Tuʻi Tonga Empire

The Tuʻi Tonga were the sacred kings of Tonga, a line that Tongan tradition traces back to around the tenth century and that ruled from the island of Tongatapu. "Tuʻi Tonga Empire" is a modern label for the wide reach of their influence across western Polynesia. How far that reach amounted to rule is debated: some scholars prefer to speak of a maritime chiefdom or a network of voyaging chiefs, while others accept "empire" as a convenient term.

Tongatapu was among the first islands in Polynesia to be settled, by people of the Lapita culture roughly 3,000 years ago. The centuries from about 400 to 1200 CE are poorly known because archaeological evidence is thin. What does seem clear is that Tongatapu's population grew, to somewhere between 17,000 and 25,000 by one estimate, and that rival chiefdoms emerged as competition for land increased.

According to Tongan and Samoan oral tradition, the first Tuʻi Tonga, ʻAhoʻeitu, was the son of the god Tangaloa, and the Manuʻa islands of Samoa were regarded as sacred ground by the early kings. Dates for him are traditional rather than documented: around 900 or 950 CE are both given. Lists of later kings were collected from the last titleholder and his family in the nineteenth century, and the two surviving versions disagree, with 39 and 48 names.

Tradition places the greatest expansion under the tenth and eleventh kings, Momo and Tuʻitātui, dated by tradition and by historians to somewhere around 1100 to 1200; one survey of Tongan history argues that the maritime power described in oral tradition began only after about 1200. Tuʻitātui is credited with building the Haʻamonga ʻa Maui, a trilithon of three coral limestone slabs over five metres high near the royal compound at Heketā. The royal seat later moved to Lapaha at Muʻa, beside the lagoon, and terraced stone tombs called langi mark the graves of former kings. Tributary chiefs were said to bring gifts each year to the ʻinasi harvest ceremony, which James Cook witnessed in 1777.

Archaeology, anthropology and linguistics show strong Tongan cultural influence in ʻUvea (Wallis), Futuna, Rotuma, Samoa and Niue, and traces further afield. Contact did not always mean submission: oral histories from Niutao in Tuvalu recall Tongan attacks in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries that were all beaten off, and ʻUvea and Futuna absorbed Tongan influence to differing degrees.

In the thirteenth or fourteenth century, under Talakaifaiki, Tongan overlordship in Samoa ended after a defeat by brothers remembered as ancestors of the Malietoa family. Several later kings were assassinated, among them Takalaua, killed while bathing, in the fifteenth or sixteenth century depending on the source. His son Kauʻulufonua I handed day-to-day government to a new line, the Tuʻi Haʻatakalaua, and the Tuʻi Tonga became chiefly a sacred figure. A third title, the Tuʻi Kanokupolu, was created around 1610 for Ngata, whose mother was Samoan, and over time it became the dominant political office.

European visitors arrived from 1616, and Cook's voyages of the 1770s described the Tuʻi Tonga's high ceremonial rank. After decades of civil war, Tāufaʻāhau, holder of the Tuʻi Kanokupolu title, united the islands in 1845 as King George Tupou I. The last Tuʻi Tonga, Laufilitonga, died in 1865, and the title was abolished in 1875.

Our maps from 500 to 1815 show the same outline for the Tuʻi Tonga Empire in every year, taking in Tonga, Samoa, ʻUvea, Futuna, Niue and part of Fiji. This is a generous reconstruction: the 500 map predates the traditional founding of the line, and by 1815 the Tuʻi Tonga no longer held political power, while the extent of rule beyond Tonga at any date is uncertain.