313 Anolani St.
Honolulu, Hawaii
January 8, 1969
Tonga, Polynesia’s last kingdom, begins with lovely circles in the sea. Some are simple coral reefs, mostly washed by milk-green tides and foaming surf with sandy islands in the golden-necklace pattern of South Pacific atolls. Others are high islands, forested volcano tops like weathered jade rimmed with sand and reef. In cold statistics, there are some 150 islands (only 36 inhabited) in three main groups running 200 miles north-south almost down to the Tropic of Capricorn.
You see relatively few of these islands on the 500-mile flight southwest from Samoa. Unseen far off towards Melanesian Fiji, for example, is volcanic Niuafoou, nicknamed “Tin Can Island” because mail for passing tourist ships has been sealed in biscuit tins and carried out through the surf. Nor, as you look down on the endless blue swells, is it apparent that this pattern of low atoll and high island rests near the west rim of one of the Pacific’s greatest depths, the Tongs Trench.
What you do get is a review of the geography and history of this archipelago that the British explorer Captain James Cook termed “The Friendly Islands.” Cook didn’t know that a dissident group of chiefs had plotted to kill him, or that Tongans were fierce and feared warriors in the Central Pacific. Still his euphoric description emerges as basically correct. Tonga is charming and beautiful, even though trouble may lie below the happy surface.
As you fly down from Samoa there is first mountainous Vavau and its associated islands. Vavau itself curls in a rough U-shape around one of the world’s most spectacular harbors, a sound lined with islands and sheer walls winding some seven miles to the little port of Neiafu. High atop the volcanic slopes behind is a new airfield built to make Vavau an accessible tourist attraction. The group is also famous for its caves, including one natural cathedral of great beauty entered only underwater. It was first described by Will Mariner; the teenage British seaman-clerk who early last century spent four years in friendly captivity after Tongans had massacred the rest of his ship’s crew.
Next is the Haapai group, the midpoint, mostly coral islands and lagoons of breathtaking greens and blues, but also including Kao, the highest island in Tonga. It was near Kao and nearby Tofua that the mutiny aboard the HMS Bounty took place in 1789. Captain William Bligh and 18 loyal crewmen landed on Tofua after the mutiny for food and water before starting on their long open-boat voyage westward to Portuguese Timor.
Haapai also has political importance. Like many Pacific island areas, Tonga was a series of feuding chiefdoms until it was united by conquest by Chief Taufa’ahau of Haapai. Emerging as King George Topou I in 1845, he brought parliamentary constitutional government after the British model, an end of serfdom, and fostered the spread of Christianity. He was the great-great-great grandfather of the present king.
Tongatapu (“Sacred Garden”) is the name of the third group and of the capital island, which is a low sprawling coral formation that covers about one-third of Tonga’s total land area and holds well over half the nation’s 80,000 population. Before landing on the opposite side of the island, the plane circles the capital Nuku’alofa, a town of some 17,500. On the waterfront cement causeways run far out across the shallow fringing reef to piers on deep blue water, Behind the sea wall and towering Norfolk pines is the royal palace and chapel, Victorian gingerbread buildings of white-painted wood and russet cupola and roofs. The tropical town of dusty streets, big trees, and weathered houses spreads off on three sides.
Tonga’s Royal Palace
This Tonga today poses its contrasts:
It is in many ways truly a kingdom bypassed by the 20th Century, content to live more with past ways rather than with hard thoughts of the future. “I guess we are lackadaisical about tourism development,” says one of the most talented government officials. He adds with a smile almost of pride: “But you know we are lackadaisical about everything.”
Yet with the discovery late in 1968 of oil deposits of uncertain potential in the Tongatapu group, the king and others talked of their little country as “The Kuwait of the Pacific.” Among the many implications is a potential strategic importance for these isolated islands.
And there are other contrasts: Tonga is a land where commoners still freely sink to the ground and bow to nobles. But there is discontent, too. One European resident says, “If you want, you can even find people who talk revolution, although I don’t know how much they mean it.” In some ways, this little land seems like the end of the world. Yet because the International Dateline was jogged eastward for Tonga’s convenience, it can call itself the place “where time begins.” But one is hardly back to nature in a place where the Rotary Club meets every Friday.
