Samoa, officially the Independent State of Samoa, is an island country in Polynesia, a part of Oceania, which is in the South Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu), two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima), and several smaller, uninhabited islands, including the Aleipata Islands (Nuʻutele, Nuʻulua, Fanuatapu and Namua). Samoa is located west of American Samoa, northeast of Tonga, northeast of Fiji, east of Wallis and Futuna, southeast of Tuvalu, south of Tokelau, southwest of Hawaii, and northwest of Niue. The capital and largest city is Apia.
The Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan Islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a Samoan language and Samoan cultural identity. Because of the Samoans' seafaring skills, pre-20th-century European explorers referred to the entire island group, including American Samoa, as the "Navigator Islands". The country became a colony of the German Empire in 1899 after the Tripartite Convention, and was known as German Samoa. German administration ended in August 1914 after New Zealand troops bloodlessly occupied the colony at the start of World War I. New Zealand officially gained control of the region as a League of Nations mandate in 1920, when it became the Territory of Western Samoa. After being converted into a United Nations Trust Territory in 1946, Western Samoa gained independence on 1 January 1962 and officially returned to its original pre-occupation name Samoa on 4 July 1997.
Samoa is a unitary parliamentary democracy with 11 administrative divisions. It was admitted to the United Nations on 15 December 1976 and the country is also a member of the Commonwealth of Nations and the Pacific Islands Forum. The island's defence is responsible to the New Zealand Defence Force.
Etymology Samoa may come from , uniting a compound of and . The name is alternatively derived from a local chieftain named Samoa or an indigenous word meaning 'place of the chicken'.
From independence in 1962, the country was officially known as the Independent State of Western Samoa, commonly known as Western Samoa. From 4 July 1997, the country changed its name to Samoa, drawing protests from nearby American Samoa, although the former name remains in use, especially their .ws top-domain.
History
Geological history The islands of Samoa were formed from the Miocene period. For the past 2 million years, the Samoan archipelago has experienced activity related to volcanic hotspots.
Early history Samoa was discovered and settled by the Lapita people (Austronesian people who spoke Oceanic languages), who travelled from Island Melanesia. The earliest human remains found in Samoa are dated to between roughly 2,900 and 3,500 years ago. The remains were discovered at a Lapita site at Mulifanua, and the scientists' findings were published in 1974. The Samoans' origins have been studied in modern times through scientific research on Polynesian genetics, linguistics, and anthropology. However, while this research is ongoing, a number of theories have been proposed in the meantime. One theory is that the original Samoans were Austronesians who arrived during a final period of eastward expansion of the Lapita peoples out of Southeast Asia and Melanesia between 2,500 and 1,500 BCE.The Political Economy of Ancient Samoa: Basalt Adze Production and Linkages to Social Status (Winterhoff 2007)
Intimate sociocultural and genetic ties were maintained between Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga, and the archaeological record supports oral tradition and native genealogies that indicate interisland voyaging and intermarriage among precolonial Samoans, Fijians, and Tongans. Notable figures in Samoan history included the Tui Manu'a line, Queen Salamasina, King Fonoti and the four tama a ʻāiga: Malietoa, Tupua Tamasese, Mataʻafa, and Tuimalealiʻifano. Nafanua was a famous woman warrior who was deified in ancient Samoan religion and whose patronage was highly sought after by successive Samoan rulers.
Today, all of Samoa is united under its two principal royal families: the Sā Malietoa of the ancient Malietoa lineage that defeated the Tongans in the 13th century; and the Sā Tupua, Queen Salamasina's descendants and heirs who ruled Samoa in the centuries that followed her reign. Within these two principal lineages are the four highest titles of Samoa – the elder titles of Malietoa and Tupua Tamasese of antiquity and the newer Mataʻafa and Tuimalealiʻifano titles, which rose to prominence in 19th-century wars that preceded the colonial period. These four titles form the apex of the Samoan matai system as it stands today.
Contact with Europeans began in the early 18th century. Jacob Roggeveen, a Dutchman, was the first known non-Polynesian to sight the Samoan islands in 1722. This visit was followed by French explorer Louis Antoine de Bougainville, who named them the Navigator Islands in 1768. Contact was limited before the 1830s, which is when British missionaries of the London Missionary Society, whalers, and traders began arriving.
19th century Visits by American trading and whaling vessels were important in the early economic development of Samoa. The Salem brig Roscoe (Captain Benjamin Vanderford), in October 1821, was the first American trading vessel known to have called, and the Maro (Captain Richard Macy) of Nantucket, in 1824, was the first recorded United States whaler at Samoa.Rhys Richards, (1992), Samoa's forgotten whaling heritage; American whaling in Samoan waters 1824–1878, Wellington, Lithographic Services, pp.18–20. The whalers came for fresh drinking water, firewood, provisions, and, later, to recruit local men to serve as crewmen on their ships. The last recorded whaler visitor was the Governor Morton in 1870.Langdon, Robert (1984) Where the whalers went; an index to the Pacific ports and islands visited by American whalers (and some other ships) in the 19th century, Canberra, Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, p.215.
