Okay, this post will be split into two parts.
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The first part:
Apologies for not answering these questions and addressing the comments earlier, but here:
This seems reasonable - even if the jade-for-rice trade gives the alliance a new lease on life in the west, it will still die out in the places that don't have jade and aren't suited to rice culture. There might be much more of a difference between the western and eastern Pacific IOTL and even between the western and eastern Polynesian cultures, with Aotearoa, Tonga and probably Samoa developing in tandem with Fiji and Micronesia (I'd expect that Fiji, as well as Pohnpei and Guam, will also develop rice culture) while the Society Islands, Hawaii and other eastern cultures will remain "purer."
I would like to point out that Guam did have their own rice culture, though it was primarily as a luxury good, presumably due to the higher labour cost or something. But other than that, it seems fine. I haven't actually thought that far yet.
Will the Tongan Empire still be called that now that the royal family is on Aotearoa? Will the Tongan islands themselves be content under the rule of a royal family that lives elsewhere? Maybe some of those assassinations will take place closer to home than Lau or Futuna.
The first two questions will be answered in this post, but the assassinations I believe did not take place in Lau or Futuna, since this is the Tu'i Tonga we are talking about. The assassins were merely from these islands; the actual assassinations occurred on Tongatapu itself.
Also, has contact with the Philippines, and indirectly with China, resulted in any epidemics in the western Pacific? If some Eurasian diseases burn through parts of Polynesia in the 14th century, they'll be in a much stronger position when Europeans make contact.
That will be answered in a future post, since a couple of details will need to be sorted out, but yes. I believe there will be various epidemics, since that generally happens when two cultures meet for the first time.
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Second part:
Part five
The breakup part two dated about 1351 to 1366 CE
Si’i pe kae hā.
-Tongan proverb[1]
Far Eastern Ocean
By this time, the central island of the Friendly Alliance, Hawaiki, had already lost contact with various fringe islands such as Nga Pito o te Fenua and Hawaiki-roa, and it was in the process of losing contact with Aotearoa. The trade network was built solely on the transfer of obsidian and other rocks to various islands for fashioning into stone tools and the good will of the people, so when the inevitable decrease in the need for this material occurred, the essentially self-sufficient communities would then stop their inter-island travel, and then soon lose their knowledge of building their ocean-going waka and navigating the open ocean.
From this, it is not surprising that the Friendly Alliance was going to collapse; if the Alliance did not collapse from the discovery of the western civilisations, it would have collapsed by some other means. What was surprising was the degree of inter-island contact post-discovery. In fact, the Alliance’s post-collapse influence was so great that, even today, the Chinese word for the people that comprised the alliance’s former territory, 橃, or fá, was named not for the waka that they sailed with, but for the first syllable of the phrase Fakatau Aroha.
Even so, it would not suffice to talk about the Alliance as a whole after this point, so here is a summary of the effects of the Discovery of the West on the former Alliance’s constituent islands, as well as other islands with a dominant Duebarche population.
Ngapito
From the Incident, the Ngapito were left alone to deal with its rapidly decreasing resources, splitting off into two tribes. There was also a change in religion as the belief in Tangaroa waned and the belief in his contemporary, Makemake, grew.
Rarotonga
Presiding over an archipelago that essentially was half Tonga and half Tahiti, Rarotonga and its neighbours seemed to be the perfect mediator between the two great ocean powers. The representative of Te Ao-uri had hailed from Rarotonga when the Alliance still functioned, and even now, trade to and from Tahiti was required to go through this almost insignificant island for safety reasons. It was from this symbolic chokepoint that Rarotonga would soon become one of the richer islands in the Far Eastern Ocean.
Rotuma
As one of the two islands that began the Fakatau Aroha, Rotuma was admired greatly by the people of Hawaiki. However, like its admirer, it soon became a backwater island in the Tongan Empire. This was an island where people were born to leave, with nothing of note happening here. Rotuma had their own chiefs, and were generally left alone by the Tongans.
Samoa
After the people of Savai’i and ‘Upolu ousted the Tu’i Tonga from the islands, Tonga still maintained fairly good relations with them. That is, until Takalaua decided to conquer the islands, starting with ‘Upolu. Of course, under the control of the malietoa, the people of ‘Upolu repelled the invasion, and the Tongans were repulsed once again. From this victory, the Malietoa, in order to increase his legitimacy among the other chiefs, Tu’i Atua and Tu’i A’ana, decided to invade their attempted invaders, organising an invasion party en route to the island of Tongatapu.