A Bit of History
If Tonga has been relatively isolated from the tides of change in the Pacific, it has not been a hermit kingdom at any point of its history. War parties spread Tongan power and influence from Fiji to Samoa in the years before missionaries established themselves in the early 1800s. (Today the Wesleyan Methodist Church is the state church of Tonga and most of the nation’s people are devout Christians.)
Nor was Tonga immune from the maneuverings of the big powers in the Pacific last century. But fortunately because of its isolation, its relative lack of resources, and the general turn-of-the-century political settlements, Tonga escaped outright colonization and preserved much of its independence. Under a treaty with Great Britain in 1900, it emerged as a protected state, autonomous, but with British advisers playing key and sometimes forceful advisory roles in government and England handling foreign affairs. Last year the old treaty of friendship was revised to lessen British influence. Soon Tonga will join the British Commonwealth and the United Nations as well as post its own ambassadors in some foreign countries.
Tonga’s monarchs have brought the nation a measure of international attention in recent years. Salote Topou II, the smiling, statuesque queen who ruled for 47 years before her death in 1965, was a benevolent, protective figure, who distinguished herself by riding bareheaded in the chill rain through London at the 1953 coronation of Queen Elizabeth. Her son, crowned last year as King Taufa’ahau Topou IV, traveled widely in the years he was premier. In December he passed through the United States en route to England for his son’s graduation from the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst. No mere constitutional monarch, the king today remains the most important figure in the nation.
Tonga’s king presides over a political-cultural system that is a mixture of feudal holdover and British parliamentary practice. Unlike in Samoa where the matai or chiefs are elected b family members, noble titles (and the land that goes with them) are hereditary in Tonga. It is, in short, less democratic.
Here, also, the extended family is the most important cultural unit in the average man’s life. Villages are not as attractively neat, clean, and park-like as those in Samoa where matais exercise control, but they remain culturally important. At the same time, there is a meaningful shift from the old ways. There is said to be a trend towards westernized ideas of the smaller, close-knit family. But, as in the West, there is also a breakdown of the old discipline that families provided. One result is more urban crime. A well-educated Tongan official said of such social change: “I would say acculturation is faster here than in most other island areas.”
That may or may not be so in some social matters, but change is far less fluid in the political arena. It is progress that officers who used to be appointed by the premier are now elected by the people. Still real power centers around the king, the nobility, and the cabinet headed by the premier, Prince Tu’ipelehake, brother of the king.
Parliament consists of seven nobles elected from among the thirty-three hereditary titles, seven commoners elected by adult franchise, the cabinet, and the appointed governors of Haapai and Vavau. There is one house and no parties. Most important ideas come from the Privy Council (king, cabinet, and governors), which also legislates, between the annual two-three month sessions of parliament. Says one respected Tongan of this situation:
“It’s like England a couple hundred years ago. The commoners have some rights and representation. In parliament they tend to join together. But the initiative and power is still with the elite. It may be getting outdated, but because the system is over ninety years old there is resistance to change.”
On the other side of the scale, there is growing resentment over the power and privilege of the nobility in some quarters, notably from some educated young commoners. Obviously not too many feel as strongly as the concerned young man who sought me out and said, among other things: “The nobles and royalty treat us like dogs sometimes…. There has to be change. If there isn’t, I am afraid there will be trouble in five or ten years.”
Most Tongans, especially in rural regions, retain deep respect for the hereditary elite. Some of the most talented commoners recognize the stabilizing value of tradition in periods of change. But indications are a growing number feel adjustments in the system must be made in the face of changing political attitudes and growing economic pressures.
Whether the nobility can respond to such a need is one of the key questions in Tonga today. And it is not as simple as waiting for a group of old men to be replaced by their enlightened sons. Says one informed political observer: “The average age of the nobles is 38 to 40. Some are not educated, and there are very few respected elders. “Early change is not automatic.”
Nuku’alofa on a busy morning
The Royal Role
Tonga’s delicate political situation gives special importance to King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV, a man of large size, wide interests, and considerable talent.
This is no ordinary ceremonial monarch, but a man who, while understanding the modern world, operates with much the style and power of last-century royalty.
The king’s importance can be measured several ways. One is in the words of a commoner active in politics: “The king has more power than it might seem because he is both educated and experienced as the former premier. That’s why he has so much control. He’s too clever.”
On another level there is this point from a European: “The king is in a special position. The nobles need him because he is head of the established system; so he can make them move. On the other hand, while many commoners may distrust or dislike the nobles, they respect the king and accept the concept of a royal sovereign.”
