State Formation, Development, and Social Change in Tonga

Abstract

This chapter attempts to analyze the social, political, and economic changes in the Tongan Islands without assuming an inherent progress in what Darcy Ribeiro calls the ‘civilization process’. The view presented in the chapter of Tongan social and political dynamics before and after contact focuses on changes in the content – and sometimes the form – of social strata, land tenure, gender roles, and the relations of production and societal reproduction (not simply demographic replacement). The state represented a tense coalition of royalty and a landed nobility that did not include all the traditionally high-ranking kindred. Crosscutting the ranked orders was a new class structure, which gave the royal retinue and landed gentry unprecedented economic and political power. In the twentieth century capitalist development in Tonga has had decidedly uneven effects. Subsistence production remains a significant sphere and the ‘archaic’, tribute-based land tenure situation can be held responsible for the virtual absence of chronic malnutrition in the Islands.