🇦🇸 American Samoa

Samoa was settled as early as 1000 BC by Austronesian peoples, making it one of the earliest inhabited island groups of Polynesia.

Although settled for millennia, Samoa was not visited by Europeans until the 18th century, when Dutch and French navigators sighted the islands.

The Dutch navigator Roggeveen sighted the archipelago and named it the Baumann Islands after one of his captains. This marked the beginning of recorded European contact with a group inhabited by Polynesians since prehistoric times.

The French explorer was the next European to reach the Samoan Islands after Roggeveen. His naming of the islands fixed them on European charts and drew further Pacific expeditions towards the archipelago.

The British explorer noted the Samoan island names in his records but never visited the group. The entry added the islands to British navigational knowledge of the Pacific.

The French navigator put parties ashore from the Boussole at Fagasā and from L'Astrolabe at Aʻasu on Tutuila's north shore. It was among the earliest recorded European landings on the island that would become the territory's centre.

While attempting to obtain water on Tutuila, Captain de Langle, the scientist Robert de Lamanon and several crew were surrounded by over a thousand Samoans and killed. Lapérouse named the island Massacre Island, and the bay near Aasu still bears the name, shaping European perceptions of Samoa for decades.

The Royal Navy vessel called at the island during its Pacific search for the mutineers of HMS Bounty. The visit reflected the islands' growing position on naval routes through the South Pacific.

Williams arrived from the Cook Islands and Tahiti in late 1830 to begin missionary activity. Christianity became overwhelmingly dominant in Samoan society, a religious character the territory retains.

The American expedition visited the islands as European and American vessels increasingly used Pago Pago Harbor as a coaling and whaling stop. The visit marked early United States interest in the archipelago's strategic harbour.

Meade sailed the USS Narragansett from Hawaiʻi to Pago Pago, tasked by the US minister to Hawaiʻi with securing American interests. Mauga granted the United States exclusive rights to build and maintain a naval station in exchange for American friendship and protection, and Meade also set commercial port regulations. This was the foundation of the American presence at Pago Pago Harbor.

An Imperial German naval force destroyed American property in a Samoan village, and three American warships confronted three German warships in Apia harbour. A typhoon wrecked the ships of both sides before shots were fired, forcing a compulsory armistice and underscoring the great-power rivalry over Samoa.

The convention divided the archipelago, with the eastern group passing to the United States and the western islands becoming German Samoa, while Britain abandoned its Samoan claims in exchange for German concessions in Tonga, the Solomons and West Africa. It followed the Washington Conference of 1887, the Treaty of Berlin of 1889 and the Anglo-German Agreement on Samoa. The partition created the enduring division between American Samoa and Samoa.

After taking possession of eastern Samoa, the Navy obtained a Deed of Cession from Tutuila's chiefs on behalf of the US government and expanded the coaling station at Pago Pago Bay into United States Naval Station Tutuila. The cession remains the legal foundation of American Samoa's relationship with the United States, and 1900 also fixed the baseline for freehold land ownership.

The last Tui Manuʻa ceded the Manuʻa group following a series of US naval trials known as the Trial of the Ipu, held in Pago Pago, Taʻu and aboard a Pacific Squadron gunboat. The cession completed American possession of the eastern Samoan islands and ended an ancient paramountcy.

After Governor William Michael Crose conveyed Manuʻan resentment at being excluded from the name Naval Station Tutuila, the Navy Department invited the people to choose a name, and traditional leaders selected American Samoa. The solicitor general of the Navy authorised the proclamation on 7 July and it took effect on 17 July 1911, giving the territory its enduring identity.

Hearing radio reports of the pandemic, Poyer requested quarantine ships from the US mainland and sealed the territory, making American Samoa one of very few places worldwide with no influenza deaths. Neighbouring Western Samoa lost around 20 per cent of its population; Poyer was awarded the Navy Cross and regarded locally as a hero.

Echoing the Mau movement in New Zealand-administered Western Samoa, a World War I veteran from Leone village organised opposition in American Samoa after meetings on the US mainland. He was barred from disembarking on his return and the movement was suppressed by the Navy, though the agitation kept the territory's status in question.

