A History of Tonga

THE FACTS
Tonga is officially the Kingdom of Tonga (Remember it is still a kingdom, headed by Tupou VI) although he doesn't have very much real power. He mostly just sits in a suit and chills out.

Tonga is a nation of about a hundred thousand in the South Pacific, north of New Zealand and east of the Solomon Islands. 

PRE-EUROPEAN CONTACT (????-1616)
Like many of the countries I have delved into the lack of written language makes learning the pre-colonization history hard. Most of it comes from archaeological evidence or stuff the native populace told the Europeans. This stuff is problematic too, because the line between legend and history is often blurred like the original Emperors of China. 

Archaeologists have inspected the tombs of Tongan chiefs and the stonehenge-like structures that the Tongans constructed, but things are still fuzzy. 

The Tongan Empire in the 1100s was the most powerful in the Pacific. This wasn't a traditionally western idea of an Empire with a single leader controlling territories and colonies, but it was more of a culturally and ideological similar area united by trade. The remains of Tongan pottery and other goods have been found as far as the Solomon Islands and Samoa. Tongans belong to the Polynesian subgroup, but their "imperial" influence was felt by the Melanesians and Micronesians.