As a result, a common point made about Tonga today is that this king must be the architect of new adjustments between nobility and commoners. If he fails, the thinking goes, there is nobody in sight to prevent turmoil.
I saw the king on three occasions during my visit to Tonga — at a long private interview at the palace, at an elaborate state ceremony that lasted several days, and on a dawn scientific trip that turned into something of a feast.
Before the interview, I was ferried to the palace grounds in an old London taxi of 1930ish vintage that was once the official car of Queen Salote. The king now has a Cadillac and other modern vehicles, but such was the love for the late queen that older Tongans still sometimes turn and bow to the little black taxi. It is that kind of a country.
The palace itself is not expensively elaborate by the standards, say, of various Asian potentates and presidents. But it has an atmosphere. Behind the white clapboard and roccoco trimmings of the 1860s are cool quiet rooms with Polynesian-Victorian mementos, rich comfortable furniture, oiled wood, and fine Tongan mats for rugs. Norfolk pines shade lawn and garden and frame the view out across the sea to far-off atolls. On the sunny day I visited, a group of laughing women worked on one lawn dyeing a brown pattern into a piece of tapa cloth the size of a large room.
The king is a huge man — 6 feet 2 inches and perhaps 350 pounds. The sheer size of the man is impressive as he comes quickly into the reception room wearing what looks like a soft tan Tongan version of a Nehru shirt with matching lava lava, and around his waist an especially old, frayed, and valued ta’ovala, the finely woven pandanus leaf mat that serves as part of most Tongan costumes. If the royal appearance tends to be awesome as he fills much of a large couch, the visitor is both relaxed and engaged. There is quiet, serious talk broken at times by rich laughter when the king jokes about suck things as his catching the errors editors have missed when he proof reads the weekly editions of Tonga’s only paper.
The 50-Year-old king has been called a “Renaissance Man” by some writers, and there is no doubt he has pursued a variety of interests from scuba diving and surfing in younger days to agriculture, economics, and history. Parts of our talk, for example, ranged from copra production to how the king instructed U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in the use of the abacus for teaching math in Tongan schools.
King Taufa’ahau Tupou IV
But we also talked about politics. The king pointed out that nobles were elected before the first king established British-type constitutional government and hereditary titles in 1875. He said the change had done away with the involved intrigue in seeking titles.
Tonga now, he said, is “seeking to combine the best of hereditary stability and continuity with an elected system to take advantage of all people with ability and leadership qualities.”
I asked about reports of resentment over the nobility by some commoners but got the impression the king did not consider it a priority problem in itself. At one point he said: “The succession of titles isn’t divisive, and in any case we have a substratum of officials and they do the hard work.”
The king’s response leads one to reflect back on the view of several persons. They say that although the king has informants, there is some question of his sensitivity concerning dissident commoner feelings. On the other hand, one might also question whether a sophisticated national leader of any kind would want to share his innermost concerns on the first meeting with a visiting newsman. The answer is inconclusive but important.
Dancing and a Dawn Feast
I saw the king next as he took part in programs commemorating the 100th anniversary of secondary education, which marked the fact, that Tonga was the first of the South Pacific islands to establish it. Tupou College, Tonga’s first secondary school was founded in the late 1860s by King George Tupou I and the Wesleyan Mission.
The celebration underscored the role of religion in Tongan life. One of its high points was a rendition of Handel’s “Messiah” in the Free Wesleyan Church cathedral, which was decorated as if for Christmas with red stars, green paper, and fragrant vines. While the king sat elevated and alone in the royal pews, hundreds of his white-clad people took turns singing in groups or solo. The queen, a dignified, strong-looking woman, played the organ and sang one solo. The royal brass band played portions of the score. For the climax, choirs from various parts of the islands — some 2,000 voices sounding like a great organ in the tropical night — joined in a thunderous Hallelujah Chorus.
The king also presided over a great feast as part of the celebration. Incredible amounts of food were spread out under thatched dining pavilions. There were dozens of woven eight-foot trays, each overflowing with several tiny suckling pigs (golden roasted and smiling), lobsters, chickens, corned beef, giant yams, taro pieces as big as thighs, coconut pudding, bananas, watermelon, and salad.