The island's first bus operations began on 8 June 1922. It marked the beginning of organised public land transport on the territory's main island.

Mead reached American Samoa aboard the SS Sonoma to conduct fieldwork for her Columbia University doctorate under Franz Boas. Her resulting 1928 book became the most widely read work in anthropology at the time, projecting American Samoa into global intellectual debate.

Swains Island, previously listed among the guano islands appertaining to the United States under the Guano Islands Act, was annexed by Public Resolution 68–75. The annexation followed the United Kingdom's dissolution of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Protectorate and extended the territory's reach northwards.

The Act classified American Samoa as an unincorporated territory and vested all civil, judicial and military powers in the President of the United States. It provided the constitutional framework under which the territory has been governed ever since.

Congress despatched an investigating committee led by Americans who had taken part in the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii. The inquiry followed Mau agitation and reflected unresolved questions about American Samoa's political future.

The Act contained special wage provisions for American Samoa from its inception, citing the territory's limited economy. These exemptions shaped the territorial labour market and the viability of its tuna canning industry for decades.

During the Second World War Marines stationed in Samoa outnumbered the local population and exerted a large cultural influence, while Samoan men from the age of fourteen received combat training. Samoans served as combatants, medical and code personnel and ship repairmen, beginning the territory's enduring tradition of high military enlistment.

At 2:26 a.m. on 13 January 1942 a submarine surfaced between Southworth Point and Fagasa Bay and fired about fifteen shells from its deck gun. The attack brought the Second World War directly to the territory and underlined its strategic exposure.

An Interior Department-sponsored bill to incorporate American Samoa was introduced in Congress and defeated chiefly through the efforts of Samoan chiefs. Their campaign led instead to the creation of the American Samoa Fono, the territorial legislature meeting at Fagatogo, entrenching local self-rule while preserving unincorporated status.

Civil administration of the territory passed from naval to Interior Department control. The transfer ended half a century of direct naval government and began the modern civil administration.

Truman transferred the presidential powers over American Samoa vested by the Ratification Act of 1929 to the Secretary of the Interior. This established the Interior Department as the territory's supervising federal authority.

By 1956 the US Navy-appointed governor had been succeeded by Coleman, a Samoan. His accession marked the beginning of indigenous leadership of the territorial executive.

The two languages were designated official for the territory, restating the recognition first made in 1999. The measure entrenches the position of the Samoan language alongside English in public life.

On 20 July 2021 the Fono voted unanimously in support of the Tenth Circuit's reversal. The resolution confirmed that resistance to further integration into the US system, evident since the Deeds of Cession, is locally driven.

District Judge Clark Waddoups struck down 8 U.S.C. § 1408(1) as facially unconstitutional, holding that people born in American Samoa are US citizens under the Citizenship Clause, but the Tenth Circuit reversed and upheld the statute. The outcome preserved the territory's distinctive national-but-not-citizen status.

A group of American Samoans brought suit seeking recognition that persons born in the territory are US citizens under the Fourteenth Amendment. The litigation opened a long constitutional contest over the status of the territory's people, who remain US nationals rather than citizens.

A package of territorial constitutional amendments was defeated at the polls, including a provision restricting legislative service by US citizens to those of Samoan ancestry. The vote reflected continuing caution about altering the territory's settled political arrangements.

The largest earthquake of 2009 struck 120 miles off American Samoa at a depth of 11.2 miles on 28 September. The resulting tsunami killed over 170 people across the Samoa Islands and Tonga.

The plant shut citing minimum wage increases and, chiefly, rising foreign competition. The closure removed a pillar of the private economy; StarKist began laying off up to 800 workers from August 2010 for similar reasons, leaving a single cannery.

The Act began raising the territorial minimum wage by 50 cents an hour annually towards the federal rate of $7.25. The change was highlighted in Congress at the request of delegate Eni Faleomavaega and had severe consequences for the canning industry.

