Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate
2 Franklyne Road , Otara  

Tonga’s Emancipation Day Celebration
Friday 11 June, 2004 

“Emancipation in Tonga: Yesterday and Today”

 by

 ‘Okusitino Mâhina, PhD
Anthropology
The University of Auckland

Malo e laumâlie ‘a hou’eiki ; si’oto ‘ofa, kia ora and greetings to you all. Principals, teachers and students, parents, ladies and gentlemen. I am greatly honoured for the invitation to take part in the celebration of Tonga’s Emancipation Day, which took place on the 4 th of June, 1862, and, more importantly for me personally, to give the keynote address, marking this extremely important chapter in the history of Tonga. For that matter, I must thank the principals and members of the combined Faculties of Sir Edmund Hillary Collegiate, particularly Mr Silioni Unu and the Tongan teachers and students, as well as the Tongan parents and the wider Tongan community in Otara. I have been asked to speak on the topic “Emancipation in Tonga: Yesterday and Today”. This is a rather huge topic, in terms of both its breadth and depth. However, I will have to narrow it down to a few issues of some general and specific significance.

Let me begin with a short resume of the history of Tonga. Tonga consists of more than 150 islands, thirty-six of which are inhabited. According to both archaeology and linguistics, Tonga was first settled some 4,000 years ago by the so-called Lapita people, who were ancestral to all of Polynesia, and originally came from Southeast Asia. This place of origin of the Polynesians has been extended as far as Taiwan and mainland China. According to oral history, Tonga is said to be the first to have been settled, then Samoa from where the rest of Polynesia were peopled, commencing with the Cooks, Mangarewa and the Society Islands in central Polynesia, followed by Hawai’i in the north, Rapanui Easter Island in the east and Aotearoa New Zealand in the north, the last to have been inhabited some 1,000 years ago. Their points of entry into Tonga were Vanuatu and mainly Fiji.

Over time and space, Tongan society became more settled, shaped strictly by both internal pressure and external influences. The external influences came in the form of imperial activities beginning with the Tu’i Pulotu empire in Fiji and followed by the Tu’i Manu’a empire in Samoa. In other words, Tonga was under considerable influence from the imperialism of both Fiji and Samoa. However, Tonga was able to free herself through bitter and bloody wars from the imperial domination of the Tu’i Manu’a -- which eventually led to the formation of the Tu’i Tonga empire around AD 950 in the person of ‘Aho’eitu, the first Tu’i Tonga -- whose father was a deified Samoan high chief, Tangaloa ‘Eitumâtupu’a, and mother a Tongan woman, Va’epopua, of great noble birth. This double origin entitled the Tu’i Tonga to hold both divine and secular offices. In principle, the close cultural and historical interlinkages between Fiji, Samoa and Tonga were essentially elitist, involving the intermarriage between regional aristocratic families.

However, the rise and fall of these regional empires took place well before the contact with Europe. In the case of Tonga, for example, the Tu’i Tonga empire existed before, during and after the European contact. It was not until the 10 th Tu’i Tonga, Momo, and his son, Tu’itâtui, the 11 th Tu’i Tonga, around AD 1200 that the Tu’i Tonga empire was extended beyond Tonga to include all of Fiji and some parts of Samoa. Subsequent Tu’i Tonga continued expanding the imperial frontiers to the whole of western Polynesia, including some parts of Melanesia and Micronesia and central Polynesia. The building of the imperial centre was made possible through the enforced extraction and exploitation of both human and material resources such as slave-workers, prestige goods and services and rare material objects, facilitated by the existence of an imperial fleet of sea-worthy, long-distant canoes led by most notable of them such as Tongafuesia, ‘âkiheuho, Lomipeau and Taka’ipômana amongst others.

