KEY EVENTS IN HISTORY OF SAMOA
By Michael Field
AUCKLAND, New Zealand (May 30, 2001 – Agence France-Presse)---In the first week of June the Independent State of Samoa marks the 40th anniversary of its re-establishment of independence. These are key events in its history:
·    Around 1000 BC people arrived -- probably "Lapita" people who founded Polynesia from Tonga and Fiji.
·    1721 -- Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen was the first white man to visit although he had no clear idea of where he was. Frenchman Bougainville in 1768 called the place the Navigator Islands because he saw many canoes.
·    Samoa's chiefly families struggled through the 19th Century to remain independent as Britain, Germany and the United States sponsored proxy civil wars in bids to claim the country. Treasure Island author Robert Louis Stevenson, who was to die in Samoa, wrote of the strife in "A Foot-Note to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa."
·    1830 - Christianity arrives in Samoa
·    March 16, 1889 -- A naval disaster saw ships from Germany and the U.S. wrecked in storms in Apia Harbor with heavy loss of life, prompting the 1889 Berlin Treaty recognizing Maliatoa Laupepa as "king" of Samoa while the three powers controlled the capital, Apia. Further conflict followed.
·    March 1, 1900 -- Germany takes over "Western" Samoa while the United States takes, and continues to hold, American Samoa.
·    August 29, 1914 -- German Samoa becomes the first German territory to fall to the Allies when New Zealand -- supported by the Australian and French navies -- seizes Apia. It was bloodless; the Germans refused to fight.
·    November 7, 1914 -- New Zealand ship Talune arrives in Apia. Carelessness saw no quarantine and Western Samoans became the world's worst victims of Spanish Influenza, killing over 7,500 or 22 percent of the population in two weeks. The U.S. kept American Samoa free of the virus. Talune went on to take the disease to Tonga and Fiji.
·    1919 -- Under the Versailles Treaty Western Samoa became a League of Nations mandate under New Zealand's care.
·    December 28, 1929 -- Armed New Zealand police confront the pacifist Mau Movement calling for self-government and kill 11, including charismatic high chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III. New Zealand's infant air force and the Royal Navy were sent in to suppress the Mau.
·    The tension ended in 1936 when New Zealand elected its first Labor Government, which gave a mouthpiece to self-government, but did nothing about it.
·    During World War II the U.S. Marines were based on Upolu, affecting the Samoan view of the world.
·    From 1947 on Western Samoa moved toward independence after a United Nations referendum conducted under a universal franchise. It approved a constitution giving the vote only to matai or chiefs and created two life term heads of state. One died shortly after independence but Malietoa Tanumafili II has now led the country for 40 years.
·    January 1, 1962 -- Independence from New Zealand but pragmatically it marks the annual anniversary on June 1 to 3 to avoid the wet season. It was the first Pacific nation to re-establish independence.
·    1979 -- its first political party formed: the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP).
·    1982 -- New Zealand's highest court, the Privy Council in London, ruled that all Samoans born between 1928 and 1949 were still New Zealanders. Wellington quickly changed the law.
·    1982 -- political crisis in Samoa with three prime ministers in the year during a corruption scandal and power struggle. By the end of the year missionary son Tofilau Eti became prime minister and stayed in office until 1998.
·    1989 and 1991 -- devastating cyclones hit Samoa hard.
·    1993 - the main food crop taro wiped out by blight.
·    1990 -- Samoa changes from matai or family head franchise to universe franchise -- but only matai can sit in Parliament.
·    1997 -- Drops as a colonial relic the "Western" from its name, outraging American Samoans.
·    July 16, 1999 - Cabinet minister assassinated by gunman sent by two other disgruntled cabinet ministers. All three eventually sentenced to death, but commuted to life-imprisonment.
Michael Field
New Zealand/South Pacific Correspondent
Agence France-Presse
FROM:  http://pidp.eastwestcenter.org/pireport/2002/May/05-31-03.htm