Prime Minister John Key got a taste of Samoan pride at Independence Day celebrations in Apia today. It is the 52nd Independence Day - Samoa became independent from New Zealand in 1962. New Zealand had governed it since 1914 when New Zealand troops took over what was then German Samoa as part of Allied action. colonial efforts only began in 1884. Most of Germanys colonies were occupied by its enemies in the first weeks of World War I, German South-West Africa surrendered in 1915, Kamerun in 1916 and German East Africa only in 1918 by end of the war. Germanys colonial empire was officially confiscated with the Treaty of Versailles on 10 January 1920 after Germanys defeat. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire These are colonies settled by and controlled by the German Empire from 1884 to 1919. Those territories constituted the German Colonial Empire. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies#German_imperial_colonies These were German colonies in the Pacific: German New Guinea (Deutsch-Neuguinea) (1884–1914) and Micronesia (later incorporated into the German New Guinea) Kaiser-Wilhelmsland Bismarck Archipelago (Bismarck-Archipel) German Solomon Islands or Northern Solomon Islands (Salomonen or Nördliche Salomon-Inseln) (1885–1899) Bougainville Island (Bougainville-Insel) (1888–1919) Nauru (1888–1919) Marshall Islands (Marschall-Inseln) (1885–1919) Mariana Islands (Marianen) (1899–1919) - present-day Northern Mariana Islands Caroline Islands (Karolinen) (1899–1919) - present-day Federated States of Micronesia and Palau German Samoa (Deutsch-Samoa) (1899–1914) - present-day Samoa en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_former_German_colonies#Pacific In the Pacific, Japan gained Germany’s islands north of the equator (the Marshall Islands, the Carolines, the Marianas, the Palau Islands) and Kiautschou in China. German Samoa was assigned to New Zealand; German New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and Nauru to Australia as mandatory. British placement of surrogate responsibility for former German colonies on white-settler dominions was at the time determined to be the most expedient option for the British government — and an appropriate reward for the Dominions having fulfilled their great and urgent imperial service through military intervention at the behest of and for Great Britain. It also meant that British colonies now had colonies of their own — which was very much influenced at the Paris proceedings by W.M. Hughes, William Massey, and Louis Botha, the prime ministers of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The principle of self-determination, embodied in the League of Nations covenant was not considered to apply to these colonies and was regarded as meaningless. To allay President [Woodrow] Wilson’s suspicions of British imperialism, the system of ’mandates’ was drawn up and agreed to by the British War Cabinet (with the French and Italians in tow), a device by which conquered enemy territory would be held not as a possession but as ‘sacred trusts.’ But far from envisaging the eventual independence of the [former] German colonies, Allied statesmen at the Paris Conference regarded 1919 as the renewal, not the end, of an imperial era. In deliberations the British War Cabinet had confidence that natives everywhere would opt for British rule, however, the cabinet acknowledged the necessity to prove that its policy toward the German colonies was not motivated by aggrandizement, ... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire#Confiscation Only Togoland and German Samoa became profitable and self-sufficient; the balance sheet for the colonies as a whole revealed a fiscal net loss for the empire. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire#Colonial_governments In the Pacific colonies (1913) lived a total of 1,645 Germans. After 1905 a ban on marriage was enacted forbidding mixed couples between German and native population in South West Africa, and after 1912 in Samoa en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire#German_colonial_population In her African and South Seas colonies Germany established diverse biological and agricultural stations. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_colonial_empire#Medicine_and_science The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea grew out of the work of the Neuendettelsau Mission Society (1886) and the Rhenish Mission Society (1887), both from Germany. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evangelical_Lutheran_Church_of_Papua_New_Guinea#History With the exception of German Samoa, the German islands in the Western Pacific formed the Imperial German Pacific Protectorates. These were administered as part of German New Guinea and they included the German Solomon Islands (Buka, Bougainville, and several smaller islands), the Carolines, Palau, the Marianas (except for Guam), the Marshall Islands, and Nauru. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_New_Guinea Hanseatic League merchant houses were the first to establish footholds: Johann Cesar Godeffroy & Sohn of Hamburg, headquartered at Samoa from 1857, operated a South Seas network of trading stations especially dominating the copra trade and carrying German immigrants to various South Pacific settlements; in 1877 another Hamburg firm, Hernsheim and Robertson, established a German community on Matupi Island, in Blanche Bay (the north-east coast of New Britain) from which it traded in New Britain, the Caroline, and the Marshall Islands. By the end of 1875, one German trader reported: German trade and German ships are encountered everywhere, almost at the exclusion of any other nation. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_New_Guinea#Early_German_South_Pacific_presence The theme of the bottle imp can be found in the German legend Spiritus familiaris by the Brothers Grimm as well. At the time of publication in 1891, the currency system of the Kingdom of Hawaii included cent coins that circulated at par with the U.S. penny. The novel reflects Stevensons impressions gained during his five-month visit of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1889 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottle_Imp#Background According to Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal (both quoted by Amazon) this tale was originally published, in Samoan, in 1891. The Locus Online Index to Science Fiction similarly states The Stevenson story was first published in Samoan in 1891, appearing later that year in English. The Project Gutenberg text of the story has a note by Stevenson which says ...the tale has been designed and written for a Polynesian audience... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottle_Imp#Publication Island Nights Entertainments (also known as South Sea Tales) is a collection of short stories by Robert Louis Stevenson, first published in 1893. It would be some of his last finished works before he died in 1894. It contains three stories: The Beach of Falesá The Bottle Imp The Isle of Voices en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_Nights%27_Entertainments In the late 1800s, rivalry between the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom resulted in the Tripartite Convention (1899) that formally partitioned the Samoan archipelago into a German colony (German Samoa) and a United States territory (American Samoa). ... New Zealand occupied the German colony through 1920, then governed the western islands until independence in 1962 as a (1) League of Nations Class C Mandate and (2) United Nations Trust Territory after 1946. The pro-independence Mau movement across the islands eventually led to the political independence of the western islands from New Zealand in 1962 while the eastern islands, American Samoa, remains a political territory of the United States. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_Islands#Political_partition He spent time at the Gilbert Islands, Tahiti, New Zealand and the Samoan Islands. During this period he completed The Master of Ballantrae, composed two ballads based on the legends of the islanders, and wrote The Bottle Imp. He witnessed the Samoan crisis. He preserved the experience of these years in his various letters and in his In the South Seas (which was published posthumously), an account of the 1888 cruise which Stevenson and Fanny undertook on the Casco from the Hawaiian Islands to the Marquesas and Tuamotu islands. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Louis_Stevenson#Journey_to_the_Pacific The Samoan Crisis was a confrontation standoff between the United States, Imperial Germany and Great Britain from 1887–1889 over control of the Samoan Islands during the Samoan Civil War. ... The standoff ended on 15 and 16 March when a cyclone wrecked all six warships in the harbour. Calliope was able to escape the harbour and survived the storm. Robert Louis Stevenson witnessed the storm and its aftermath at Apia and later wrote about what he saw. The Samoan Civil War continued, involving Germany, United States and Britain, eventually resulting, via the Tripartite Convention of 1899, in the partition of the Samoan Islands into American Samoa and German Samoa. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samoan_crisis
Posted on: Sun, 01 Jun 2014 22:45:23 +0000