| Abstrakt: |
Tonga is the only island nation in the Pacific never to have been colonised by any European power, even though it was technically a British protectorate for 70 years from 1900. By the time the Pacific was being divided up among the great world powers, Tonga had a united population under a single constitutional monarch, King George Tupou I, who, under the expert guidance of his secretary (and later Prime Minister) Shirley Baker, negotiated treaties of friendship with Germany in 1876, Great Britain in 1879 and the United States in 1886, which all recognised Tonga as an independent sovereign state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
