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Tonga¶

Area

Coins

4

The Kingdom of Tonga is a 169 island archipelago in the South Pacific ocean. Stretching about 800 km in a north-south direction, 36 of the islands are inhabited. Tonga is the only sovereign monarchy among the island nations of the South Pacific, and has plans to become a constitutional monarchy sometime in 2010. Tonga is the only nation in the region that miraculously avoided being taken over by Europeans (aka "colonisation").

Named the sixth most corrupt country on earth in 2008 by Forbes magazine, the monetary part of Tonga's economy is pretty much owned and controlled by the royal family and so-called nobles. The country also relies heavily on remittances from the half of Tongans who live abroad (mainly in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States). In rural Tonga, the people mainly rely on subsistence agriculture.

Tonga on Wikipedia

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