Unveiling sovereignty: Are Tongan women truly free?

A Tongan academic’s PhD thesis examines how the island's 19th-century laws and colonial influences continue to shape women’s rights in the Kingdom today.

Dr Patricia Tupou’s study also raises questions about the true meaning of sovereignty.

Speaking on PMN Tonga, Tupou reflects on her doctoral research, which explores Tongan sovereignty through the lens of gender and colonial legacy.

“I've always been interested in understanding the history and the legacy of what it means that we're [Tonga is] sovereign and what does it mean to claim sovereignty in a Tongan context,” she says.

“I guess that led to me asking a central question: Are Tongan women free if we’re sovereign?”

Her research uses Pacific archives at the Australian National University (ANU) and the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau (PMB), which is a key reason many Tongan scholars choose to study there.

She highlights the irony of researching Tongan history, noting that many archives are housed in national libraries in Australia, the United Kingdom, and Spain.

“So I think it's interesting to do work on Tongan history. It means you always have to go outside of Tonga a lot of the time,” Tupou says.

She says the current sovereignty upheld in Tonga’s government and constitution is Westphalian, stemming from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. “So it stems from Europe. It's not a sovereignty that is born and bred from Tonga.”

The Peace of Westphalia, the name given to multiple treaties, marked the conclusion of the Thirty Years' War. Signed on 24 October 1648. Photo/The Swearing of the Oath of Ratification of the Treaty of Münster, oil on copper by Gerard Terborch, 1648

Tupou’s work focuses on women’s land rights, or the lack thereof, highlighting the fact that Tonga is the only Pacific island nation where laws prevent women from owning land.

“I think it's really interesting when you place women at the centre of sovereignty because you very quickly start to realise that we aren't perhaps as sovereign as we like to claim we are because there are plenty of restrictions on women's agency and power and rights that allow for that type of sovereignty,” she says.

Tupou says that many legal codes establishing land ownership were aligned with Christian ideas of propriety and sexuality.

For example, in Tonga, if a married woman’s husband passes away and there is no male heir, she can inherit the land only if she has not slept with another man.

Watch Dr Patricia Tupou's full interview below.

Tupou points to multiple court cases where widows have been denied land inheritance based on claims about their personal lives, raising significant questions about women's agency and sexual freedom that challenge conventional notions of sovereignty.

Although her thesis is deeply academic, Tupou is passionate about making her work accessible to a broader Tongan audience.

She hopes it encourages further talanoa - open, communal discussions - about gender, power, and history.

“A lot of our histories and our stories do centre around Tāufaʻāhau and around Shirley Baker and around this kind of great male figures who are always described as being before their time and being the ones who are able to solidify our independence.

Shirley Baker was a Methodist missionary in Tonga. He founded the Free Church of Tonga and enjoyed significant influence during the reign of George Tupou I, who made him prime minister. Photo/Supplied

“But I really wanted to always read about the women who were also operating during the 19th century and contributing to the sovereignty or perhaps also fighting against the missionisation of Tonga.”

This archive of women’s voices and experiences is largely unwritten, prompting Tupou to create something that does not exist.

She lectures at the Auckland University of Technology in New Zealand while remaining engaged with archival work in Tonga.

She often visits the Tongan Royal Office archive, which is being relocated to a new facility.

The new Royal Archives building in Tufumahina, Tongatapu. Photo/Talanoa 'O Tonga

“The people that I was working with were really excited that there was somebody that was doing history who was Tongan because they usually just get Australian volunteers coming in.”

For Tupou, making history accessible is more than a career goal.

“People need to be able to engage more with our history and different offshoots because there's one main narrative but there's so many more stories and understandings of our past that need to be known.”