Tonga ([ˈtoŋa] ; Tongan: Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), officially the Kingdom of Tonga, is a Polynesian sovereign state and archipelago comprising 176 islands with a surface area of about 750 square kilometres (290 sq mi) scattered over 700,000 square kilometres (270,000 sq mi) of the southern Pacific Ocean, of which 52 are inhabited by its 103,000 people. [4] Tonga stretches over about 800 kilometres (500 mi) in a north- south line about a third of the distance from New Zealand to Hawaii. It is surrounded by Fiji and Wallis and Futuna (France ) to the northwest, Samoa to the northeast, Niue to the east, Kermadec (part of New Zealand) to the southwest, and New Caledonia (France) and Vanuatu to the west. Tonga became known as the Friendly Islands because of the congenial reception accorded to Captain James Cook on his first visit in 1773. He arrived at the time of the ʻinasi festival, the yearly donation of the first fruits to the Tuʻi Tonga (the islands paramount chief) and so received an invitation to the festivities. According to the writer William Mariner, the chiefs wanted to kill Cook during the gathering but could not agree on a plan. [5] Tonga is one of the few countries that have successfully resisted European colonization , and it has never lost its sovereignty to a foreign power. [6] In 2010 Tonga took a decisive step towards becoming a fully functioning constitutional monarchy, after legislative reforms paved the way for its first partial representative elections . Etymology In many Polynesian languages, Tongan included, the word tonga means south, as the archipelago is the southernmost group of islands of central Polynesia. In Tongan, the name is pronounced [ˈtoŋa] ,[7] and it is commonly pronounced as / ˈ tɒ ŋ ə/ or / ˈt ɒ ŋ ɡə/ in English. The name of Tonga is cognate to the Hawaiian region of Kona . History Main article: History of Tonga An Austronesian-speaking group linked to the archaeological construct known as the Lapita cultural complex reached and colonised Tonga around 1500– 1000 BCE. [8] Scholars have much debated the exact dates of the initial settlement of Tonga, but recently it has been thought that the first settlers came to the oldest town, Nukuleka, about 826 BCE, ± 8 years. [9] Not much is known before European contact because of the lack of a writing system , but oral history has survived and been recorded after the arrival of the Europeans. The Tongan people first encountered Europeans in 1616 when the Dutch vessel Eendracht made a short visit to trade.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Jan 2014 12:39:46 +0000
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