Some early European commentators have propagated the notion of a pre-historic "Tui Tonga Empire" or "Tongan Empire" in Oceania

Oceania

Oceania is a region centered on the islands of the tropical Pacific Ocean. Conceptions of what constitutes Oceania range from the coral atolls and volcanic islands of the South Pacific to the entire insular region between Asia and the Americas, including Australasia and the Malay Archipelago...

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This idea has long been a source of cultural pride among some Tongans even though it has been seriously challenged and generally discounted by modern archaeologists, historians, and Tongan scholars; the physical evidence for any long-term, successive "empire" is scanty at best and supported only by a handful of oral traditions which have been widely propagated as fact.