Colonial Service
In 1883, with the promise of marriage to a Grace Webber should he be financially secure, Thomson secured a cadet position at the Colonial Office, where he assisted Sir William Des Vœux, then Governor of Fiji. Arriving in Fiji in early 1884, and set about learning the Fijian and Tongan languages while appointed as a stipendiary magistrate throughout the islands. When Sir William MacGregor was appointed administrator of British New Guinea, Thomson joined his staff until he was invalided back to England after contracting malaria.
Back in England, Thomson married Grace Webber in 1890, returning to Fiji with his wife in the middle of that year to serve as commissioner of native lands. When Sir John Thurston, the Governor of Fiji, dismissed the Premier of Tonga (Shirley Waldemar Baker) in his capacity as High Commissioner of the Western Pacific, Thomson was moved to Tonga, where he became assistant premier to Siaosi U. Tuku'aho, the pro-British chief appointed as Baker's replacement.
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