Baker family collection.

Shirley Waldemar Baker was a missionary and premier of Tonga, who developed the constitution of Tonga in 1875. He successfully advocated ecclesiastical independence for the Tongan mission, which was granted by the Australian conference in 1875. Baker was also largely responsible for negotiating the treaty of friendship signed between Tonga and Germany in 1876. The treaty, however, attracted the attention of the British authorities in Fiji and, after an inquiry by the British consul into his methods of fund raising, Baker was recalled from Tonga by the missionary committee in 1879. A bitter dispute developed with the Wesleyans and in 1885 Baker established the Free Church, Wesleyan in doctrine but free from Australian control. In 1887 an unsuccessful attempt was made on Baker's life; renewed persecutions by the Wesleyans followed and six Tongans were executed for complicity in the plot. The disturbances led to increasing British intervention in Tonga and in 1890 Baker was deported by the High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, Sir John Thurston, for being 'prejudicial to the peace and good order of the Western Pacific'. He died in Tonga in 1903.