Samoa

Samoa may come from Samoan: Sāmoa, lit. 'holy centre', uniting a compound of Samoan: sā, lit. 'sacred' and Samoan: moa, lit. 'middle'. 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.

=== 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

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."

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. 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:

There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country ... if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children's, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will, in that case, be cast out into outer darkness.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The German colonial administration governed on the principle that "there was only one government in the islands." 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."

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. 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.

In the first incident, approximately one fifth of the Samoan population died in the influenza epidemic of 1918–1919.

In 1918, during the final stages of World War I, the Spanish flu had taken its toll, spreading rapidly from country to country. On Samoa, there had been no epidemic of pneumonic influenza in Western Samoa before the arrival of the SS Talune from Auckland on 7 November 1918. The NZ administration allowed the ship to berth in breach of quarantine; within seven days of this ship's arrival, influenza became epidemic in Upolu and then spread rapidly throughout the rest of the territory. Samoa suffered the most of all Pacific islands, with 90% of the population infected; 30% of adult men, 22% of adult women and 10% of children died. The cause of the epidemic was confirmed in 1919 by a Royal Commission of Inquiry into the Epidemic concluded that there had been no epidemic of pneumonic influenza in Western Samoa before the arrival of the Talune from Auckland on 7 November 1918.

The pandemic undermined Samoan confidence in New Zealand's administrative capacity and competence. Some Samoans asked that the rule of the islands be transferred to the Americans or the British.

The second major incident arose out of an initially peaceful protest by the Mau (which translates as "strongly held opinion"), a non-violent popular pro-independence movement which had its beginnings in the early 1900s on Savai'i, led by Lauaki Namulauulu Mamoe, an orator chief deposed by Solf. In 1909, Lauaki was exiled to Saipan and died en route back to Samoa in 1915.

By 1918, Western Samoa had a population of some 38,000 Samoans and 1,500 Europeans.

However, native Samoans greatly resented New Zealand's colonial rule, and blamed inflation and the catastrophic 1918 flu epidemic on its misrule. By the late 1920s the resistance movement against colonial rule had gathered widespread support. One of the Mau leaders was Olaf Frederick Nelson, a half Samoan and half Swedish merchant. Nelson was eventually exiled during the late 1920s and early 1930s, but he continued to assist the organisation financially and politically. In accordance with the Mau's non-violent philosophy, the newly elected leader, High Chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi, led his fellow uniformed Mau in a peaceful demonstration in downtown Apia on 28 December 1929.

The New Zealand police attempted to arrest one of the leaders in the demonstration. When he resisted, a struggle developed between the police and the Mau. The officers began to fire randomly into the crowd and used a Lewis machine gun, mounted in preparation for the demonstration, to disperse the demonstrators. Mau leader and paramount chief Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III was shot from behind and killed while trying to bring calm and order to the Mau demonstrators. Ten others died that day and approximately 50 were injured by gunshot wounds and police batons. That day would come to be known in Samoa as Black Saturday.

On 13 January 1930, the New Zealand authorities banned the organisation. As many as 1500 Mau men took to the bush, pursued by an armed force of 150 marines and seamen from the light cruiser HMS Dunedin, and 50 military police. They were supported by a seaplane flown by Flight Lieutenant Sidney Wallingford of the New Zealand Permanent Air Force. Villages were raided, often at night and with fixed bayonets. In March, through the mediation of local Europeans and missionaries, Mau leaders met New Zealand's Minister of Defence and agreed to disperse.

Supporters of the Mau continued to be arrested, so women came to the fore rallying supporters and staging demonstrations. The political stalemate was broken following the victory of the Labour Party in New Zealand's 1935 general election. A 'goodwill mission' to Apia in June 1936 recognised the Mau as a legitimate political organisation, and Olaf Nelson was allowed to return from exile. In September 1936, Samoans exercised for the first time the right to elect the members of the advisory Fono of Faipule, with representatives of the Mau movement winning 31 of the 39 seats.

After repeated efforts by the Samoan independence movement, the New Zealand Western Samoa Act of 24 November 1961 terminated the Trusteeship Agreement and granted the country independence as the Independent State of Western Samoa, effective 1 January 1962. Western Samoa, the first small-island country in the Pacific to become independent, signed a Treaty of Friendship with New Zealand later in 1962. Western Samoa joined the Commonwealth of Nations on 28 August 1970. While independence was achieved at the beginning of January, Samoa annually celebrates 1 June as its independence day.

At the time of independence, Fiamē Mataʻafa Faumuina Mulinuʻu II, one of the four highest-ranking paramount chiefs in the country, became Samoa's first prime minister. Another paramount chief, Tuiaana Tuimalealiʻifano Suatipatipa II, was admitted to the Council of Deputies; the remaining two – Tupua Tamasese Meaʻole and Malietoa Tanumafili II – became joint heads of state for life.