Christian missionary work in Samoa began in 1830 when John Williams of the London Missionary Society arrived in Sapapali'i from the Cook Islands and Tahiti. According to Barbara A. West, "The Samoans were also known to engage in 'headhunting', a ritual of war in which a warrior took the head of his slain opponent to give to his leader, thus proving his bravery."West, Barbara A. (2008). Encyclopedia of the Peoples of Asia and Oceania . Infobase Publishing. p. 704.
In A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892), Robert Louis Stevenson details the activities of the great powers battling for influence in Samoa – the United States, Germany and Britain – and the political machinations of the various Samoan factions within their indigenous political system.Stevenson, Robert Louis (1892). A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa at Gutenberg. Even as they descended into ever greater interclan warfare, what most alarmed Stevenson was the Samoans' economic innocence. In 1894, just months before his death, he addressed the island chiefs:
He had "seen these judgments of God" in Hawaii, where abandoned native churches stood like tombstones "over a grave, in the midst of the white men's sugar fields".
The Germans, in particular, began to show great commercial interest in the Samoan Islands, especially on the island of Upolu, where German firms monopolised copra and cocoa bean processing. The United States laid its own claim, based on commercial shipping interests in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and Pago Pago Bay in eastern Samoa, and forced alliances, most conspicuously on the islands of Tutuila and Manu'a, which became American Samoa.
Britain also sent troops to protect British business interests, harbour rights, and the consulate. This was followed by an eight-year civil war, during which each of the three powers supplied arms, training, and, in some cases, combat troops to the warring Samoan parties. The Samoan crisis reached a critical juncture in March 1889, when all three colonial contenders sent warships into Apia harbour, and a large-scale war seemed imminent. A massive storm on 15 March 1889 damaged or destroyed the warships, ending the military conflict.
The Second Samoan Civil War reached a head in 1898 when Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States were locked in dispute over who should control the Samoan Islands. The Siege of Apia occurred in March 1899. Samoan forces loyal to Prince Tanu were besieged by a larger force of Samoan rebels loyal to Mataʻafa Iosefo. Supporting Prince Tanu were landing parties from four British and American warships. After several days of fighting, the Samoan rebels were finally defeated.Mains, P. John; McCarty, Louis Philippe (1906). The Statistician and Economist: Volume 23. p. 249
American and British warships shelled Apia on 15 March 1899, including the USS Philadelphia. Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States quickly resolved to end the hostilities and divided the island chain under the Tripartite Convention of 1899, signed in Washington on 2 December 1899, with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900.Ryden, George Herbert. The Foreign Policy of the United States in Relation to Samoa. New York: Octagon Books, 1975. (Reprint by special arrangement with Yale University Press. Originally published at New Haven: Yale University Press, 1928), p. 574
The eastern island group became a territory of the United States (the Tutuila Islands in 1900 and officially Manu'a in 1904) and was known as American Samoa. The western islands, by far the greater landmass, became German Samoa. The United Kingdom had vacated all claims in Samoa and in return received (1) termination of German rights in Tonga, (2) all of the Solomon Islands south of Bougainville, and (3) territorial alignments in West Africa.Ryden, p. 571
German Samoa (1900–1914)
The German Empire governed the western part of the Samoan archipelago from 1900 to 1914. Wilhelm Solf was appointed the colony's first governor. In 1908, when the non-violent Mau a Pule resistance movement arose, Solf did not hesitate to banish the Mau leader Lauaki Namulau'ulu Mamoe to Saipan in the German Northern Mariana Islands.World History at KMLA , zum.de
The German colonial administration governed on the principle that "there was only one government in the islands."Lewthwaite, Gordon R. "Life, Land and Agriculture to Mid-Century," in Western Samoa. Edited by James W. Fox and Kenneth Brailey Cumberland. Christchurch, New Zealand: Whitcomb & Tombs Ltd. 1962, p. 148 Thus, there was no Samoan Tupu (king), nor an alii sili (similar to a governor), but two Fautua (advisors) were appointed by the colonial government. Tumua and Pule (traditional governments of Upolu and Savai'i) were for a time silent; all decisions on matters affecting lands and titles were under the control of the colonial Governor.
In the first month of World War I, on 29 August 1914, troops of the New Zealand Expeditionary Force landed unopposed on Upolu and seized control from the German authorities, following a request by Great Britain for New Zealand to perform this "great and urgent imperial service."
New Zealand rule (1914–1961)
From the end of World War I until 1962, New Zealand controlled Western Samoa as a Class C Mandate under trusteeship through the League of Nations, then through the United Nations. Between 1919 and 1962, Samoa was administered by the Department of External Affairs, a government department which had been specially created to oversee New Zealand's Island Territories and Samoa."External Affairs Bill", in New Zealand Parliamentary Debates, Vol. 185 (3 October–5 November 1919), p.337. In 1943, this department was renamed the Department of Island Territories after a separate Department of External Affairs was created to conduct New Zealand's foreign affairs. During the period of New Zealand control, their administrators were responsible for two major incidents.
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