A history from writers from Western Samoa, examining thematically the influences of European settlers, the churches, German and NZ colonialism and the background to Western Samoa's independence. This short history is written for the general reader and for senior high school and university students seeking an overview of Samoan history. First published in 1987 and last reprinted in 2003. This is a reissue of the 2003 edition for 2018.

A History of America Samoa is a high school level textbook initiated and completed by the Amerika Samoa Humanities Council. The content detailed in the book ranges from the migration, discovery, and inhabitation of the western Pacific and specifically Samoa, today known as a territory just over a hundred years old. This textbook is written from the perspective of both oral and written accounts of Samoan history. It covers the geographical formation, historical inhabitation, and development of American Samoa through legends, geography, and timelines that help span a time period beginning with the earliest signs of human integration to today's modern setting. This text weaves together the historical account of a little known island with its people spread throughout the globe, through local myth, legend, and authentic biographical information in this comprehensive history of American Samoa.

A new history of globalization and empire at the crossroads of the Pacific. Located halfway between HawaiÔi and Australia, the islands of Samoa have long been a center of Oceanian cultural and economic exchange. Accustomed to exercising agency in trade and diplomacy, Samoans found themselves enmeshed in a new form of globalization after missionaries and traders arrived in the middle of the nineteenth century. As the great powers of Europe and America competed to bring Samoa into their orbits, Germany and the United States eventually agreed to divide the islands for their burgeoning colonial holdings. In Coconut Colonialism, Holger Droessler examines the Samoan response through the lives of its workers. Ordinary SamoansÑsome on large plantations, others on their own small holdingsÑpicked and processed coconuts and cocoa, tapped rubber trees, and built roads and ports that brought cash crops to Europe and North America. At the same time, Samoans redefined their own way of being in the worldÑwhat Droessler terms ÒOceanian globalityÓÑto challenge German and American visions of a global economy that in fact served only the needs of Western capitalism. Through cooperative farming, Samoans contested the exploitative wage-labor system introduced by colonial powers. The islanders also participated in ethnographic shows around the world, turning them into diplomatic missions and making friends with fellow colonized peoples. Samoans thereby found ways to press their own agendas and regain a degree of independence. Based on research in multiple languages and countries, Coconut Colonialism offers new insights into the global history of labor and empire at the dawn of the twentieth century.

Looks back at the American involvement in the islands, historical events, cultural artifacts, and the people and topography of the islands.

"Since independence in January 1962, several constitutional court cases have exposed the dilemma which the Western Samoa Government is facing balancing fa'a Samoa (Samoan customs and traditions) with Western legal systems of authority. This book traces the clash between Samoan and Western notions of government and law from the 1830s to the 1980s emphasizing the hitherto neglected interpretation of events from a Samoan perspective. As a critical reinterpretation of the literature on Western Samoa, drawing on oral sources and material from the archives of the Land and Titles Court of Western Samoa, the book provides important new insights into pre-colonial regimes, racial issues and the contemporary political problems of the independent state of Western Samoa."--Back cover.

"Jean Tekura Mason's poetry reflects her life as a person living in two worlds - Polynesian and European. Some of her poems are reflective. Others are glib (and deliberately so). There is humour and there is passion - of love and hate, pagan faiths and Christian beliefs, ancestors and dancers, customs and politics, migrants and immigrants, and Pacific flora and fauna - all have stimulated Ms Mason to put pen to paper. At times incisive and descriptive, and at others deeply moging, this book is a collection of poems which is both retrospective perceptive"--Back cover