Washington twice argued unsuccessfully that American Samoa should not be considered a colony. The territory remains on the United Nations list of non-self-governing territories, a listing disputed by its own government officials.

The observer seat was granted on 13 August 1999. Six days later the territory officially recognised both Samoan and English as its official languages, a designation reaffirmed in 2022.

The bid to host 23 participating countries was approved in May 1993, with groundbreaking in January 1994 and construction of 1,500-seat stands. Around 2,000 athletes, coaches and sponsors from 19 countries competed in 11 sports, and American Samoa fielded 248 athletes in the biggest international event ever staged in the territory.

Hunting bans were imposed to allow bat and pigeon populations to recover. The Samoa flying fox population held stable at about 900 on Tutuila and 100 in the Manuʻa Islands between 1995 and 2000, though scientists still counted fewer than 5,500 Pacific flying foxes by 2000.

Reagan signed the legislation on 1 November 1988, after the National Park Service began establishing the park in July 1987 and an initial appropriation of $400,000 in 1989. Governor Peter Tali Coleman and Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan signed the formalising leases on 19 September 1991, creating the fiftieth US national park.

Membership gave the territory its own Olympic representation. It was an early instance of American Samoa acting in its own name in international bodies.

The measure was urged by Paul Cox, High Chief Nafanua of Falealupo and the Bat Preservers Association. It connected American Samoa to federal wildlife conservation funding and frameworks.

American Samoa's incorporation of the US tax code led it to tax on the basis of citizenship, a practice struck down in 1983. The territory continues to tax worldwide income of residents and locally generated income of non-residents under modified rules based on the 2000 US code.

The diocese was erected through the bull Studiose quidem as a suffragan see of the Archdiocese of Samoa-Apia. It gave the territory's Catholics, served by at least eighteen churches and twenty-nine parishes, their own ecclesiastical structure.

The department and commission were created by law, and Governor Peter Tali Coleman appointed Fuga Tolani Teleso as director in 1981. The move institutionalised public recreation and conservation administration in the territory.

The territory gained a non-voting delegate's seat, first filled in 1981 by Democrat Fofō Iosefa Fiti Sunia. Only three people have held it, with Eni Faleomavaega serving 1989–2015 and Aumua Amata Radewagen from 2015, giving American Samoa a permanent voice in Washington.

The flight from Auckland crashed on approach at 10:41 pm on 30 January 1974 with 91 passengers aboard; 86 died, including the captain. It remains the territory's worst aviation disaster and was revisited in a documentary filmed locally in 2014.

Seven sites in the territory were given National Natural Landmark status. The designation was an early formal recognition of the islands' distinctive natural heritage.

The pope was received in a brief but lavish greeting during a stopover. The visit reflected the depth of Christian, and specifically Catholic, attachment in the territory.

The college was established as the territory's institution of higher education. It remains the principal provider of post-secondary education on the islands.

Astronaut crews of Apollo 10, 12, 13, 14 and 17 were retrieved a few hundred miles from Pago Pago and flown by helicopter to the airport before transfer to Honolulu aboard C-141 Starlifters. The role gave the territory a prominent place in the American space programme.

Ratified in 1966 and promulgated on 2 June 1967, the constitution took effect on 1 July 1967 and made the territory self-governing with separate executive, legislative and judicial branches. Although American Samoa remains technically unorganised, the constitution has been the basis of domestic government ever since.

Educational television was launched with some 6,000 programmes produced annually at its peak. By 1981 the system had contracted to a single series of 40-minute English-language lessons.

The Fagaʻitua paramount chief was sworn in on 21 June 1963 in the newly created post. The office institutionalised traditional Samoan leadership within the territorial government.

Pressure from the matai on the naval governor converted the old Marine barracks at Utulei into American Samoa's only high school. With a median age of fifteen, demand grew rapidly: three more high schools opened by 1968 and six public and private high schools served 2,800 students by 1979.

From the mid-1960s deliberate steps were taken to build tourism in American Samoa. It marked an attempt to diversify an economy dominated by government employment and tuna canning.