Tonga and the British Empire in the Great War: Loyalty and Neutrality

Abstract

ABSTRACT The historiography of Tonga in the First World War is very sparse. It is dominated by Elizabeth Wood-Ellem’s authoritative biography of Queen Salote (Tupou III). She does not make use of the Colonial Office files stored in the British National Archives and underestimates the threat that the War posed to Tonga’s autonomy in its association with the British Empire. The Tongan government under King Tupou II and Prime Minister Tu‘ivakano felt threatened not by Germany but by Great Britain and by New Zealand. They warmly endorsed British war aims because they could identify them with the defence of small, vulnerable nations such as Belgium and Tonga. They hoped to hold London to that principle. While ostentatiously supporting the war effort, they took no measures against the large German commercial community. Tonga had, legally, to be considered neutral. London required a change in this policy in 1916. At the same time a new, inexperienced, and zealous acting consul, G.B.W. Smith-Rewse, manufactured a political crisis to force the dismissal of Tu‘ivakano and the disempowerment of the king. Wood-Ellem largely ignores this crisis, and it is now almost completely forgotten. Smith-Rewse mishandled it and was not backed by his more cautious superiors. In 1917 a substantive consul, Islay McOwan, took over and restored the close co-operation with the king, which he had established on a previous posting to Tonga. Tu‘ivakano remained prime minister, but strengthened his anti-German rhetoric, which he could now link with the statements of American as well as British aims in January 1918. The new policy survived the unexpected death of Tupou II and the succession of his totally inexperienced teenaged daughter in April 1918. This article will try to show how Tongan autonomy was strengthened by the war and how Tonga was one of the few states to profit from the ‘Wilsonian moment’.