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Zealand occupied the German protectorate of Western
Samoa at the outbreak of World War I in 1914. It
continued to administer the islands as a mandate
and then as a trust territory until 1962, when the
islands became the first Polynesian nation to reestablish
independence in the 20th century. The country dropped
the "Western" from its name in 1997.
The
first Polynesians to arrive in the Samoan Islands
came island-hopping over several generations from
Southeast Asia, via Fiji and probably Tonga, more
than 4000 years ago and from there settled the
rest of Polynesia: first traveling eastward to
the Marquesas Islands, and from there southwest,
via the Society Islands to New Zealand, southeast
to Easter Island, and northward to Hawaii. Samoa
enjoys a rich history, preserved in folklore and
myth, of voyages across the ocean, conquests of
different islands, and interisland warfare with
other West Polynesian polities, such as the Kingdom
of Tonga and certain Fijian chieftainships. Some
people believe that a temple on the island of
Manono has a record, using a system of stone cairns,
that commemorates more than 150 wars. Robert Louis
Stevenson, who spent the last four years of his
life in Samoa, remarked that "War is Samoa's
favourite pastime."
Contact
with Europeans began in 1722, but intensified
after the 1830s, when English missionaries and
traders began arriving. Mission work in these
islands was begun in late 1830 by John Williams,
of the London Missionary Society. By that time,
the Samoans had gained a reputation of being savage
and warlike, as they had clashed with French,
British, German, and American forces, who, by
the late nineteenth century, valued Samoa as a
refueling station for coal-fired shipping.
As
Germany began to show more interest in the Samoan
Islands, the United States laid its own claim
to them; Britain sent troops to express its interest.
There followed an eight-year civil war. Each of
the three powers supplied arms, training, and
in some cases combat troops, to the warring Samoan
parties. All three sent warships into Apia harbor,
and a larger-scale war seemed imminent, until
a massive storm damaged or destroyed the warships,
ending the military conflict. At the turn of the
twentieth century, the Treaty of Berlin split
the Samoan Islands into two parts: the eastern
group became a territory of the United States
(the Tutuila Islands in 1900 and officially Manu'a
in 1905), and are today known as American Samoa;
the western islands, by far the greater landmass,
became known as German Samoa after the British
gave up claims to the islands in return for Fiji
and some Melanesian territories. New Zealand troops
landed in 'Upolu on 29 August 1914 and seized
control from the German authorities; after that,
the western islands became known as Western Samoa.
From
the end of the Great War (World War I) until the
1960s, New Zealand controlled Samoa under trusteeship
through the League of Nations. Though never a
member of the British Commonwealth, it enjoyed
many benefits through its relationship with New
Zealand. The Western Samoans began a campaign
known as the Mau movement to protest the foreign
administration, claiming mistreatment of the Samoan
people and blaming outsiders for the death of
a fourth or fifth of the population during the
Spanish flu pandemic, which ravaged the western
islands and much of the world in 1918. (A prompt
quarantine by authorities in American Samoa spared
the eastern islands.) In 1962, Western Samoa became
the first Pacific Island state to regain its independence.
In many ways though, it remains closely tied to
New Zealand.
In
July 1997, the constitution was amended to change
the country's name from Western Samoa to Samoa.
Samoa had been known simply as Samoa in the United
Nations since joining the organization, in 1976.
The U.S. territory of American Samoa protested
the move, asserting that the change diminished
its own identity. American Samoans still use the
terms Western Samoa and Western Samoans to describe
the Independent State of Samoa. While the two
Samoas share language and ethnicity, their more
recent culture has followed different paths, with
American Samoans emigrating to Hawai'i and the
U.S. mainland and adopting many U.S. customs,
such as American football and baseball. Western
Samoans have tended to immigrate to New Zealand,
whose influence has made the sports of rugby and
cricket more popular in the western islands.
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