On 15 December 1976, Western Samoa was admitted to the United Nations as the 147th member state. It asked to be referred to in the United Nations as the Independent State of Samoa.

Travel writer Paul Theroux noted marked differences between the societies in Western Samoa and American Samoa in 1992.

Western Samoa had signed the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea on 28 September 1984, so indicating its intentions, and ratified it on 14 August 1995, making the island nation a party in efforts to manage marine resources and protect its vast regional ocean territory. The convention entered into force for Western Samoa on 13 September 1995.

On 4 July 1997, the government amended the constitution to change the name of the country from Western Samoa to Samoa, the name it had been called by in the United Nations since it joined. American Samoa protested against the name change, asserting that it diminished its own identity.

In 2002, New Zealand prime minister Helen Clark formally apologised for New Zealand's role in the Spanish influenza outbreak in 1918 that killed over a quarter of Samoa's population and for the Black Saturday killings in 1929.

On 7 September 2009, the government changed the rule of the road from right to left, in common with most other Commonwealth countries – most notably countries in the region such as Australia and New Zealand, home to large numbers of Samoans. This made Samoa the first country in the 21st century to switch to driving on the left.

At the end of December 2011, Samoa changed its time zone offset from UTC−11 to UTC+13, effectively jumping forward by one day, omitting Friday, 30 December from the local calendar. This also changed the shape of the International Date Line, moving it to the east of the territory. This change aimed to help the nation boost its economy in doing business with Australia and New Zealand. Before this change, Samoa was 21 hours behind Sydney, but the change means it is now three hours ahead. The previous time zone, implemented on 4 July 1892, operated in line with American traders based in California. In October 2021, Samoa ceased daylight saving time.

In 2017, Samoa signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

In June 2017, Parliament amended Article 1 of the Samoan Constitution to make Christianity the state religion.

In May 2021, Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa became Samoa's first female prime minister. Mataʻafa's FAST party narrowly won the election, ending the rule of long-term Prime Minister Tuilaʻepa Saʻilele Malielegaoi of the Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP), although the constitutional crisis complicated and delayed this. On 24 May 2021, she was sworn in as the new prime minister, though it was not until July that the Supreme Court ruled that her swearing-in was legal, thus ending the constitutional crisis and bringing an end to Tuilaʻepa's 22-year premiership. The FAST party's success in the 2021 election and subsequent court rulings also ended nearly four decades of HRPP rule. In 2025, after Mataʻafa dismissed FAST leader and agriculture minister Laʻauli Leuatea Schmidt over corruption charges, she was in turn expelled from FAST. After FAST, led by Schmidt, won the ensuing snap election, he replaced Mataʻafa as prime minister.

The 1960 constitution, which formally came into force with independence from New Zealand in 1962, builds on the British pattern of parliamentary democracy, modified to take account of Samoan customs. The national modern Government of Samoa is referred to as the Malo.

The head of state of Samoa is known as the O le Ao o le Malo in Samoan, and since its establishment only paramount chiefs have held the office. The current head of state is Tuimalealiʻifano Vaʻaletoʻa Sualauvi II, who was elected by the legislature in 2017 and again in 2022.

The Legislative Assembly or Fono is the unicameral legislature, consisting of 51 members serving five year terms. Forty-nine are matai title-holders elected from territorial districts by Samoans; the other two are chosen by non-Samoans with no chiefly affiliation on separate electoral rolls. At least ten per cent of the MPs must be women. Universal suffrage was adopted in 1990, but only chiefs (matai) may stand for election to the Samoan seats. There are more than 25,000 matais in the country, about five per cent of whom are women. The prime minister, chosen by a majority in the assembly, is appointed by the head of state to form a government. The prime minister's choices for the 12 cabinet positions are appointed by the head of state, subject to the continuing confidence of the legislative assembly. Since 2025, Laʻauli Leuatea Schmidt has served as prime minister, while Auapaʻau Mulipola Aloitafua has been speaker of the Legislative Assembly.

Prominent women in Samoan politics include the late Laʻulu Fetauimalemau Mataʻafa (1928–2007) from Lotofaga constituency, the wife of Samoa's first prime minister. Their daughter Fiamē Naomi Mataʻafa is a matai and a long-serving senior member of cabinet, who was elected Prime Minister in 2021. Other women in politics include Samoan scholar and eminent professor Aiono Fanaafi Le Tagaloa, orator-chief Matatumua Maimoana and Safuneituʻuga Paʻaga Neri (former Minister of Communication and Technology).

The judicial system incorporates English common law and local customs. The Supreme Court of Samoa is the court of highest jurisdiction. The Chief Justice of Samoa is appointed by the head of state upon the recommendation of the prime minister.

Samoa comprises eleven itūmālō (political districts). These are the traditional eleven districts which predate European arrival. Each district has its own constitutional foundation (faʻavae) based on the traditional order of title precedence found in each district's faalupega (traditional salutations). The capital village of each district administers and coordinates the affairs of the district and confers each district's paramount title, amongst other responsibilities.

