German Samoa
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German Samoa (Ger. Deutsch-Samoa) was a former German protectorate from 1900 to 1914, consisting of the islands of Upolu and Savaii and now wholly within the independent state of Samoa. Samoa was the last German colonial acquisition in the Pacific, received following the Treaty of Berlin with Great Britain and the United States on February 16, 1900. It was also the only German colony in the Pacific administered separately from German New Guinea.
[edit] History
The first European to reach Samoa was the Dutchman Jakob Roggeveen in 1722. An American expedition under Charles Wilkes reached Samoa 1839 and left a consul, followed by a British consulate in 1847. German commercial operations in the area began in the 1850s.
Increasing German interests in the area saw the the USA begin commercial operations in the port Pago Pago on Tutuila in 1877. One year later, Germany had opened its own port Apia on Upolu.
Tensions caused in part by the three separate colonial administrations led to the eight-year Samoan Civil War. The war ended with the division of the islands in 1899, with the Treaty of Berlin giving control of the western islands to Germany, the eastern Islands to the United States (present-day American Samoa) and Great Britain to be compensated with other territories in the Pacific.
Germany ruled western Samoa for 14 years, until it was occupied by New Zealand at the start of World War One. New Zealand later governed the islands as a League of Nations Mandate from 1920 onwards.
[edit] Bibliography
- Deutsche Kolonialgesellschaft: Kleiner Deutscher Kolonialatlas, Verlag Dietrich Reimer, Berlin 1899
- Karlheinz Graudenz/ Hanns-Michael Schindler: Die deutschen Kolonien, Weltbildverlag, Augsburg 1994, ISBN 3-89350-701-9
- Hans-Henning Gerlach/Andreas Birken: Die Südsee und die deutsche Seepost. Deutsche Kolonien und deutsche Kolonialpolitik Band 4, Königsbronn 2001, ISBN 3-931753-26-3
[edit] Links
- http://www.deutsche-schutzgebiete.de/deutsche-kolonien.htm (in German)
- Deutsches Koloniallexikon (in German)
nl:Duits Samoa
