Tonga (Concert of Europe)

The Kingdom of Tonga (Tongan: Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), informally known as Tonga, is a sovereign nation and an archipelago in Polynesia, consisting of 169 islands scattered over 700,000 square kilometers, of which 35 are inhabited. The main island is Tongatapu, on which the capital, Nuku'alofa, is located. The beginnings of its history are lost to the mists of time, but the islands have been inhabited since at least around 1500-1000 BC.

The current Kingdom was born in 1845, when chieftain Tāufaʻāhau I became the islands' first Christian king, as he had been baptized by missionaries from. Starting from the late 19th century, Tonga became a British protectorate: like, it became a fully sovereign nation after the , as the Concert of Europe wanted to undermine British hegemony over the. However, it still uses English as one of its official languages.

The economy of the islands is modest and quite obsolete, as European influence on the islands was never strong enough to allow a modernization of the kingdom. Tonga is largely a rural country, depending on agriculture and fishing, and with little money actually circulating in the country.