The history of Tonga

Tonga is an archipelago of about 170 islands in western Polynesia, grouped around Tongatapu in the south, Haʻapai in the centre and Vavaʻu in the north. Its first settlers arrived about 2,900 years ago, and from the tenth century a line of sacred kings, the Tuʻi Tonga, built a maritime power whose influence reached across much of western Polynesia. After a long civil war, the chief Tāufaʻāhau united the islands in 1845 as King George Tupou I and gave them a constitution in 1875. Tonga was a British protected state from 1900 to 1970, but it was never colonised: it kept its own monarchy, government and land throughout, the only Pacific island kingdom to do so. Its modern history has turned on the slow move from royal to parliamentary rule.

Tongan tradition says the demigod Maui fished the islands up from the sea, and that the god Tangaloa sent down the first people. Archaeology shows that seafarers of the Lapita culture, sailing from the area of Fiji, reached Tongatapu by about 900 BCE and settled on beaches by the lagoon at Nukuleka and Pea, then spread quickly to Haʻapai, Vavaʻu and the Niuas. They lived first mainly from fish, shellfish and turtles, and within a few centuries had wiped out the islands' giant iguanas, megapode birds and most pigeons and fruit bats. Their stamped pottery became plainer and then disappeared altogether by about 400 CE.

Over the same centuries the settlers of Tonga and Samoa developed the language and culture now called Polynesian, and from this western homeland voyagers later set out, using the techniques of Pacific wayfinding, to settle the islands of eastern Polynesia. Farming of yams, taro, breadfruit and bananas, and the raising of pigs and chickens, supported a growing population of perhaps 17,000 to 25,000 on Tongatapu alone, and chiefdoms emerged to compete for land.

Royal genealogies trace the Tuʻi Tonga back 39 generations to ʻAhoʻeitu, said to be the son of the god Tangaloa and a Tongan woman, who may have reigned around 950 CE. The Tuʻi Tonga were sacred rulers, owed reverence as descendants of the gods. Their capital moved to Lapaha at Muʻa on the lagoon of Tongatapu, where the great terraced stone tombs known as langi still stand. The trilithon called the Haʻamonga ʻa Maui, whose coral limestone blocks weigh more than 40 tonnes each, is attributed to the eleventh Tuʻi Tonga, Tuʻitātui, around 1200.

From about 1200 to 1500 the Tuʻi Tonga stood at the centre of a network of power and exchange that historians often call the Tuʻi Tonga Empire, though some prefer "maritime chiefdom". Fleets of double-hulled canoes, the largest able to carry around 100 people, carried warriors, chiefs and goods between Tonga and Fiji, Samoa, ʻUvea (Wallis), Futuna, Niue and Rotuma, and Tongan influence is traced in the traditions of Tuvalu, the Polynesian outliers of Melanesia and parts of Micronesia. Each year subject chiefdoms were expected to bring the first fruits of the harvest, the ʻinasi, to Muʻa. How far this amounted to rule rather than prestige and kinship is debated. Oral histories in other islands also remember resistance: the people of Niutao in Tuvalu recall defeating several Tongan invasions, and Samoan tradition credits the founders of the Malietoa line with driving the Tongans from Samoa.

Within Tonga the sacred kingship became dangerous to hold. Several Tuʻi Tonga were assassinated, and after Takalaua was killed, his son Kauʻulufonua I pursued the murderers to ʻUvea and then created a new title, the Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua, for his brother, who took over everyday government while the Tuʻi Tonga kept spiritual authority. Around 1610 the sixth Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua created a third title, the Tuʻi Kanokupolu, for his son Ngata, whose mother was Samoan. Over the following two centuries the Tuʻi Kanokupolu, whose line drew heavily on Samoan custom and titles, became the real power in the islands. Marriages with Samoan and Fijian chiefly families bound the three island groups together.

