When Queen Salote of Tonga (1900 – 1965) attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1953, she was greeted as the tallest queen of the smallest kingdom, and gained universal admiration by her natural dignity and the warmth of her personality. This event reinforced Queen Salote’s reputation as a universally beloved monarch. She lived on a diet of Tongan food – principally suckling pig roasted over an open fire.
What this reputation concealed were the very real achievements of a very human person. Vulnerable at the beginning of her reign, Queen Salote succeeded to her titles under threat of annexation and with the enmity of a powerful clique of chiefs who perpetuated dynastic quarrels and resisted centralised government. She soon won the confidence and loyalty of significant people, not least the representatives of the British government in the Western Pacific, and profoundly influenced the opinion and behaviour of her subjects by personal example. Queen Salote gave her people a strong sense of their identity, which was tested by internal dissension, occupation by US forces in World War Two, and the challenges of the modern world.
She attributed her eventual success as a ruler to hard work and a strong character, and observers referred to her intelligence, authority, and knowledge of her people. Salote achieved her great mana by intelligent manipulation and (as she admitted in a rare moment) by ‘hard work … strong character, and kindness’. She did indeed have a strong character, and also worked very hard. Her ‘kindness’ was benevolence, although she could be scathing, particularly of those who did not do their duty or whose moral character was dubious.
While notably dispensing advice to others, Queen Salote had the ability to distinguish between good advice and bad advice offered to her and to know whom she could trust and whom she could not trust. She could also evaluate events not just in personal terms or in the short-term, but understood the difference between temporary setbacks and the war to be won. She had the capacity to inspire confidence in others.
These qualities imply a choice of allies. In Tongan social and political life, the key relationship is between the sister and brother who together rule the prime social unit, the kainga. The sister determines the destiny of the group and is the ultimate authority on social relationships, and the brother governs the land and its produce. Thus it was fortunate that the chief chosen by Tupou II to be Salote’s consort was not only willing to operate within these traditional parameters, but had a passion for the land exceeded only by his loyalty to the Queen and the commitment to his sons as future leaders of the nation. The Queen and her consort adopted the traditional functions of the sister-brother of the traditional hierarchy, aiming at creating a kainga of the whole nation. The dual leadership of Queen Salote and Tungi Mailefihi lasted for 23 critical years in Tonga’s history.
Queen Salote was aware that many chiefs were not worthy of their high position in Tongan society, and her response was to encourage, regardless of rank, those who showed ability, were personally loyal to her, and were willing to work for the benefit of others and for the kingdom as a whole. She was not unaware of the needs of the common people. In 1919 – following the great influenza epidemic – she established a Department of Health and encouraged the reorganization of the Department of Education. The law provided for free and compulsory education, and she put the law into practice. Granted she did not achieve much in the way of social justice for the poorest of her subjects, but governors do not have as much power to change their world as those beneath them believe. The compromises that Salote made, particularly in confirming the privileges of the highest chiefs, were not of her choosing, but in order to achieve what she believed to be a greater good.
The second half of Queen Salote’s reign was characterised by dual leadership very different from that with her consort. Anxious that the Crown Prince should learn the duties of leadership, she appointed him Premier when he was only 31 years of age, and only hinted that she did not totally agree with his policies of modernization, nor with his Eurocentric view that the male is superior to the female.
Salote had a strong Christian faith, which appears ultra-conservative to modern eyes, but it gave her a sense of God’s presence in times of trouble. Even before she was freed of many of her duties in the last two decades of her reign by the premiership of the Crown Prince, she gave much time to establishing networks within the church and to giving instruction by means of Bible study and prayer. Nor was she sectarian in her behaviour. She ignored the demarcation between churches, which had been determined by political allegiance, and welcomed all who worked for the welfare of the people in whichever church. In the 1950s she founded a number of organisations, church and secular, that would help ordinary folk to cope with the growing intrusiveness of the outside world.
The second half of Salote’s reign was one of personal acclamation. They were the golden years, when Queen Salote’s mana was such that the chiefs and people competed to outdo each other in carrying out her slightest wish. Salote loved to celebrate events that enhanced the reputation of the Tupou dynasty. The most significant of these were the celebration of the centenary of Tupou I in 1945, the investitures when British honours were bestowed upon her (demonstrating the recognition of the outside world), and the great Lo’au of 1959, when hundreds of chiefs from all over Tonga came to signify their total acceptance of her as the highest chief by taking their places in her taumafa kava.
In her last years, Queen Salote could see Tongan values being eroded by economic considerations, and she attempted to reinforce those customs in Tongan society that would strengthen the Tongan sense of identity, such as ‘love, respect, and mutual helpfulness’. She was largely successful in preserving Tongan pride, for Tongans were not demoralised as were many colonised Pacific Islanders, nor (at least, not while the Queen was alive) did they mindlessly adopt foreign ways. In the words of the linguist Melenaite Taumoefolau, Queen Salote provided ‘shade’ for her people. It was this ‘shade’ that enabled them to survive and which preserved their identity in a time of challenge.
What then was Queen Salote’s legacy to Tonga? When she became Queen there were among her subjects some who remembered the last years of the civil wars that had devastated the whole group of islands that were Tonga. The ancient dynastic quarrels that lay behind those wars could be settled only by the emergence of a centralised government led by a strong and just ruler. To her eldest son she left the legacy of a secure throne and a loyal brother, and to both sons the mana of descent from three powerful royal lines.
To her people Salote left the peace and unity she had so often extolled as her major goal. During her lifetime she attained by thoughtful planning what was possible for the well-being for the people rather than chasing impossible dreams of economic wealth. She was aware that women of high and middle rank, who had a privileged place in Tongan society, were losing ground because of the intrusion of the masculine ideology of papalangi, and she encouraged women to hold to their former dignity as well as taking their place beside men in the modern world. The Queen also realised the importance of continuity, and she ensured the preservation of the knowledge of Tonga’s past and of Tongan language and culture.
Since Queen Salote’s death in 1965, Tonga has been struggling with the forces of modern economics. Change seem to be spinning out of control, and Tonga survives only because about 40 per cent of its people live overseas. The danger is that in the rush to be rich and to be ‘modern’, Tongans will lose that very sense of identity that has protected them and enabled them to cope with challenges from the outside world. There is also a demand among commoners for political change, and for the people to have a greater say in the affairs of the kingdom.