Name- Manpreet Singh

Student Id: - 0164720

Instructor- Melissa Clement

Subject- Anthro 101 102

Date- 16-06-2023

Cultural Introduction

I am studying the Tongan Culture in this semester. My writings on the Tongo Culture in this
assignment I have founded from the most resources in the college library and attached the
reference of the following paragraphs…

I am Studying about the Tongan Culture. The People of the Tonga country are called Tongans.
It’s consisting of more than a hundred islands. And its land of volcanic undersea mountains.
The scattered and the pristine Islands of western Polynesian united in 1845 and became the
Kingdome of Tonga. There were kings in Tonga but now it’s an indigenous governance. Tonga
Join the Commonwealth in 1970. Around 3000 years ago, the Lapita people from Southeast Asia
migrated west via the Malay peninsula and the remote islands of the East Indies to settle in the
scattered and pristine islands of the South Pacific. (Foster, 2023).
The History of colonization in Tongo is old when the Tonga was explored by the European in
1616. When the Dutch navigators Wilhelm Schouten and Jacob Le Marie discovered the small
northern most islands of the Tongo archipelago. In 1773, the British explorer and navigator
Captain James Cook visited Tonga’s southern islands of Tongatapu and ‘Eua. Cook and his men
was presented by Chief Finau in the village of Lifuka in the Ha’apai island group. Cook was so
impressed by Tongan hospitality he dubbed Tonga the ‘Friendly Isles’, not realising the amiable
and social nature of the locals concealed a plan to raid his boats and kill Cook and his crew. The
Tongan People are also having short stories, a writer Epeli Hau’ofa most popular collections of
stories is Tales of the Tikong. And the other is Konai HeluThaman. (The Kingdom of Tonga.
(n.d.))
In the case of Tongan economy. Due to the large fields the main income resource for the people
is farming as they produce coconuts, banana and vanilla beans, corn etc. (Addo, 2013). Timber
production and fishing also contribute to Tonga’s economy. Many of Tong’s products are
consumed domestically, but they import from the New Zealand, Singapore, United States and
Australia. However, Most of the Crops and fish are exports to Japan, Australia etc.

Reference
The Kingdom of Tonga. (n.d.). The Kingdom of Tonga’s History.

http://thekingdomoftonga.com/