1795: Australian convicts Morgan, Ambler and Connolly land on Tonga, off American ship, Otter

‘Towards the end of the 1790s a new influence came to Tonga in the form of permanent European residents. The first of these were convicts who had escaped from the British Colony of NSW, which had been established on the east coast of Australia by the British government primarily as a punishment for criminals. In 1795, some of these found a place on on the American ship Otter, which put them ashore on Tonga.
First white men to live in Tonga, a novelty: The names of these men were Morgan, Ambler and Connolly. As the first white men to live in Tonga, there were a novelty, and the chiefs were eager to patronise them. They were claimed by Tuku’aho*, who although he was not Tui’Kanokupulo, was the most powerful chief in Tonga.
Usefulness of foreigners: Foreigners had often lived with powerful chiefs, but in past they has almost always been Samoans or Fijians, and were useful because they did not have obligations – except to the chief who adopted them. European residents became quite highly valued by the chiefs in the same way and some of them became quite important’.
* A cousin of Maa’fu
p.42. CAMPBELL.I.C , Island Kingdom, Tonga Ancient and Modern, Canterbury University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-908812-14-0

1870: Cotton boom ends, chaos rises: government needed: planters of Lau, German with business interests in Tonga, wanted Ma’afu; the men of Western Fiji preferred Cakobau

On June 5th, 1871, Cakobau was proclaimed King of Fiji at a ceremony in Levuka. This event followed a period of chaos created by the sudden fall in the value of cotton. Derrick, in his “History of Fiji” (p.196), says, “With the rapid increase of the foreign population the need for government became more urgent. A leading article in the ‘Fiji Times’ of 15th January, 1870, compared the creditable manner in which the natives governed themselves with the lack of control among the Europeans; ‘It is not the natives we want the Government for, but ourselves,’ the article affirmed; and it went on to urge the need of protection for homes and families.

Government plan: In its next issue the paper suggested that a committee be set up to recommend a suitable form of government. A meeting was held as arranged, and was largely attended. Though the meeting agreed that some form of Government was necessary, there was a difference of opinion about who should be the native head of the administration.

Planters backed Ma’afu: The planters of Lau, who were principally German, with business interests in Tonga, wanted Ma’afu; the men of Western Fiji preferred Cakobau. On this question, and on the manner in which revenue should be handled, no agreement was reached; and after appointing a committee to draft a constitution, to be submitted to delegates, the meeting broke up.”

Fall in cotton values spread dismay among the settlers: That meeting was on the 14th April, 1870, when everything from the planters’ angle seemed happy enough, but the sudden fall of France and the subsequent fall in cotton values spread dismay among the settlers generally.

Bankrupt in the midst of chaos: Many of the planters were men of education, some from the Forces, men of character, faced with bankruptcy in the midst of chaos. Concern for so many from Australia prompted politicians in Australia to urge the United Kingdom to annex the Group, but it was certain that the United Kingdom had no interest in the matter.

coup d’etat was launched: With dramatic suddenness a coup d’etat was launched, led by ex-Lieutenant George Austin Woods, the newly arrived marine surveyor.

1875: writer, Anthony Trollope – “Levuka has been the white man’s capital in Fiji”; merchants and the missionaries compelled colonial control

 English writer, postal commissior, Anthony Trollop gives an English view of Fiji in 1875, after visiting Consul Hector Robinson, who quotes Cakobau as he explained his tactic in ceding to Britain..

October 1874: Trollope reported the British flag was hoisted, “with the usual formalities,” by Sir Hercules Robinson, in Fiji. Anthony Trollope, in The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury In 1875 reported on his  round the world trip  reported on events in Fiji, from Sydney, but did not visit. He had been to Fiji in 1871.  Trollope appears to have visited Sir Hercules Robinson, the governor of NSW, in Sydney.

Sir Hercules Robinson had taken control of Fiji in 1874: Trollope wrote “In October, 1874—just one year ago when this letter will reach England—Great Britain was strengthened or burdened, as the case may be, by the possession of a new colony. On the 10th of that month, the British flag was hoisted, “with the usual formalities,” by Sir Hercules Robinson, in Fiji.  Sir Hercules was and is the governor of New South Wales, and had been commissioned by the Home Government to complete the arrangement, if such completion might be possible; and this he did successfully”.

 “Levuka has been the white man’s capital in Fiji”; “In 1835 a few white traders, Englishmen and Americans, probably mixed, first came to Fiji in quest of fortune, and established themselves in a place called Levuka, in one of the smaller islands. From that time to this, Levuka has been the white man’s capital in Fiji; and two years later, missionaries settled themselves among the islands.

