Hear the word Fiji and you are likely to think of turquoise waters, lush foliage and a year-round tropical paradise. But this island nation is more than a place to which to escape. Its fascinating history includes a brief background as to how Fiji became a British Crown Colony between 1874 and 1970, which period is overlapped by the monopoly of Fiji's sugar industry by the Colonial Sugar Refining Company (CSR) of Australia between 1880 and 1973 when sugar was the mainstay of Fiji's economy.