Onotoa, where the practice of dividing fines among the unimane, meeting as Kaubure, had continued, Campbell
reduced the Kaubure from 130 to 13 and ordered all the previous 40
Kaubure to be fined 4s. as a basis for the Island Fund. A rival of the uea who had seized the office of Magistrate at Maiana, and ruled for the benefit of himself, his family, and a clique of his
supporters among the Kaubure, was summarily removed from the 41
government. One Kaubure at Abemama, on his second conviction for drunkenness, was removed to Tarawa by Campbell for an indefinite period and his fine of £1 returned. Campbell reported that 'an example of some sort was necessary in order to impress upon the natives something of the power and intentions of the Protectorate
42
Government'. Again, during a tour of the Ellice group in December 1896, Campbell ordered the Nanumanga Magistrate dismissed, and fined
38 R.C. to H.C., Ellice no. 1, 9 Jan. 1896 - ibid., 79/1896; Ellice no. 8, 15 Dec. 1896 - ibid., 68/1897; Gilberts no. 42, 3 Sept.
1896 - ibid., 388/1896.
39 R.C. to H.C,, Gilberts no. 7, 3 May 1897 - ibid., 266/1897. 40 R.C. to H.C., Gilberts no. 1, 2 Jan. 1897 - ibid., 76/1897. 41 R.C. to H.C., Gilberts no. 42, 3 Sept. 1896 - loc. cit. 42 ibid.
39
8s. for failing to attend a meeting called on his arrival, and then 43
reduced the number of Kaupuli from twelve to four. In the remedial measures that he took, Campbell appointed Magistrates, Kaubure and Kaupuli who were compliant to his views. After a series of dismissals made in his absence, especially in the Ellice Islands, he insisted
that changes in the island governments could only be made with his approval.^
The policy initially pursued by the Magistrates of inflicting fines for almost all offences, and the passing of the drought in the southern islands in 1894, helped the growth of the Island Funds. Further advances were made when Campbell ordered the registration of
45