For example:

Aʻana has its capital at Leulumoega. The paramount tama a 'āiga (royal lineage) title of Aʻana is Tuimalealiʻifano. The paramount pāpā title of Aʻana is the Tui Aʻana. The orator group which confers this title — the Faleiva (House of Nine) — is based at Leulumoega.

Ātua has its capital at Lufilufi. The paramount tama a ʻāiga (royal lineage) titles of Ātua are Tupua Tamasese (based in Falefa and Salani) and Mataʻafa (based in Amaile and Lotofaga). The two main political families who confer the respective titles are ʻAiga Sā Fenunuivao and ʻAiga Sā Levālasi. The paramount pāpā title of Ātua is the Tui Ātua. The orator group which confers this title — the Faleono (House of Six) — is based at Lufilufi.

Tuamasaga has its capital at Afega. The paramount tama a ʻāiga (royal lineage) title of Tuamasaga is the Malietoa title, based in Malie. The main political family that confers the Malietoa title is ʻAiga Sā Malietoa, with Auimatagi as the main speaker for the family. The paramount pāpā titles of Tuamasaga are Gatoaitele (conferred by Afega) and Vaetamasoalii (conferred by Safata).

The eleven itūmālō are identified to be:

On Upolu

1. Tuamasaga (Afega)1

2. Aʻana (Leulumoega)

3. Aiga-i-le-Tai (Mulifanua)2

4. Atua (Lufilufi)3

5. Vaʻa-o-Fonoti (Samamea)

On Savaiʻi

6. Faʻasaleleaga (Safotulafai)

7. Gagaʻemauga (Saleaula)4

8. Gagaʻifomauga (Safotu)

9. Vaisigano (Asau)

10. Satupaʻitea (Satupaʻitea)

11. Palauli (Vailoa)

1 including the faipule district of Siumu

2 including islands Manono, Apolima and Nuʻulopa

3 including the Aleipata Islands and Nuʻusafeʻe Island

4 smaller parts also on Upolu (Salamumu, incl. Salamumu-Uta and Leauvaʻa villages)

Major areas of concern include the under-representation of women, domestic violence and poor prison conditions. Homosexual acts are illegal in Samoa.

In June 2017, an Act was passed changing the country's constitution to include a reference to the Trinity. As amended, Article 1 of the Samoan Constitution states that "Samoa is a Christian nation founded on God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit". According to The Diplomat, "What Samoa has done is shift references to Christianity into the body of the constitution, giving the text far more potential to be used in legal processes." The preamble to the constitution already described the country as "an independent State based on Christian principles and Samoan custom and traditions."

Samoa has no formal defence structure or regular armed forces. It has informal defence ties with New Zealand, which is required to consider any request for assistance from Samoa under the bilateral Treaty of Friendship of 1962.

Officers of the national police force, the Samoa Police Service, are regularly unarmed, but may be armed in exceptional circumstances with ministerial approval. As of 2022 there are between 900 and 1,100 police officers in Samoa.

Samoa lies south of the equator, about halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand, in the Polynesian region of the Pacific Ocean. The total land area is 2,842 km2 (1,097 sq mi), consisting of the two large islands of Upolu and Savaiʻi (which together account for 99% of the total land area) and eight small islets.

The islets are:

the three islets in the Apolima Strait (Manono Island, Apolima and Nuʻulopa)

the four Aleipata Islands off the eastern end of Upolu (Nuʻutele, Nuʻulua, Namua, and Fanuatapu)

Nuʻusafeʻe, which is less than 1 ha (2+1⁄2 acres) in area and lies about 1.4 km (0.87 mi; 0.76 nmi) off the south coast of Upolu at the village of Vaovai

The main island of Upolu is home to nearly three-quarters of Samoa's population, and to the capital city, Apia.

The Samoan Islands result geologically from volcanism originating from the Samoa hotspot, which is probably driven by a mantle plume. While all of the islands have volcanic origins, only Savaiʻi, the westernmost island in Samoa, remains volcanically active, with the most recent eruptions at Mount Matavanu (1905–1911), Mata o le Afi (1902) and Mauga Afi (1725). The highest point in Samoa is Mount Silisili, at 1,858 m (6,096 ft). The Saleaula lava fields situated on the central north coast of Savaiʻi result from the Mount Matavanu eruptions, which left 50 km2 (19 sq mi) of solidified lava.

Savaiʻi is the largest of the Samoan islands and the sixth-largest Polynesian island (after New Zealand's North, South and Stewart Islands and the Hawaiian islands of Hawaiʻi and Maui). The population of Savaiʻi is roughly 42 thousand people.

Samoa has an equatorial climate. The average annual temperature is 26.5 °C (79.7 °F), and a main rainy season from November to April, although heavy rain may fall in any month.