The Dutch navigators Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire traded off Niuatoputapu and Tafahi in April 1616, and Abel Tasman of the Dutch Republic's East India Company visited Tongatapu and Haʻapai in January 1643. James Cook came in 1773, 1774 and 1777, when he watched an ʻinasi ceremony, and named the group the Friendly Islands, unaware, according to a later tradition, that chiefs in Haʻapai had considered killing him. The mutiny on the Bounty broke out in Tongan waters in 1789.

In 1799 the Tuʻi Kanokupolu Tukuʻaho was killed, and Tonga fell into a civil war that lasted half a century, in which rival chiefs fought for Tongatapu with the help of muskets and European castaways. Missionaries of the London Missionary Society landed in 1797 but fled or were killed in the fighting. Wesleyan Methodists returned from 1822, and in 1831 the young Haʻapai chief Tāufaʻāhau was baptised as George. With Methodist support he became ruler of Haʻapai and Vavaʻu, took the Tuʻi Kanokupolu title in 1845 and defeated his remaining rivals on Tongatapu by 1852. Christianity, mainly Methodism, became the faith of almost all Tongans. The last Tuʻi Tonga, Laufilitonga, died in 1865, and the old sacred title lapsed.

King George Tupou I worked to keep Tonga independent as Britain, France and Germany expanded across the Pacific. A law code of 1862 freed commoners from forced labour for chiefs. In 1875, advised by the missionary Shirley Baker, he granted a constitution that created a parliament, guaranteed freedom of the press, and set up a hereditary nobility with estates, while declaring that land could never be sold to foreigners. Every Tongan man was entitled to a plot for his household. Treaties with Germany in 1876 and Britain in 1879 won recognition of Tongan sovereignty. Baker, who became premier, was deported by the British in 1890 after a period of autocratic rule and persecution of Tongans who refused to join the king's new Free Church. George Tupou I died in 1893, aged about 96.

Under his great-grandson George Tupou II, debts and rivalries among chiefs and settlers gave Britain an opening, and on 18 May 1900 he signed a treaty of friendship that made Tonga a protected state of the British Empire. Britain controlled Tonga's foreign affairs, and from 1905 a British consul had a strong voice in government, but the monarchy, the courts, parliament and the land system remained Tongan. New Zealand's wish to annex Tonga was turned down. The 1918 influenza pandemic killed about 1,800 Tongans, around eight per cent of the population.

Queen Sālote Tupou III, who reigned from 1918 to 1965, became the most beloved figure in modern Tongan history. She reconciled rival Methodist churches, encouraged education and health care, recorded Tongan history and poetry, and won worldwide affection at Queen Elizabeth II's coronation in London in 1953. In the Second World War Tonga declared war on Germany and Japan, raised a defence force trained by New Zealand, and hosted thousands of American and New Zealand troops. Before her death Sālote arranged the end of protected status, which came on 4 June 1970 under her son, King Tāufaʻāhau Tupou IV.

Tupou IV, who reigned until 2006, opened Tonga to the wider world, and large Tongan communities grew in New Zealand, Australia and the United States, whose remittances became vital to the economy. But power stayed with the king and nobles: most members of parliament were appointed by the king or chosen by the small hereditary nobility. A democracy movement led by the commoner MP ʻAkilisi Pōhiva gained ground from the 1980s. On 16 November 2006, after parliament adjourned without passing reforms, riots in Nukuʻalofa burned much of the business district and killed eight people.

King George Tupou V agreed in 2008 to give up most of his powers, and from 2010 the people elected 17 members of parliament and the nobles nine, giving commoners' representatives a majority. Pōhiva became prime minister in 2014 and served until his death in 2019. Tupou V died in 2012 and was succeeded by his brother, Tupou VI. On 15 January 2022 the undersea volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai produced the largest atmospheric explosion ever recorded by modern instruments; its tsunami struck Tongatapu and outlying islands and killed four people in Tonga. After the election of 20 November 2025 parliament chose the speaker, Lord Fakafānua, a noble and relative of the king, as prime minister on 15 December 2025, a result some pro-democracy campaigners saw as a setback for reform.