 This was later misinterpreted by Europeans as sovereignty or subjugation of the other islands to Tahiti.In the 1830s, tensions between French naval interests, the British settlers and pro-British native chieftains on Tahiti led to conflict.In 1836, the Protestant Queen Pōmare IV of Tahiti, under the influence of British consul and former LMS missionary George Pritchard, evicted two French Catholic missionaries from the islands to maintain the dominance of Protestantism in the island kingdom.