As the Tu’i Tonga moved his palace to Aotearoa, Tongatapu was pretty much easy pickings for the invading party, with only the unnaturally bloodthirsty governor, Kau’ulufonua [2], putting much of a fight. Now the ruler of the original capital, Mu’a, the Malietoa proclaimed himself the Tu’i Tonga, though the Tongans in Aotearoa would soon call them Tu’i Kanokupolu [3].
Tahiti
Due to its relatively large size, the island of Tahiti was split into various territories headed by ariki, or chiefs. However, even with this fundamental division, the influence of Tahiti had grown enough that before the disintegration of the Fakatau Aroha, the island was considered the counterpart to the Tongan Empire. However, when the Fakatau Aroha did dissolve, Tahiti lost its prominence, due to its distance from the Duebarche’s trading partners.
Tahiti’s main exports was the pearl.
Tokelau
As a set of three related atolls in the middle of nowhere, Tokelau was most definitely not noticed by any of the main powers of the Far Eastern Ocean, except possibly as route between Tonga and Tahiti. This would have made Tokelau fairly rich due to the increased traffic, but all that extra food and items go immediately into the survival of the population.
Tonga
As arguably one of the most powerful islands on the Far Eastern Ocean, Tonga’s realm of direct influence ranged from Rotuma in the west to Niue in the east at its greatest extent in 1351.[4] Soon after contact with China and its tributaries, however, life in the empire became more chaotic. In an effort to increase their own prestige among the rest of the ocean, the then-current Tu’i Tonga, or chief, Takalaua, ordered for the creation of rice farms on the biggest islands within the empire, where land was not at a premium: nowhere. Though Rotuma and Tongatapu were fairly large by Tonga’s standards, the land was not enough for the creation of the rice fields ordered.
So, after executing all those who failed him, Tu’i Tonga Takalaua organised an invasion party to retake the recently independent Samoa, after his ancestor, Tu’i Tonga Talakaifaiki, lost it in his old age. Unfortunately, the gift of gunpowder had not truly arrived on the Tongan shores, mostly because of the slightly undeveloped nature of those weapons. This meant that, after over a year of fighting, Takalaua withdrew his forces and forced him to find new lands to plant his precious rice.
Takalaua did not give up in his folly, however. He got his explorers to find a new land for him to plant his rice, and when they did find a plentiful land in the south, Takalaua moved the capital and his palace to that new southern land. Unbeknownst to him, the new land that Takalaua would settle was also Aotearoa.
Tuvalu
The eight islands of Tuvalu were very important for the discovery of the world west of the islands of Tonga, being the western frontier of the Empire. It was because of Tuvalu that Tarawa and Nan Madol were discovered by the Fakatau Aroha, and it was because of Tuvalu that there were Duebarche populations in
Wa’ab (Yap)
The Western concept of using a third-party item to simplify trade was not new to the island of Wa’ab, as they have used large stone circles, known as rai stones, in their transactions. However, since these people had no writing at all, these transactions were recorded in oral history. Also, since these rai stones soon became too large to carry around comfortably, these transaction were also only performed like so:
Person A: I would like to trade your stuff for my rai stone that fell in the sea because the sailors crashed or something.
Person B: Alright. The ownership of the rai stone in the sea has now transferred to me. Here’s the stuff.
Ultimately, when the idea of currency was introduced to the rest of the Far Eastern Ocean, it would be attributed to the people of Wa’ab.
Wahipounamu
The Turehu, or Waitaha, nominally controls the entirety of the island, and that was what they told the Westerners. However, in reality, the Waitaha control reached only the East Coast, where most people lived, as well as small pockets of the West Coast, where various rocks, such as nephrite jade, were being mined.
Due to the practically impassable nature of Raukawa, all those seeking to go between the east and west coasts had to go through the actual land of the Turehu. That was what the northerners called themselves possibly as a sign of solidarity with their southern cousins. The Waitaha were having none of it. Sure, they needed the Turehu’s services for a safe travel, but that did not mean that the Waitaha had to be friends with them.
[1] This is actual OTL Tongan proverb, again killing some butterflies. It means roughly: Though our island is small, we are still great.
[2] Kau’ulufonua (the First) IOTL was the Tu’i Tonga that succeeded Takalaua after his successful assassination that was unsuccessful here. It was said that he chased the assassins in an inter-island chase, before killing them on Mu’a after arresting them on ‘Uvea or Futuna.
[3] This IOTL was the name of the third and current Tongan dynasty, and means Flesh of ‘Upolu. This was so named IOTL because a Tongan noble married a Samoan woman.
[4] This is assuming that there were about three Tu’i Tonga every hundred years instead of four, as is current thinking.