Mind you, the political expansion of the Tu’i Tonga empire was not at all smooth, for its stability and growth went through both assistance and resistance by means of alliance-formation and series of wars. On the local level, the Tu’i Tonga empire was equally under immense pressure. This led to the falefâ, i.e., the Tu’i Tonga advisors, to always reorganise the empire accordingly. But, at other times, they failed, which prompted the murders of a number of Tu’i Tonga, notably Havea I, Havea II and Takalaua, the 19 th, 22 nd and 23 rd Tu’i Tonga, all of whom were known for their extreme tyranny. The murder of Takalaua around 1470 led to a major structural and functional reorganisation of the empire, which resulted in the enforced separation of his dual, divine-secular roles, with the Tu’i Tonga retaining the divine office while that of the secular role went to the Tu’i Ha’atakalaua, a second dynastic line of kings merely created for this purpose. The first holder of this title, Mo’ungâmotu’a, was the second eldest son of Takalaua and younger brother of Kau’ulufonua I, who became the 24 th Tu’i Tonga. Subsequent to this reorganisation no Tu’i Tonga was ever murdered.

Assuming the secular role of running the day-to-day affairs of the empire, the Tu’i Ha’atakalaua was in existence for more than a hundred years. In doing so, the Tu’i Ha’atakalaua, like the Tu’i Tonga, was under considerable pressure from within and outside of Tonga. Consequently, this also led to the creation of yet another kingly line, Tu’i Kanokupolu, the first holder of which was Ngata, son of the 6 th Tu’i Ha’atakalaua, Mo’ungâtonga, around 1610. Now the Tu’i Kanokupolu took over the secular role, politically responsible for the running of the empire. His aristocratic mother was a daughter of ‘Ama, a Samoan high chief from Safata on the island of ‘Upolu in Samoa. This marked the beginning of the increasing penetration of powerful Samoan influence, which inverted the highly centralised Tu’i Tonga political system, now strictly conducted in what can be referred to as “the Samoan way of doing politics”. As a consequence, politics became more fluid and fragmented, marking the start of a process of “democratisation” in Tonga, which took place well before the introduction of a number of Codes of Laws, subsequently leading to the introduction of the Constitution in 1875. In the process, the Tu’i Ha’atakalaua -- now sandwiched between the Tu’i Tonga and Tu’i Kanokupolu -- was politically squeezed out of social existence altogether.

While the Tu’i Tonga were firmly secured in their divine realm, both the Tu’i Ha’atakalaua and Tu’i Kanokupolu became target of much political contestation mainly from within Tonga, as many of them were renowned for being highly oppressive rulers. In 1799, the murder of the 14 th Tu’i Kanokupolu, Tuku’aho, a ruthless and tyrannical ruler, threw Tonga into a long bloody Civil War of Independence for some fifty odd years. With great ambition and determination, Taufa’âhau, who became the 19 th Tu’i Kanokupolu in 1845, took advantage of this opportunity to unify the whole of Tonga under his rule. Prior to 1875, Taufa’âhau, who was consistently backed by missionaries, began introducing a number of Codified Laws, starting with the Vava’u Code in 1839 -- through the 1950 Code of Laws and 1962 Emancipation Edict -- to the 1875 Constitution.

In essence, the introduction of these Codes of Laws was an ongoing attempt by Taufa’âhau to free the commoners from political bondage, which had been systematically administered by the divinely-sanctioned Tu’i Tonga and overly ambitious but politically oppressive powerful Kanokupolu chiefs. Basically, his agenda was to counter head-on the hegemony of the Tu’i Tonga and supremacy of many of the dominant Kanokupolu chiefs, who were considered as real obstacles in the way of his political campaign for the unification of the whole of Tonga. Along these Codes of Laws, the commoner people led by Taufa’âhau fought together for their freedom from systematic oppression of the Tu’i Tonga and Kanokupolu chiefs. Freedom was therefore fought for, both by Taufa’âhau and the commoners, and not something granted by Taufa’âhau to the commoner people of Tonga, as many historians commonly asserted.

