The alleged imperialism of George Tupou I

Abstract

that power expands to its natural limits. Kings, politicians and capitalists are all presumed to obey this supposed law of history so that the limits of any man's success are those established by the counter-expansionism of others. So it is in the case of George Tupou I, king of Tonga from 1845 to 1893. From a small, disputed inheritance in the Ha'apai group in 1820, his ambition to reunite Tonga after its civil wars which had begun in the 1780s led him first to the conquest of Ha'apai in 1826; he secured the inheritance of Vava'u in 1833, and the inheritance of the Tu'i Kanokupolu title which nominally gave him Tonga tapu in 1845, and thus made himself king of all Tonga. Even before becoming king, it is thought, he was looking beyond the Tongan group, and to this end sent his agents in the guise of Christian missionaries to the neighbouring island groups. In 1835 a party of Tongans went to Uvea to evangelise but their other activity provoked their own massacre. Later, when the Wesleyan Missionary Society withdrew its agents from Samoa, Tongan teachers were sent there, and from the mid-1830s onwards Tongan mission teachers worked in Fiji, where George's cousin, Ma'afu, later built on their influence to gain political advan tage. For a period of nearly 50 years, therefore (from the early 1820s to 1869), King George can be said to have been working towards an extension of his territory, and for over 30 years (from the mid-1830s to the late 1860s) to have been expanding beyond Tonga's logical geographical boundaries. Allegations to this effect were made by George's contemporaries, and are echoed in recent his toriography, although the evidence is often no better than innuendo from sources which inspire little trust. It is significant, however, piat whereas his torians of Samoa and Fiji impute imperialist plans to the Tongan king, historians of Tonga scarcely mention them, and portray a king who was burdened with the worries of internal disunity and preoccupied with staving off imperialist designs from outside ? in particular, from the French. The only substantial evidence for George's imperialism is his planned invasion of Fiji in 1862, and even in that case things might not be quite what they appear. There is in fact very little foundation for the allegations of imperialism. The first possible case of imperialism was the adventure on Uvea in 1835. This affair began when Ngongo, the chief of Niuatoputapu, who had been only recently converted to Christianity, was visited by the Rev. Peter Turner on his way to take up his appointment in Samoa. Shortly afterwards, Ngongo took a