In several **South Pacific societies encountered by European explorers**, sexual relationships could be considerably less restricted than European Christian norms. This sometimes included practices that Europeans described as prostitution, sexual hospitality, or the exchange of sex for goods/status.

A few examples:

* **Tahiti / Society Islands:** European voyagers in the late 18th century described women having sexual relationships with visiting sailors in exchange for goods. However, historians caution that these encounters occurred within existing Tahitian systems of exchange, status, and sexuality rather than necessarily representing a profession equivalent to European prostitution.

* **Hawaiʻi:** Sexual relationships outside European-style marriage norms could be relatively flexible, and high-ranking women could exercise substantial sexual autonomy. Again, European observers often interpreted unfamiliar practices through their own categories.

* **Marquesas:** European accounts described comparatively permissive premarital sexuality and sexual relationships between islanders and visitors.

* **Tonga and Fiji:** There were also systems of sexual relationships and exchanges involving status and hospitality, although the details varied substantially by community and period.

One particularly famous phenomenon was **“sexual hospitality.”** In some Pacific societies, offering a visitor a sexual partner could be incorporated into hospitality or reciprocal obligations. European sailors sometimes interpreted this as straightforward prostitution, while anthropologists have emphasized that **sex, kinship, hospitality, political relationships, and material exchange were intertwined**.

There is also an important gender distinction: this doesn't necessarily mean Pacific women were uniformly “liberated.” Some societies had **strict hierarchies governing who could have sex with whom**, and sexual privileges could depend heavily on rank, marriage, age, or chiefly status.

### Why the European accounts need caution

A lot of the original evidence comes from **European sailors and missionaries**, particularly people such as James Cook's expedition members. They frequently described Pacific women using terms like *prostitute* because that was the closest European category available to them.

And there was a powerful incentive for sailors to emphasize sexual availability: it made for sensational travel writing.

So the more defensible historical claim is:

> **Some precolonial Polynesian and Melanesian societies had sexual norms that were substantially more permissive than contemporary European Christian norms, and in some contexts women exchanged sexual access for material goods or participated in forms of sexual hospitality.**

That's different from saying **“South Pacific women traditionally practiced prostitution.”**

If you're thinking of a **specific country/island**—Tahiti, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, Hawaiʻi, etc.—I can dig into the historical evidence for that particular society, including **what European observers actually recorded versus what modern historians think was really happening**.

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5895996&forum_id=2.#50085480)