Samoa History

Pre 20th Century

The origins of Samoa are shrouded in an ambiguity that is pure Samoa. The most popular theory is that Samoans, like other Polynesians, originated from the East Indies, the Malay peninsula or the Philippines, but Samoans tell a different story. Other Polynesians, they say, might have come from Asia but Samoans come from Samoa. They believe themselves to be the cradle of Polynesian culture, a race of people created by the god Tagaloa while he was cooking up the world. In fact the Samoan legend of the beginning of the world is startlingly similar to that told in Genesis.

Despite its reputation as an exotic, far-away land Samoa was in fact as busy as a shopping mall from the mid-1770s when trading ships, sailing along the spice route and looking for the Great Southern Land, popped in and out with monotonous regularity. Much of the early contact and bloody encounters between Samoans and Europeans took place in the islands that are now part of American Samoa but the islands of Samoa suffered the same diseases and acts of violence that came with the European ships. By the time the British arrived, looking for the troublesome Christian Fletcher and his band of merry mutineers, the Samoans were hardly in a welcoming mood. In the resulting head-to-head between the British and the Samoans, lives were lost on both sides and gave rise to the reputation that Samoans were hostile and aggressive.

Given this violent history it's a miracle that the missionaries arriving in the early 19th century, brandishing their Bibles and threats of everlasting damnation, weren't killed immediately. Instead there were wholesale conversions, a phenomenon that might be explained by the fact that Christianity and old Samoan beliefs were not dissimilar and that the Samoan god Nafanua had predicted the coming of a new religion which would be stronger and more powerful than the old gods. The fire power and wealth of the palagi (Europeans or 'sky bursters') was obvious and the enthusiastic embracing of Christianity may have had more to do with religious pragmatism than blind faith. These early soul-scouting expeditions were brief affairs, long on brio but short on planning. This changed in 1836 when John Williams and Charles Barff became the first two men to take up missionary posts in Samoa. Williams converted a large number of Samoans before ending up as main course at a traditional Melanesian feast. The untimely demise of Reverend Williams did not stop the onward Christian soldiers and the influence of these early missionaries was so profound that even today Samoa is known as the Bible Belt of the Pacific.

By the late 19th century Britain, America and Germany all had their hackles raised and were pulling at Samoa in a three-way tug-of-war, which had much to do with commerce and the flexing of military muscles and not much to do with 'protecting' Samoa. Tensions escalated and more ships were called in until there were no fewer than seven warships bristling and snarling inside the small confines of the Apia harbour. The whole shebang started to look like a bad joke ('the British, the Americans and the Germans were in a Mexican standoff in Samoa...'), when the punch line was delivered. So busy were they watching each other that they failed to notice the falling barometer and before they knew it a cyclone of epic proportions had hit. After the dust had settled, six of the ships had either sunk or been scuttled. The only surviving ship was the British ship Calliope. The cyclone knocked a bit of sense into the Europeans and they went to the table to negotiate but the result for the Samoan islands wasn't much better. Samoa was carved up piecemeal with Western Samoa being handed to the Germans, Eastern Samoa going to the Americans, and the British going home empty-handed.

Modern

Germany made the classic colonialist's error of disregarding local customs and kings and before long the indigenous inhabitants were chafing under autocratic foreign rule. The Western Samoans formed a resistance force, the Mau Movement, dedicated to the preservation of their culture and the establishment of independence. The outbreak of war in 1914 changed the Euro-Pacific arena and Germany had a few other problems on its hands apart from a rebellious Samoan resistance movement. As part of the war effort Britain asked New Zealand if they wouldn't mind, old chap, taking over the radio station in Western Samoa which they duly did in an operation that was more Dad's Army than the Dardenelles. Hoisting a white serviette (no-one could find a white flag or hanky), they were received by one or two minor officials from the German government who apologised for not being able to authorise the surrender of Western Samoa and then promptly went AWOL. New Zealand heroically 'captured' the radio station by fossicking around in the bushes for the parts of the radio station thrown away by the defeated army and then 'liberated' Western Samoa.

A change in rulers meant little to the Mau Movement or the majority of Western Samoans who continued to agitate for independence. New Zealand continued to govern the islands, introducing rugby and possibly even Jandals into the cultural mix. Finally in 1961 a proposal was put before the United Nations and independence was granted in January 1962. Unfortunately, it was not all smooth sailing. Labour disputes and increasing dependence on foreign aid meant reality fell short of the dream, but things really got black when the country was ripped apart by back-to-back cyclones in the 1990s and their main export crop, taro, was decimated by a fungal blight.

Recent

The country, which changed its name in 1997 to Samoa, fell into an economic hole from which it has never fully recovered, although tourism and financial laws designed to attract offshore capital are now easing the pressure. Indeed, Samoa's efforts to become an international finance centre landed it in some trouble when an OECD report of 2001 listed the country as one of 35 tax havens conducive to money-laundering.

Samoa marked the 40th anniversary of its independence with a ceremony at Apia attended by New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark. She used the occasion as an opportunity to apologise to Samoans for their treatment at the hands of New Zealanders during colonial times.

The most recent cyclone to hit the island was Olaf in February 2005, though the resulting damage on 'Upolu was much less than at first feared.