From Matangi Tonga Magazine, Vol. 16, no. 2, September 2001.

Historian, Ian Campbell, has published a new edition of his book Tonga, Island Kingdom, Tonga Ancient and Modern.

The second revised edition went on sale in Nuku‘alofa on August 13.

The first edition was published in 1992 by the University of Canterbury. Ian said that a lot of changes had taken place since then, and the new edition incorporated two new chapters, as well as new information on Tonga’s prehistory.

Plot

Ian described his work as a General History of Tonga, in which he tried to treat history as coherent single story. “I think about it as a novel, and a main plot carries the story, but there are sub-plots, and the art is to try to get the main plot and the sub-plot to intertwine and flow along.”

Ian said that his main plot was the politics of Tonga, “the distribution of power, who has the power, who gets to exercise power, and what to do with power.” He said that one sub-plot was economic history, “its revolution, a growth in the development of the squash industry, the migration of Tongans overseas and the remittances.”

Ian said that there was also a power sub-plot, “no regime in the world, whether it is supported by a constitution, or by tradition or respect, can afford to take for granted that they will always be there. They need to listen to their people. If the monarchy wants to retain power it has to be attentive to the condition of the people. History is the way to understand the present, and I am reasonably satisfied with how completely I have told the story,” he said.

Errors

Ian may be satisfied with his work but, unfortunately, there are a few errors. Firstly, the Matangi Tonga was first published in 1986 not 1987, and secondly, if he wanted to make a statement about the first non-government publication in modern Tonga he completely disregarded the weekly Tonga Parliamentary Bulletin, that was first published in 1984.

Ian said that a complete work on Tongan history had yet to be written. Tonga was in need of a history policy, “and government has to stop ignoring history, …history should be taken seriously as a school subject.” Ian said that many governments these days employed historians to make sure that a nation was well informed of its history. “The preservation of history and the dissemination of historical information is not something that is left to chance.

“Without being egotistical, I am the only one who is dealing with the Tongan history. I could have done something else, and if that was the case there would be no history of Tonga in a single volume,” he said.

Low Priority

Ian said there were a number of reasons why Tongans shied away from becoming professional historians. “I think Tongans have a lot of things on their minds, so heritage and history is low on their list of priorities. In terms of higher education it is natural for Tongans to prefer to study for things that would make an economic difference, and it is no wonder that history loses out. Throughout the whole Pacific there is not one historian who is a national of the country being studied.”