400th anniversary of European contact with Tonga

Transcript

It's 400 years since Tonga had its first contact with European explorers.

In 1616, an expedition led by two explorers from the Netherlands, Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, came across the Niuas while trying to find an alternative route to Indonesia.

Malakai Koloamatangi, an academic from New Zealand's Massey University, says the explorers only stayed for four days, in which time they managed to both trade and fight with the locals.

Dr Koloamatangi, who was in Tonga to mark the event with the Dutch Ambassador to New Zealand Rob Zaagman, told Jamie Tahana that despite the brief visit, they left a lasting legacy.

MALAKAI KOLOAMATANGI: Well Willem Schouten was the captain of the ship and Jacob Le Maire as kind of a commercial enterpriser. His father Isaac Le Maire and a number of merchants from Amsterdam had funded the expedition. Le Maire senior and the merchants had formed this company in competition with the Dutch East India Company, because they had a monopoly on the spice trade and also the trading routes, interestingly enough, so the expedition was actually sent to try and find an alternative route around South America. So they left Holland in June 1615 and then they came across the Tuamotu Archipelago, which is in Tahiti, and then they reached Tonga on the 9th of May, 1616. They stayed there for about four days, but they didn't actually land - they didn't actually step on Tongan soil - but they did trade with the locals, and also there were a bit of problems, as is the case, with misunderstandings and so on and so forth. 

JAMIE TAHANA: Was there any intention of discovering Tonga? Because this was the first European encounter for Tonga, wasn't it?

MK: It was the very first European encounter. I don't think they actually had any intention to land. These are the northern islands of Tonga - the Niuas - and I think they were just sailing westwards and it just so happened that they came upon the Tongan islands. But yeah, so it was the very first encounter obviously, and of course the next encounter with a European explorer was Abel Tasman who came to Tonga in 1643. So it was just 27 years after Schouten and Le Maire that Tasman came along, of course Tasman landed and stayed in Tonga for some time. But these guys, it was very interesting, because they came with some conceptions from Europe as to the so-called natives and how they live and so forth, and of course the Tongans themselves also had conceptions themselves about foreign visitors, so they weren't passive actors. Schouten and Le Maire, they didn't understand a lot of the things that happened, but they did write down everything that they saw, even the things they didn't understand, and then through that I was able to get a glimpse of the political and social set up in Tonga at that time. 

JT: And what was the Tongans' perspective? Just the thought of imagining being on an island and then suddenly this giant European ship turns up with white people on board. How was that recorded from the Tongan perspective? 

MK: Yeah I mean interestingly enough, at that time Tonga was going through a political upheaval itself. Traditionally, Tonga had three kingly dynasties - the third dynasty is the present dynasty in Tonga at the moment. So that dynasty had just been established just before Schouten and Le Maire came to Tongan waters, and so things were not quite settled, not quite established. So they came on to that and I think at the time Tongan society was somewhat in disarray because of the new dynasty. The dynasty of course was established from Tongatapu which is several hundred kilometres away and it would have been difficult to gauge the influence of the new dynasty at the Niuas where Schouten and Le Maire visited. Actually, at the time the Niuas were somewhat semi-independent from the centre of power in Tongatapu and the King of Niuas, Latumailangi, who actually received the Dutch explorers, some say he was an independent king, which wasn't how things were prior to this. But the other angle was that the Niuas had been given the right by a previous king to resist foreign visitors to their shores, now I don't know whether this extended to white foreign visitors but the way that the Niuas had tried to resist and attack the Dutch explorers actually reflected this independence on their part. The other interesting thing was that the encounter has actually be memorialised and remembered through the creation of Tongan family names. There's a name called Vakata -- 'Vaka' is boat and 'ta' is to hit. So Vakata is to hit the boat and also the name Tauvaka is one of the people who was injured by the Dutch when the Tongans tried to attack the boat.

JT: So it was quite a fraught encounter? 

MK: It was. I think, and it's mainly because the Europeans came with their own way, their own perceptions about what they hoped to find, and you know, for example, on the ninth they encountered this canoe which was sailing apparently towards Samoa. They had fired a couple of shots across the bow, you know, in marine protocol that means they wanted to stop. Of course the Tongans had no idea, they didn't stop of course and they kept moving northwards and there was skirmish and some people were injured. And I think had they stayed a little bit longer, I suppose they would have been able to get to understand each other from both sides. But as it was they sailed from Niuatoputapu and Tafahi towards Niuafo'ou, and they were actually attacked there as well. So it seems like the Tongans were not overawed by these, as you said, by these great big boats and people who actually had guns and so on. They saw themselves as being the equals of the Dutch or, in fact, probably a bit superior.