  In this paper, which is part of a study of positive representations of
locally compact groups in Banach lattices, we initiate the theory of positive
representations of finite groups in Riesz spaces. If such a representation has
only the zero subspace and possibly the space itself as invariant principal
bands, then the space is Archimedean and finite dimensional. Various notions of
irreducibility of a positive representation are introduced and, for a finite
group acting positively in a space with sufficiently many projections, these
are shown to be equal. We describe the finite dimensional positive Archimedean
representations of a finite group and establish that, up to order equivalence,
these are order direct sums, with unique multiplicities, of the order
indecomposable positive representations naturally associated with transitive
$G$-spaces. Character theory is shown to break down for positive
representations. Induction and systems of imprimitivity are introduced in an
ordered context, where the multiplicity formulation of Frobenius reciprocity
turns out not to hold.
