Ko e hingoa ʻo e kiʻi fonua ʻi he Pasfiki tongahihifo ko Tonga ia, pe ʻOtu motu ʻo Tonga pe Puleʻanga fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga. Ko e hingoa ʻOtu Angaʻofa pe ʻOtu Felenite (Friendly Islands) naʻe ʻoatu ʻe he ʻeikivaka ko Semisi Kuki.
The Kingdom of Tonga is an independent archipelago in the southern Pacific Ocean. It lies about a third of the way between ► New Zealand and ► Hawaii, south of ► Samoa and ► American Samoa, west to ► Niue, east of ► Fiji and north of ► New Zealand. The islands are also known as the Friendly Islands, the name given by Captain Cook because of the friendly reception he received. He happened to arrive at the time of ʻinasi festival, the yearly donation of the first fruits to the Tuʻi Tonga and was invited to the festivities.
This section holds a short summary of the history of the area of present-day Tonga, illustrated with maps, including historical maps of former countries and empires that included present-day Tonga.
The WIKIMEDIA COMMONS Atlas of the World is an organized and commented collection of geographical, political and historical maps available at Wikimedia Commons. The main page is therefore the portal to maps and cartography on Wikimedia. That page contains links to entries by country, continent and by topic as well as general notes and references.
Every entry has an introduction section in English. If other languages are native and/or official in an entity, introductions in other languages are added in separate sections. The text of the introduction(s) is based on the content of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. For sources of the introduction see therefore the Wikipedia entries linked to. The same goes for the texts in the history sections.
Historical maps are included in the continent, country and dependency entries.
The status of various entities is disputed. See the content for the entities concerned.
The maps of former countries that are more or less continued by a present-day country or had a territory included in only one or two countries are included in the atlas of the present-day country. For example the Ottoman Empire can be found in the Atlas of Turkey.
