How our friends envied us. The poor things had just started scanning the annual holiday supplements to discover how to make their travel allowances work the miracle of the loaves and fishes, while we were setting out on a round-the-world tour via Persia to Australia, and back through the South Pacific and the Caribbean. An enterprising Australian television company paid for the round trip—first-class air fare, first-class hotels, including the wife. How everybody envied us!

The journey took two months, and we returned, to coin a phrase, impoverished by the experience. As I look back at it, much of it seems like a journey through an air-conditioned, neon-lit tunnel, filled with the ubiquitous sound of Muzak, the smell of hamburgers, and the sight of blue-haired matrons spending the life insurance money of their deceased husbands on package tours from one duty-free shop to the next. Every day about 5:30 P.M., the tunnel changes into the dark womb of the same cocktail bar in the same Hilton or Sheraton in Honolulu, Fiji, or Teheran; and subsequently into the same Gourmet’s Rainbow Oak Room, where the same freeze-broiled choice T-bone is banged down by the same Italian waiter beside the same spluttering fancy candle on your table. Never a native dish. Never a tropical fruit. And day by day in every way, the muddy floods of Muzak pour down on you, piped into the lift, the lobby, the bathrooms, bar, restaurant, swimming pool, coral beach—a tonal diarrhea, unrelenting, inescapable. There are worldwide crusades for the preservation of wildlife and countryside; it is time somebody started a movement for the preservation of silence.

The explosion of the tourist industry and its culture-eroding fallout are still regarded as a minor nuisance. They are more than that. All over the world the tourist trade is an increasingly important factor in the national economy. In some countries it takes first or second place, and in some the number of tourists per annum outnumbers the total native population. It is a plague of locusts which brings to the natives material prosperity and cultural corruption, eroding traditional ways of living, contaminating arts and crafts with the vulgarity of the souvenir industry, and leveling down indigenous cultures to a uniform, mechanized, stereotyped norm.

It is a global phenomenon. In the Alpine meadows, the farmers are turning into innkeepers; tourists are easier to milk than cows. If French gastronomy is now hardly more than a legend revived each year by new editions of the Guide Michelin, it is an indirect consequence of the explosion; why should the chef waste hours on a dish when the customer from overseas drenches it in ketchup, and the natives soon learn to imitate him? One has watched the blight spread over Europe, from the gulf of Naples to the Swedish fjords; but I still had some illusions left about the Pacific islands, the “palm-fringed jewels of the sea,” as the travel brochures invariably describe them, “where all of life sways to music and every heart responds to gaiety and laughter.”

“I am very romantic”

The first of the jewel islands we descended on was Fiji (more precisely Viti Levu, the central island of the group) , which may serve as a fair sample. All the old hands in Sydney had told us that it was less spoiled than Noumea or Tahiti or Hawaii, and up to a point this seemed to be true. I must confess that I also had a naïve curiosity about the place because, according to the reports of nineteenth-century missionaries and anthropologists, the “Feegeeans” were by far the most cruel and savage people among the Pacific islanders—and the most prodigious man-eaters, who practiced cannibalism on an unprecedented scale, partly as a ritual, mainly because of a genuine addiction to human flesh. One Methodist missionary, the Reverend John Watsford, reported in 1846: “The poor wretches [captives of a hostile tribe] were bound ready for the ovens, and their enemies were waiting anxiously to devour them. They did not club them lest any of their blood should he lost. Some, however, could not wait until the ovens were sufficiently heated, but pulled the ears off the wretched creatures and ate them raw.” The last case of cannibalism is supposed to have occurred some thirty or forty years ago—nobody is quite sure—in a village a few miles from Nadi International Airport, and there are rumors about more recent cases in the interior. I mention this to indicate that cannibalism is not merely a subject for funny New Yorker cartoons, but a tradition that has survived within the span of living memory in Fiji (and is still practiced sporadically in New Guinea): perhaps the starkest symbol of the gulf that separated one type of human culture from another only two or three generations ago. So one could not help wondering whether any traces of a mentality beyond our imagination could still be discerned by the perceptive eye.

The perceptive eye’s first discovery at Nadi Airport was a tourist leaflet which had a map, a list of the various duty-free liquor allowances for travelers to the United States, Australia, Noumea, Tahiti, Mexico, and so on; and also a list of “helpful words and phrases in Fijian.” The complete list of helpful phrases (omitting the translation in Fijian) ran as follows: “Go away.” “I am broke.” “Another round, etc.” “This is lousy.” “Where is the entertainment tonight?” “Take me to the Skylodge.” “Girls, stop crowding me.” “Have we met before?” “I am very romantic.” “You are an extremely attractive young woman.” “Take me to your chief, leader, etc.” “Where is the manager?” “You are standing on my foot.” “My friend needs a doctor.” “Driver, take me home.”