Dancing at Secondary Education Celebration
Beforehand, guests had tea and cakes in fine British tradition and watched a two-hour program of often wild Tongan dancing. Hundreds from villages around Tongatapu took part in the panorama of colorful costume, violent drumming, and spirited shouting. It was a scene of ferocious grace. While the king’s matapule, or talking chiefs, sat on the ground shouting instructions and encouragement to the dancers for him, the monarch himself sat behind on a shaded platform decorated with fine mats and rich tapa. There, with charm and sophistication, almost as if in another world, he chatted with the European men in dark suits and their ladies in frilly British dresses and hats who were his guests.
Another view of the king in public was offered at dawn on my last day in Tonga. It was the first day of winter in the Southern hemisphere, and several of us traveled to a far corner of Tongatapu to watch the king verify one of his scientific-historical findings. There by a quiet village and coconut grove is a sort of South Sea Stonehenge called the “Ha’amonga.”’ This 20-foot high trilithon of three huge coral slabs was erected over 700 years ago. It had served as a ceremonial arch, but in 1967 the king had deciphered the pattern of lines etched on the top of the central slab. He theorized that ancient Tongans had used it to determine when the sun rose at the beginning of various seasons.
We waited in the pre-dawn darkness for the king who arrived in a black station wagon with a motorcycle escort. As the time of sunrise approached, the king, wearing sport shirt, lava lava, and brown boots, marched vigorously to the arch, climbed a wooden stairway constructed for the occasion and peered into the transit set by the royal surveyor along the sight line through the trees to the ocean horizon.
The Ha’amonga
Unfortunately, the sun rose unseen behind clouds. So we all waited, swatting mosquitoes in the dim light and talking to the king when he spoke down to us. Finally after 15 minutes the orange sun shot a ray through a hole in the clouds. There was applause for the sun as the king made his sighting.
“Does this confirm your theory then, Sir?” I asked up to the king.
“Certainly, There was never any doubt,” he answered with some majesty. When he descended, the king added with pride:
“While this is simpler, it is only here and at Stonehenge that we have such a structure.”
The king then moved across the road to a tapa cloth pavilion constructed in a schoolyard to receive villagers. They came bearing two huge woven baskets of food much like those used for servings at the royal feast in Nuku’alofa. The half dozen of us European guests were about to leave when a messenger brought word that, “The king would like you to share one basket of his food.”
The king himself was not eating, busy talking to villagers and a young American Peace Corps teacher. So we sat on an old school porch at 7:30 a.m. faced with a table overflowing with little roast pigs, chickens, lobsters, fish, yams, taro, bananas, coconut pudding, and drinking coconuts. Village women cut bite-size pieces for us. Not everyone felt up to such a banquet in the cool coffeeless morning, but by South Sea standards it was delicious. As we left with the sun just coming over the coconut trees, the villagers were starting to mix kava, the stimulating ceremonial drink made from water and the grated root of the pepper plant. It seemed unlikely muck work would get done in the village that important day.
Economics and Oil
Just what major oil deposits would mean to this Tongan scene is uncertain; the potential commercial value of the findings of September and October is still to be determined. There will be some speculation on the impact later in this article.
Economically (as well as politically) Tonga needs something. A traditional South Pacific copra-banana economy served well enough in the past. Tongans still have enough to eat, and there is hardly an air of crisis in the kingdom. Yet concerned officials and economic experts point to a combination of population explosion, unemployment problem, and land situation that poses real danger signals.
In islands with limited land area and (any oil aside) limited economic potential, Tonga’s population has been increasing at a reported 3.8 per cent a year to some 80,000 today. That means more than 300 Tongans per square mile, a very high figure by Pacific island standards. For Tongatapu the figure is more than 480 persons per square mile.
Some 60 per cent of Tonga’s population is under 21. The average age is 17, which means a high percentage of youths coming into the job market. There are only government and private industry jobs for a fraction of those coming out of school every year. “We don’t have good figures,” said one official, “but unemployment is bad and underemployment is terrific.”
Tonga’s land situation is both unique and complicated. All land is the property of the crown. Large tracts are assigned to the hereditary nobles. But last century, King George instituted a system where every man at age 16 is entitled to a rural farm allotment of 8 1/4 acres and a house site in town. Much of this land comes from the estate of the nobles.
Today only one third of the eligible males have their allotted land, A variety of sometimes conflicting reasons are given why the system has not worked: Much of the still available land is in remote regions, including the far-off islands of the Haapai and Vavau groups. Most men understandably want their land on populous, crowded Tongatapu or near the towns. Nobles have sometimes been slow and selfish, controlling and using the system to their advantage. Men are sometimes lazy, often not using the land they have. A number turn down plots; waiting to take over land their fathers have developed.
