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Chromograph map of Samoa - George Cram 1896. The Samoan Islands were first settled some 3,500 years ago as part of the Austronesian expansion.Both Samoa's early history and its more recent history are strongly connected to the histories of Tonga and Fiji, nearby islands with which Samoa has long had genealogical links as well as shared cultural traditions.
Samoa, [note 1] officially the Independent State of Samoa [note 2] and known until 1997 as Western Samoa (Samoan: Sāmoa i Sisifo), is an island country in Polynesia, consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima); and several smaller, uninhabited islands, including the Aleipata Islands (Nuʻutele, Nuʻulua, Fanuatapu and Namua).
The inhabitants have in common the Samoan language, a culture known as fa'a Samoa, and an indigenous form of governance called fa'amatai. [2] Samoans are one of the largest Polynesian populations in the world, and most are of exclusively Samoan ancestry. [3] The oldest known evidence of human activity in the Samoan Islands dates to around 1050 BCE.
After World War I, during the time of the Mau movement in Western Samoa (then a New Zealand protectorate), there was a corresponding American Samoa Mau movement, led by Samuel Sailele Ripley, who was from Leone village and was a World War I war veteran. In 1921, seventeen chiefs of the American Samoa Mau were arrested and imprisoned under hard ...
Samoans or Samoan people (Samoan: tagata Sāmoa) are the Indigenous Polynesian people of the Samoan Islands, an archipelago in Polynesia, who speak the Samoan language.The group's home islands are politically and geographically divided between the Independent State of Samoa and American Samoa, an unincorporated territory of the United States of America.
Samoa's long history of various ruling families continued until well after the decline of the Tui Manuʻa's power, with the western isles of Savaiʻi and Upolu rising to prominence in the post-Tongan occupation period and the establishment of the tafaʻifa system that dominated Samoan politics well into the 20th century.
After World War I, the League of Nations carved up Samoa. Britain and New Zealand took over the western islands which became 'Western Samoa' and USA claimed the eastern half of the country which became American Samoa. In 1962, Western Samoa became the first Pacific Island nation to gain political independence.
Samoan Islands; Samoa in the west and American Samoa in the east.. The political union of Samoa (an independent state previously known as Western Samoa) and American Samoa (a US territory also known as Eastern Samoa), both of which are part of the Samoan Islands, has been proposed ever since their current status was established in the first half of the 20th century under the Tripartite ...