To make my point clear: nobody in his right senses could wish to go back to the world of the headhunting cannibal. But nobody in his right senses can rejoice to see it succeeded by a trashy tourists’ paradise surrounded by native slums. Yet this is what has happened to Fiji and the other islands. Some years ago, Alan Moorehead wrote:

In Tahiti the Polynesians had been taught to despise their own religion and had torn down their temples. In the same way, the Australian aboriginals’ gods and totems had been brought into contempt by the white man and had been destroyed and forgotten. This left the natives without a tradition or a past, and they were like men who had lost their memories; they walked about in a trance in the materialistic present, and they could not be anchored to the new white god. Backwards as well as forwards the way was blocked.

The quote is from Moorehead’s book The Fatal Impact—An Account of the Invasion of the South Pacific 1767-1840. Since then the Pacific, and vast areas in the rest of the world, have suffered a second fatal impact. The first was colonization; the second, one might call coca-colonization. The first destroyed the fabric of existing cultures without providing a replacement; the second enveloped them in a plastic pseudoculture, expanding like a giant bubble gum. The first imposed itself by rape, the second by seduction. But seduction of a victim under the age of consent is considered a crime, whether the victim is a person or a culture.

If Europe also shows signs of becoming coca-colonized, it has only itself to blame—its lack of vitality and decline of self-confidence. Even so, the process here is gradual and partial, and there is a strong, healthy resistance against it. In Melanesia or Polynesia, Hawaii or the Caribbean, the impact is more brutal and appalling because there is no resistance rooted in living tradition; it is an explosion in a vacuum. Farewell, Gauguin.

The first impact wrought havoc through syphilis, booze, and the destruction of social cohesion. The second impact works through industrialization, the mass media, and the tourist trade. A fortnight before we got to Nadi, the kingdom of Tonga was gripped by oil fever. A certain George Faleafa, while digging a well, had struck black, oily stuff; within a fortnight, Mr. E. G. Wallace, executive vice president of the Republic Mineral Corporation of Texas, was on the spot to confirm the find, and the Tongan Chronicle’s headlines screamed: “Nukualofa Is Sitting On Top Of Oil For Miles—Samples Same As Texas Oil—This Is The Real McCoy!” The King of Tonga was quick to point out that the Republic Mineral Corporation of Texas was not the only one interested in doing a deal; while the Corporation expressed its intention “to probe for oil in other Pacific areas and Fiji in particular.”

There was also excitement in Samoa, where an Australian real estate tycoon announced his intention of moving in and “getting things really going”—by building more superluxe hotels. In the meantime, the Fijians themselves were busy with their eighth annual Tourist Convention, which voiced enthusiastic predictions of “further tourist explosions in the early 1970s when we expect four times as many visitors as at present. They will be traveling in parties of up to two hundred.” The chief minister, Mr. Ratu Mara, referred to tourists as “manna from the sky and sea,” and stressed the importance of ensuring that this “manna had the widest possible distribution.” He also sounded a cautious warning to the effect that the impact of the tourist industry on “what was largely a coconut cash subsistence economy was forcing the Fijians to be jacks of all trades and masters of none.”

In fact they do not become jacks of all trades—which would not be so bad—but underpaid and mostly tintrained workers of the catering industry: waiters, cleaners, “boys,” barmen, doormen. They are a magnificent race: mostly six-footers with statuesque figures, a successful crossbreed of the Polynesian conquerors and the older Melanesian stock, with the black, crinkly hair and dark skin of the latter and the sensitive, quasiEuropean features of the former, which make them look at the same time ferocious and gentle. They smile and laugh readily, perhaps all too readily, whenever they catch your eye; it has become almost a reflex. One cannot help suspecting that in a race where tribal war was chronic, the ritual laugh conveyed the same message as the outstretched hand with the open palm; see, I carry no weapon, nor evil intent.

To watch these athletic greatgrandsons of cannibals at work serving dinner to the tourist mob is quite a study. Some of them are tip-hunters and sycophants of the same type as everywhere; the others, who have preserved their dignity, are polite and withdrawn, laugh less often, and seem rather absentminded. When irritated or out of their depth—which happens frequently, as they understand only a few words of English—they have an odd way of fidgeting and doing a rhythmic tap dance with their fingers; office girls when annoyed engage in the same display on their desk. It is a shared peculiarity—we called it the Fiji fidgets—which seems to indicate a chronic malaise. But late in the evening, when Muzak yielded to a native orchestra playing a characteristic Fijian rhythm with an abrupt stop between two bars, all the waiters fell to filling the gap by hanging on bottles and glasses, bamboo screens, windows and tabletops, anything within reach. It was a joyous outburst, a spontaneous breakthrough of compulsive rhythmic motion, which seems to be always latent in their bodies, so that they fall into dance steps under any pretext—even the charlady carrying a bucket along the corridor.