Joint desire to make money and to proselytise:  “Such have been the commencements of almost all modern colonisation. There has been the joint desire to make money and to proselytise—with the English as with the Spaniards. Now and again the love of freedom, and the desire to find new homes in which a man might say his prayers as he pleased, have driven wanderers forth and have created new countries; but the merchants and the missionaries have been the great discoverers of the world. It was they who by their joint action forced us to colonise New Zealand, and it is they who have now together compelled the Colonial Office to send a great governor to Fiji”.

Trollope’s view of Cakobau: “The name of Thakombau—here spelt as it is pronounced—will probably be familiar to most of your readers. He was born in 1804, and is still living, and in 1852 succeeded his father as chief of the largest of the Fijian tribes. But he was not then King of Fiji. A few years before the latter date there had appeared among the islands a stranger chief, a Tongan, named Maafu, who succeeded in establishing himself in the eastern or Windward Islands, as a rival to Thakombau.

Trollope dismisses Cak0bau as an ignorant savage: “But it is with Thakombau that we English have chiefly dealt, and whose co-operation with Englishmen has caused Fiji to be this day an English colony. Two years after his father’s death he became a Christian—as far as Christianity was possible to him—and renounced cannibalism. He and his wife were baptised, and he seems, at any rate, to have been convinced that there could be neither peace nor prosperity for his people unless they could be made secure, if not by British rule, at any rate by British protection.

 Cakobau sends warclub to Queen Victoria: “The other day, when the cession of the country was completed, he sent over, as a present to our Queen, his war-club, which had ever been to him the symbol of his authority.

Cakobau’s ‘melancholy conviction’: “There is much in the character of the man which recommends itself to us, though he was a cannibal and a heathen, and though now, in his old age, his Christianity is not very intelligible to himself. He seems ever to have trusted the honesty and power of the British nation, and to have mingled with that trust a melancholy conviction that his own people could of themselves do nothing; and yet the Englishmen he had seen had not always been good specimens of their nationality.

What Cakobau said to Robinson: “Of one thing I am certain,” he said to Sir Hercules Robinson, when they were negotiating the cession: “if we do not cede Fiji, the white stalkers on the beach, the cormorants, will open their mouths and swallow us.” And again he said, “Fijians are of unstable character. A white man who wishes to get anything from a Fijian, if he does not succeed to-day, will try again to-morrow, till the Fijian is wearied out and gives in.” He had learned that the weaker must give way to the stronger, and had perceived that it was better to abandon himself and his country at once to the justice of English rule than to be squeezed out of existence by the rapacity of individuals”.

Maafu v Cakobau: In the early days of chieftainship, various troubles came upon him. Maafu, his rival from Tonga, was strong against him, stirring up rebellion in the islands and separating the people. And then there were misfortunes with the Americans.

1849: In 1849 the house of the American consul was burned down, and compensation was claimed for that.

1853: In 1853, Levuka was burned, and, among other things, the houses and property of certain Americans were destroyed, for which further compensation was demanded.

 1855: In 1855, an American officer came to assess this property, and demanded a payment of £9000 ($45,000). This seems to have been the beginning of Thakombau’s pecuniary troubles. There was no means within his power of paying any such sum! If only England would take the islands and pay the money, things might at any rate be quiet!

1858:  In 1858, the first offer of cession was made. Fiji should belong to England, if England would pay those hard American creditors.

1859: A deed of cession was sent to England in 1859, the British consul resident at Fiji taking it to London. The British residents in the islands were of course quite as anxious for the arrangement as Thakombau could be.

1862: But at that time the British adult residents were only 166 in number, and in 1862 the offer was refused by us. The injury that 166 persons at the other side of the globe could do was not sufficient to induce us to accept the new burden” .

Trollope, Anthony. The Tireless Traveler: Twenty Letters to the Liverpool Mercury. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  [1978,c1941] 1978. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1d5nb0hv/

1861: Photo of Maafu, and Nacagilevu, on board the HMS Pelorus at Levuka

http://libapp.sl.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/spydus/ENQ/PM/FULL1?446591

1861: Photo of Consul Pritchard and Ritora aboard the Pelorus at Levuka

The Mitchell Library Printed Books collection contains photographs of H.M.S. Pelorus and crew members, including portraits and views taken in Fiji, New Hebrides, New Zealand and Norfolk Island, ca. 1860-1861].  The captions are not explicit; but the photos give extra details as names were written on the image in ink. For example Conference, Fijian and Tonguese chiefs on bd. Pelorus, at Mathuata, Vana Leon, Fiji. (search this blog for “Maafu” to see the left hand side of this photo).

