CELEBRATED SETS
The Tongan archipelago consists of three main groups of islands scattered over 270,000 square miles of the Southern Pacific. They were discovered in stages from the 16th to the 17th centuries – and eventually mapped by Captain Cook. He had been well-received by the natives and dubbed the group ‘the friendly islands’ – the name it uses today.
He never knew that the islands’ chiefs had been plotting to kill him and his crew.
The island group was unified in 1875 after half a century of civil war and it became a constitutional monarchy under an absolute ruler. It remains the only Pacific territory to remain self-governing–never occupied or colonised. The islands became a British Protectorate in 1900, under a Treaty of Friendship. This was largely at the request of