The granting of the 1875 Constitution, which was a mixture of Tongan, Christian and Western values, finally put in place a new social order, thereby ending an era of major historical conflicts, brought about by the Civil War which subjected Tonga to years of political turmoil. This marked the height of the political revolution in which Taufa’âhau successfully overthrew the Tu’i Tonga, as well as subverting all possible Kanokupolu contenders, publically declaring himself the king of all of Tonga, now constitutionally a sovereignty capable of dealing on an equal political footing with other sovereign powers on the international stage. To a large extent, the sovereign status of Tonga prevented her from colonisation, although she came close by becoming a British Protectorate in 1900. In recognition of his achievements, Taufa’âhau, as the first constitutional monarch under the title George Tupou I, has been referred to by historians as the Father of Modern Tonga, the Grand Old Man of the Pacific.

The 1875 Constitution of Tonga was truly ahead of its time, especially so in terms of accommodating many of the basic tenets of Western democracy. While that may be so, the Constitution has largely outgrown much of its cultural and historical relevance over time and space. While some aspects of the Constitution duly deserve preservation, many others demand serious revision. Both requirements are proposed in view of striking a balance between opposing concepts and practices vested in the Constitution. Although the Constitution has undergone a number of amendments over the years, the recent amendments have thrown Tonga into a serious constitutional crisis, given the imbalance in terms of its basic role as a “form of averaging-out” of the sum total of competing interests in Tongan society. Democracy, in the Western sense, or tau’atâina, in the Tongan context, both of which mean “freedom”, is defined in terms of this “form of averaging-out”, a function fundamental to any constitution. The question of whether these recent constitutional amendments is either oppressive or democratic is dependent on this “form of averaging-out”.

It is, therefore, in this form of collective “restraining” of conflicting social demands that the idea of “freedom” – either group or individual -- is made a meaningful practice. By implication, any of the clauses of the Constitution can be justly and justifiably amended -- so long as this is guided by the whole spirit of freedom -- where all the irreconcilable human interests are symmetrically merged together in the name of social harmony. As far as freedom goes, the common tasks of preserving the past and mapping out of the future of Tonga rest squarely on the shoulders of all of us Tongans in the present. This coincides with the cyclical, collectivist and holistic way in which Tongans organise time and space. In Tonga, like all Pacific cultures, people are thought to walk forward into the past and walk backward into the future, where both the actual past and elusive future are constantly fused and diffused in the ever-changing, conflicting present. By linking the permanence of the past into the best of what the future can offer, let us all mutually work together for what is worthwhile for Tonga – in the present. This is, if I may say, the common challenge to us all.

Ladies and gentlemen -- thank you for your indulgence -- I now rest my case. Leveleva e malanga ka e tau, ‘ofa atu fau.

About Dr ‘Okusitino Mâhina

‘Okusitino Mâhina holds a Ph.D. degree in Pacific history which he completed in 1992 from the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. In 1983, Dr Mâhina was Senior Scholar in Anthropology, the best all-round scholar in the subject at the University of Auckland, where he received his double-major B.A. degree in anthropology and sociology with Distinction. Also, in 1983, he was recipient of the Sir Peter Buck Award for the best all-round student in anthropology, including Maori studies, in all six New Zealand Universities. Again, in 1983, Dr Mâhina received the annual Excellence Prize award for the best first-year Masters student in Anthropology at the University of Auckland, where he gained his M.A. degree with First Class Honours in 1987. Between 1983 and 1986, Dr Mâhina was Senior Social & Community Worker at the Auckland Anglican-Methodist Social Services & Community Development Agency, working amongst Pacific communities in Auckland. As a teacher at ‘ Atenisi High School in Tonga, Dr Mâhina taught maths, chemistry and history between 1973 and 1979. For many years, he lectured at ‘ Atenisi University and the newly-established Massey University’s Albany Campus in Auckland. He was Director of ‘Atenisi Institute, Dean of ‘Atenisi University & Professor of Tongan studies from 1997 until 1999. In 1994, Dr Mâhina was appointed a lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Auckland, where he has been teaching Pacific political economy and Pacific arts. Dr Mâhina has published a number of journal articles and chapters in books on interdisciplinary topics, as well as poetry in the Tongan language. His first book entitled The Reed Book of Tongan Proverbs will be out sometime in August 2004. His research interests include, inter alia, time and space, development and transcultural aesthetics.