Whatever the facts, there is a political importance in the land situation. A top government official put it this way: “It is not just land but the fact that it is tied up with all sorts of expectations and rights. To know you are entitled to something and not to get it means frustration. It is a handy tag, and people bent on unrest are using it.”
There are also questions whether this system of large but dwindling noble estates and small plots lends itself to Tonga’s economic development needs. Said one man who has looked closely at this situation. “What’s needed is another kind of land reform, but you don’t find many people thinking about that because it goes right into the old system. “
There are people talking about economic development, of course. Tonga is in the midst of what seems a solidly modest five-year development plan. It includes replanting in the copra industry, a major new Nuku’alofa wharf, which has been completed, improvements in agriculture for home food consumption and banana exports, as well as various social service needs, among them a big new hospital and necessary schools.
But, at least in the pre-oil days in 1968, the king and everyone else were looking toward tourism as the major economic development hope. Tonga, by its own wishes, has been pretty much out of the Pacific tourism boom. It has a good government-owned hotel, The Dateline, on the Nuku’alofa waterfront with fifty rooms. In 1967, even with the flood of people for the king’s coronation, there were only 2,000 overnight-or-longer visitors for an occupancy rate of about seven per cent. Visiting cruise ships brought some 8,500 more tourists for stops of several hours. In 1968 the hotel occupancy was expected to hit at least twenty five per cent, hardly a crush but gaining fast.
Additionally, the number of cruise ships more than doubled, bringing the total to fourteen.
Moreover, Tongan officials were making plans. The king was talking about the need to move quickly on turning the present 5,000-foot grass airstrip into a 10,000-foot paved runway capable of receiving intercontinental jets from Hawaii and Australia. Other officials were more modest, but all talked of the need to at least pave the present strip to put Tonga into the twinjet age for flights from Fiji and Samoa. Plans were approved at midyear to add 30 rooms and a new beach to The Dateline, with more rooms to follow. Officials talk of hotel sites on rural Tongatapu and other island groups. Unfortunately, plans for a promising resort on Vavau were set back because wind currents make the recently completed airstrip built high on a plateau between two cliffs unusable. A British adviser picked the site; but with characteristic good humor Tongans seemed to shrug off the problem and to accept the idea of at least a year’s delay while a new strip is built.
New Directions or Last King?
This planning is not being done with unthinking acceptance of tourism. Key officials recognize both the economic and other advantages. The king said, “Tourist facilities can mean more seminars, conventions, and people coming to see us. If you don’t have suck facilities, ideas for development won’t come either.”
But there are those with strong doubts about the impact of tourism. An extreme view came from a commoner member of the legislature: “If much tourism comes here, we will become like Hawaii, where there are no more Hawaiians. There will be no more Tongans. I have been to Hawaii and have seen how it is spoiled.”
A top official put it in more moderate perspective: “Tourism is something we have to do economically. Yet we are always apprehensive about it. We hope it can be developed in a way and at a pace Tonga dictates. The only way we think this can be done is through the rate we introduce hotels.”
How oil fits in the equation of Tonga’s future is, again, the big question. A major new income would ease the financial strain on the government. Wisely used, it could help bridge some of the growing social tensions. For even if happiness can’t be bought, money can open some roads in that direction.
On the other side, easy money from oil can raise problems. If, for example, it were used to perpetuate the inequities in the nobility-commoner situation, the potential timetable for trouble in Tonga would be advanced.
Even with the best of intentions there is the fact that Tonga is already in social and early-political transition. Any new economic development — oil, tourism, etc. — plus education and the certainty of increasing contacts in the Pacific world — all will hasten general change.
The idea that the king is a key figure comes up again here. It may well be an oversimplification, for there may be others who will emerge as more important in the next five or ten years. Still, right now, this massive man with the background, education, and respect he holds, is very much in the middle of a delicate situation. He could like his forbearer, King George, set his islands on a new and needed direction. Or, sadly, he could be the last king of Polynesia.
Received in New York January 13, 1969.
Mr. John Griffin is an Alicia Patterson Fund award winner on leave from the Honolulu Advertiser, Honolulu, Hawaii. This article may be published with credit to Mr. Griffin, the Honolulu Advertiser, and the Alicia Patterson Fund.
