Tonga's beloved Queen Sālote [1]
Monday, May 31, 1999 - 11:00. Updated on Wednesday, December 30, 2015 - 21:38.
From Matangi Tonga Magazine Vol. 14, no. 2, May 1999.
Published in April, was a new history book, Queen Sālote of Tonga, The Story of an Era 1900-1965. This 424 pages hard covered volume s the work of Dr Elizabeth Wood-Ellem, published by the University of Auckland Press.
Queen Sālote reigned for 47 years from 6 April 1918 to 16 December 1965, and this book must be read by anyone who is interested in the Tongan history. It is the story of a gifted teenager, who at the age of 18 became the Queen of a country at a time when the world fought two wars.
The biographer and historian, Dr Wood-Ellem, who is now a research associate in history at the University of Melbourne, Australia, was born in Tonga. She writes that Queen Sālote, "was the great figure of my childhood, a myth in her own lifetime... I myself was so affected by the myth that I had to search long and hard for the human being that was Queen Salote..”
Dr Wood-Ellem has researched this book over the last 25 years, and dedicates it to her parents the late Dr Harold and Dr Olive Wood, and to her “other mother” Nusi Havea. Much of the information is new, and some of the charming photographs are published for the first time.
There are detailed accounts of highlights as well as the crises of Sālote’s reign–the worst being the Spanish influenza epidemic after the first world war that killed over 2,000 individuals in Tonga, or about 8 per cent of the population. Dr Wood-Ellem writes that Queen Sālote “failed in the first serious test of leadership” when her government broke down and desperately ill villagers starved to death in their homes. Forty years later Salote vividly described the epidemic, the effects of which were felt for at least a generation.
The book shows how within her lifetime Queen Sālote was largely successful in preserving Tongan pride, for Tongans were not demoralized as were many colonized Pacific Islanders.
Dr Wood-Ellem concludes, “The ancient dynastic quarrels…could be settled only by the emergence of a cenralised government led by a strong and just ruler. To her elder son she left the legacy of a secure throne and a loyal brother, and to both sons the mana of descent from three powerful lines.
“To her people Queen Sālote left the peace and unity she had so often extolled as her major goal.”