The History of Tonga under British Protection

Tonga is the Pacific island nation that the British never quite colonised. The 1900 Treaty of Friendship gave Britain control of Tongan foreign affairs and defence, but the King of Tonga — the Tu’i Tonga and the Tui Kanokupolu — retained full internal sovereignty. The result, as the historian Helen Morton has put it, was “a Pacific anomaly: a Polynesian kingdom that was at once independent and protected, sovereign and subordinate.” The treaty relationship survived until 1970, when Tonga became a fully independent state and a member of the Commonwealth. The Tongan monarchy has continued to rule, and the country is one of the few remaining constitutional monarchies in the Pacific.

The Tongan Monarchy and George Tupou I

The Tongan monarchy, one of the oldest in the Pacific, was established in the nineteenth century. The principal figure in the unification of Tonga was Taufa’ahau, who became King George Tupou I in 1875. Born in 1797 in the Ha’apai group, he converted to Christianity in 1831 under the influence of the Methodist missionary Shirley Baker, and he used his conversion to consolidate his authority over the rival chiefs of the Tongan archipelago. By 1852 he had established a single government over the islands, and in 1875 he promulgated a constitution that established a constitutional monarchy, a parliament, and a system of land tenure that reserved all land to the Crown.

The 1875 constitution was a remarkable document. As the historian Noel Rutherford noted in Shirley Baker and the Kingdom of Tonga (1971), the constitution was “in the main, the work of one man,” and the work of one man, Taufa’ahau, was a 73-article document that has been amended several times but remains the basis of the Tongan state. The constitution established a unicameral parliament, a system of land tenure that prevented the alienation of Tongan land, and a hereditary monarchy that has been the longest-running indigenous monarchy in the Pacific.

The Treaty of Friendship of 1900

The Treaty of Friendship of 1900 established the British protected state relationship. The treaty was the result of long British concern about the security of the Pacific islands, about the German and American presence in the Pacific, and about the need to secure Tonga’s cooperation. The treaty gave Britain control of Tonga’s foreign affairs and defence, and a British consul was appointed to supervise these matters. The treaty also gave Britain the right to establish a naval station in Tonga, and the British government made a small annual payment to the Tongan Crown. The 1905 supplementary agreement established the British High Commissioner for the Western Pacific as the principal British representative in Tonga.

The treaty was, in the judgment of the historian Kerry Howe, “the most successful of the British protected state arrangements in the Pacific.” The British got a strategic outpost in the Pacific, the Tongans got protection from German and American encroachment, and the King of Tonga kept his throne. The price was the symbolic subordination of a Polynesian kingdom to a European power, and that price was paid by the Tongans, in the long run, in political quietude.

Tonga in the World Wars and the Twentieth Century

Tonga, despite its protected state status, was affected by both world wars. In the First World War, the Tongan government contributed to the war effort, although Tonga’s actual military role was limited. In the Second World War, the United States established a base in Tonga and used it as a staging post for the war in the Pacific, and the country was an important supply point for the Allied forces. The twentieth century was a period of relatively slow change in Tonga: the country remained an agricultural society based on the cultivation of yams, taro, and other root crops, and the export of copra, bananas, and other tropical produce. Queen Salote Tupou III, who reigned from 1918 to 1965, was famous for her participation in the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, when she became a popular figure in Britain for her warmth and her colourful traditional dress. As the historian Elizabeth Wood-Ellem has shown in Queen Salote of Tonga (1999), Queen Salote’s reign was the moment at which the Tongan monarchy acquired a public persona that made it, in the long run, unassailable.

The Independence of Tonga

Tonga became fully independent on 4 June 1970, joining the Commonwealth of Nations. The 1965 constitutional changes, which had been negotiated with the British government, increased the size of the legislature and reduced the role of the Crown in the daily administration of the country; the 1970 independence constitution, set out in the Tonga Independence Order of 1970, gave the country full control of its foreign affairs and defence. Tonga was admitted to the United Nations on 14 September 1999. The 2010 constitutional reforms, prompted by the 2006 pro-democracy movement, reduced the size of the Crown’s personal court and the royal family’s control of the press, but the country continues to be an absolute monarchy.

The Modern Tongan Monarchy

Tonga today remains one of the few Pacific monarchies, and it is the only Pacific island nation that was never formally colonized by a European power. King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, who reigned from 1965 to 2006, oversaw the country’s independence in 1970 and its admission to the United Nations in 1999, and he was succeeded by his son King ‘Aho’eitu ‘Unuaki’otonga Tuku’aho, who has reigned as King George Tupou V. The 2006 pro-democracy movement, which called for a more representative government, led to riots in Nuku’alofa in November 2006 and the destruction of much of the central business district; the movement was widely seen as a response to the slow pace of reform. The country is a member of the Pacific Islands Forum, of the Commonwealth of Nations, and of the Pacific Community.

Tonga in the Modern World

Tonga’s economy is heavily dependent on remittances from Tongans living abroad, particularly in New Zealand, Australia, and the United States, and on tourism, particularly from New Zealand and Australia. The 2022 Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai eruption and the resulting tsunami caused major damage in the country, particularly in the outer islands; the international response was led by Australia, New Zealand, Japan, and the United Nations. The country’s foreign policy is conducted by a non-resident High Commissioner in London, and the country maintains close relations with its Pacific neighbours.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of British Tonga was, for a long time, dominated by the older Methodist and imperial accounts — the writings of the missionary Shirley Baker and the early histories of the Pacific. The revisionist work of the last forty years, led by Noel Rutherford, Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, and the more recent writing of the contributors to The Cambridge History of the Pacific Islanders, has produced a more critical picture, in which the British period is read as a contested terrain in which the British, the missionaries, and the Tongan chiefs were all active agents. The current debate, exemplified in the recent work of Helen Morton and the contributors to The Journal of Pacific History, is over how far the Tongan monarchy should be treated as a traditional Polynesian institution and how far it should be read as the product of the British protected state arrangement.

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