This may be the reason why the South Sea Islanders have gained the reputation of being such a happy lot of carefree hedonists. In fact, rhythmic motion is simply second nature to them. Their only form of music is drumming, stamping, and beating sticks together; but that does not necessarily express a carefree disposition, as so many romantic observers thought. Rhythm may express desire in a love dance, fury in a war dance, but also frantic irritation at having to perform the crazy rituals of arranging and changing knives, forks, and napkins, emptying ashtrays nonstop, filling up glasses, and listening to incomprehensible orders relating to an incomprehensible ceremony. One particularly fidgety giant forgot the first four courses of the six-course menu, and roared with laughter once he saw that we thought it funny. Another one stood glued to my elbow, and after each sip filled up our wine glasses to spilling level. When I told him not to bother, he said very quietly, “But this is what I am paid for.” He had been a waiter for seven years, and now earned $10.80 a week, out of which he tried to save $2.40. Before becoming a waiter he had wanted to be a mechanic, but could not get on with the Indian garage owner.

This leads to the main problem of the island, which as one might guess is a problem of race. Fiji became a British Crown Colony by the Act of Cessation in 1874. Soon afterward the colonial administration began importing indentured laborers from India to work on the sugar plantations. The Indians multiplied. In 1884, there were 3000 of them, fifty years later 83,000, another thirty years later nearly a quarter of a million. They had become the majority, outnumbering the Fijians at the rate of five to four; and they have taken over the commerce, business, and transport of the island. All the shops are Indian (selling mostly duty-free cameras and transistor radios); so are the garages, taxi companies, sight-seeing tours. There is not a single Fijian in trade on the whole island. The vast majority keep to their villages (rows of neat, widely spaced houses with a framework of timber covered with lattice and bark, thatched roofs, artful lashings instead of nails, and colored prints of the British Royal Family over the bed). The only alternative is menial work and the catering industry; and most of them —including our wine waiter—plan to go back to their villages after they have saved a little money.

Needless to say, the Indians are a hardworking and industrious lot, and they are hated by the Fijians, as all hardworking and industrious strangers are who try to monopolize trade—whether Armenian, Greek, Parsi, Jew, or Chinese. There is virtually no contact between the two races, and so far only sporadic violence—the Fijian villagers are getting increasingly fond of throwing stones at passing Indian cars. There are only about ten thousand Europeans (a term which includes Australians) living on the island; the British administration does its decent, unimaginative best, relying mainly on the restraining influence of the village chieftains, whose power is still the main social factor in Fijian life. They know on which side their bread is buttered, and have a vested interest in keeping things quiet. What is going to happen when the next generation of more educated and less docile chiefs take over is yet another question mark to be pinned on the global map bristling with question marks. One answer was given by a quiet Australian engineer who lives in Fiji: “I only hope I will no longer be here at the time of the 1970 elections.”

One thing is certain: for the British to clear out and wash their hands would lead to catastrophe. The white man’s burden has come back with a vengeance (but who was responsible for shipping Negroes to the Caribbean and Indians to Fiji?). Perhaps the Australians, who have large capital investments on the island, may be persuaded to take over one day; but they show more enthusiasm for building lucrative tourist hotels on the Coral Coast “where every heart responds to gaiety and laughter” than for shouldering new responsibilities.

Thus Fiji provides another illustration of the distressing paradox of our time—that the world is rapidly moving toward a mass-produced, uniform culture, and yet at the same time both the global confrontations and the venomous local conflicts of religion, language, and race are getting not less but more acute.

Muzak on the moon

Of course there were “bright intervals” on the journey, as the weatherman is wont to say. The palms are there, swaying in the breeze, the coral reefs and the mangrove forests; and if you get up a couple of hours before the package awakes, you can even enjoy a swim. But the grim question marks are also there, as they are in every part of the world through which the tourist caravan trail passes. The majority, however, travel like registered parcels, unaware of the natives, their aspirations, problems, and tragedies. Instead of promoting mutual understanding, they promote mutual contempt. Like an ocean liner leaving a trail of pollution, they leave a trail of corruption in their wake.

Much of the responsibility lies of course with the organizers, who treat their charges like a bunch of battery-reared hens, expected to lay three golden eggs per day. But to paraphrase an old saying: tourists get the package they deserve. Perhaps a worldwide tourist strike would damp down the explosion and improve matters. Otherwise we shall soon have Muzak on the moon, with weightless spaceburgers served in neon-lit Hilton Craters—while a small voice inside your ear whispers that soul-searching question on wartime posters:

“Was your journey really necessary?"