Kingdom of Tahiti Pomare was the Tahitian chieftain most friendly to the British. The additional British captains arriving at Tahiti accepted his claim to hegemony. They gave him guns in trade and helped him in his battles. Captain Cook gave him the advantage in a number of battles with rival forces during his last stay in Tahiti, circa 1779. British missionaries arrived, sent by a non-denominational Protestant group called the London Missionary Society. Pomare befriended the missionaries, and the missionaries favored both peace and Pomare, but, with the British unwilling to apply force to create order among the islands, the missionaries were unable
Lapwing (1769 EIC packet) normally brought provisions had not arrived. The famine was the Great Bengal famine of 1770, which killed an estimated 10 million people (a quarter of the population), in the area. It was caused due to the widespread forced cultivation of opium (forced upon local farmers by the EIC as part of its strategy to export it to China) in place of local food crops, resulting in a shortage of grain. Citations References Lapwing (1769 EIC packet) Lapwing was a packet ship that made two round-trips to India for the British East India Company (EAC). Currently, both her origin and her