(Consul Pritchard seated at right) shows Charley (Msk?) and Ritora.  Consul Pritchard, – a weedy fellow – with administrative ability – was a land-dealer. For example, he bought the island of Vanutha Lai Lai from Thakombau, and in 1862 sold the island to Thomas Johnston Thompson, an English trader. Thompson – from Sunderland, England, built sailing ships in Invercargill, and traded in the islands using the the island as a base. Some of his barques and schooners – built in Invercargill, New Zealand – were later used for the slave trade. His German wife, Christiania Gotze lived on the island with some of her 13 children. More than half died as infants; and four were baptised at Levuka in April 1862, by John Calvert, the Methodist missionary in control of the Ovalau circuit. One of those children had Pacific genes – (perhaps Tongan – as some from that line, look rather like Maafu) . Family letters tell she “slept with an axe under her pillow”, and had experienced unmentionable experiences. She left the island and “escaped over a causeway”, with the children, after a violent event on the island. No birth certificate exists for that child – Christiane Thompson; who went on to found a Pacific dynasty in New Zealand. The author of this blog descends from that line.

In June 1868, the Tongan Parliament instructed Ma’afu to cease from involving the Tongan Government in Fijian affairs

In June 1868, the Tongan Parliament ordered the flag to be hauled down and instructed Ma’afu to cease from involving the Tongan Government in Fijian affairs. This meant that he could not continue to exercise control by virtue of his authority as a Tongan chief, but had to be accepted as a chief in Fiji.
PACNEWS – Pacific Islands Broadcasting Association News Services Special Bulletin  on Fiji “Civil Coup”  Thursday, 25 May 2000 12:00PM

C. W. Whonsbon-Aston’s 1937 sea journey, to visit to Maafu at Loma Loma

By C. W. Whonsbon-Aston in Levuka Days of a Parson in Polynesia in London: Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, 1937 reported on a visit to Maafu, as he was about to end his term in Levuka.

Stars of the Southern Cross overhead: Long hot tropical days, in a turtle boat, aided by a miserable breeze, sliding lazily over the waves, quietly dipping and rolling along; nights when one lay on the hatching and watched, between slight snatches of sleep, the stars above, with the welcome Southern Cross, which saved one the trouble of craning round to see if the helmsman had fallen asleep. No awning to protect one from the strong sun’s rays, no convenience of any sort–thus I returned from my visit to the isles to the windward, where my parish stretched almost half-way to Tonga. That trip was a great experience.

Ships that pass in the nightThere is a touch of romance in lying back on the deck of a small boat away out in the Pacific to hear a distant “chug, chug, chug,” and then to see in the half light of the early morning a huge white figure appear from the gloom, pass over your bows with but little illumination beyond the navigation lights, as swiftly to disappear, its “chug, chug,” apparently divorced from the silent wraith–a Matson liner passing in the night. . . .

Historic last trip on the steamer: But all this was on the way back to Levuka. The Exploring Isles or the Lau Archipelago is not an easy place to get to, but the getting back is a greater gamble. My plans were simple: merely to go by the steamer, which was making its last trip under the scheduled arrangements and was not to be replaced, calling at such places as the boat would touch at, then to go further afield in a private yacht and by that means return to Levuka: but l’homme propose et Dieu dispose.

Arrival at the pretty lagoon at the island of Mango: A jovial company kept us all on deck after we left Levuka that evening, though the path we traversed was a particularly “rocky” one. Next morning, around ten o’clock, found us in the pretty lagoon at the island of Mango. The sun shone brilliantly and there was not a ripple on the sheltered waters. I was among the first to be put ashore, in the process of which the ship’s boat passed over beautiful patches of live coral trees with all their myriad richly coloured fish darting about below us.

Visit to a planter on Mango: Later we visited the planter and his wife and son at their home away inland on the edge of a pretty crater. We spent the whole day at Mango and in the early morning were once more on our way out of the lagoon into the still heaving waters until, at about 8.30 a.m., we entered the Tongan Passage in the long reef and bore down on Loma Loma, the main centre, on the big, long island of Vanua Mbalava.

Dear old Loma Loma: Dear old sleepy Pacific island Loma Loma had awakened from its accustomed lethargy to greet us. It was a scene of great activity: the two small stores (one included the post office) were opened, men, women and children shouted, and the village dogs, fowls and pigs added their quota of joy at this new diversion. Three-quarters of an hour later the smoke of the vessel was barely to be seen on the horizon, the ship’s carpenter returned to the caulking of the Tui Matefele on the beach, the stores were closed, the livestock once more asleep, the human participants in the welcome had effaced themselves and I was sitting in a house in Maafu’s old compound enjoying the hospitality of the District Commissioner and Roko.

Remarkable figure of Fijian history: Maafu was a really remarkable figure of Fijian history. A Tongan prince of goodly lineage, he had settled on Lau in the early days as the base for his military operations against Cakabau. But for the intervention of the British Consul in those wild days, it is not improbable that he would have been in a premier position in the overlordship of Fiji. He was one of the signatories of the Deed of Cession in 1874. The Lauan people are very charming folk, inclining probably more towards Tonga in their fairness of skin and their culture”.