Samoa

Located in the South Pacific, the islands that make up Samoa are of little economic importance, but they do have strategic value. They are near shipping lanes and, with the fine harbor of Pago Pago, are suitable for a naval base. By the 1880s a three-way competition between Great Britain, Germany, and the United States for Samoa led to a confrontation between the United States and Germany. In 1878 the United States signed a treaty with a six-foot, four-inch “tattooed prince” of Samoa. The treaty allowed the United States to develop a naval station at Pago Pago but committed it to support the native government should it have problems with foreign powers. Within a year the British and Germans also secured trading rights and agreed to respect the independence of Samoa. But American, British, and German consular agents were, with reason, suspicious of the annexationist intrigues of each other, and over the next decade the islands were in a state of constant turmoil.

Germany was more aggressive than either Britain or the United States. The newly united German Empire had embarked on a policy of catch-up colonialism to secure what it believed to be its rightful place among the great powers of Europe, and it wanted Samoa. Early in 1887 Germany sought to install a more compliant monarch on the Samoan throne. A subsequent tripartite conference in Washington did little to relieve the resultant political tensions, nor did it deter the Germans from their plans. German naval vessels arrived in Apia harbor, Western Samoa, soon after and proclaimed an island chief by the name of Tamaese as the new monarch. Fortified with 6,000 warriors, a rival chief named Mataafa rose up against Tamaese and his German backers and took over most of the islands, killing 20 and wounding 30 of the 140 German naval guards who participated in the struggle.

In an attempt to block what he saw as an unjust attempt to annex the islands and to placate public opinion that had been whipped up by the imperialist Republican press,

President Grover Cleveland sent three warships to Apia, where the British corvette HMS Calliope and three German warships were anchored in that small and rather unprotected harbor. With a trans-Pacific cable still years away, news from Samoa took 10 to 20 days to reach the United States. Rumors abounded in the press about battles in Apia harbor and the sinking of American ships. War fever grew unabated. The new Congress talked of spending $50 million to refit the navy to raid German commerce.

Actually, the ships were in a tense standoff that was broken on March 16, 1889, when a furious typhoon struck Apia and sank or drove on shore all the vessels except the Calliope, which made it out to the open sea and safety. The magnitude of the tragedy and the eerily equitable distribution of the casualties (50 sailors were killed) ended war talk in the press and made the powers more amenable to compromise. An 1889 conference in Berlin resolved that Mataafa would be king of the islands and Germany, Britain, and the United States would act as protectors of Samoa’s independence. Shared responsibility was the equivalent of no responsibility. Once again jealousy and intrigue became the order of the day, and Americans and Germans in particular annoyed each other. Finally, in 1899 the three powers met again and negotiated a treaty that allowed Germany to annex the western half of the islands while the United States acquired the eastern end, with Britain withdrawing entirely from Samoa.

Further reading: Edwin P. Hoyt, The Typhoon That Stopped a War (New York: David McKay Company, 1968); Richard O’Connor, Pacific Destiny: An Informal History of the U. S. in the Far East (Boston: Little, Brown, 1969).

—Timothy E. Vislocky

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