Samoan Civil War, First

German influence in Samoa expands during the second half of the nineteenth century, with large scale plantation operations being introduced for coconut, cacao and hevea rubber cultivation, especially on the island of 'Upolu where German firms have monopolized copra and cocoa bean processing.

Samoan contact with Europeans had begun in the early eighteenth century but did not intensify until the arrival of the British.

In 1722, Dutchman Jacob Roggeveen had become the first European to sight the islands.

This visit had been followed by the French explorer Louis-Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811), the man who named them the Navigator Islands in 1768.

Early Western contact had included a battle in the eighteenth century between French explorers and islanders in Tutuila, for which the Samoans were blamed in the West, giving them a reputation for ferocity.

The site of this battle is called Massacre Bay.

The United States Exploring Expedition (1838–42) under Charles Wilkes had reached Samoa in 1839 and appointed of Englishman John C. Williams as acting U.S. consul.

However, this appointment is never confirmed by the U.S. State Department; John C. Williams had merely been merely recognized as "Commercial Agent of the United States".

A British consul was already residing at Apia.

Missionaries and traders had arrived in the 1830s.

In 1855, J.C. Godeffroy & Sohn had expanded its trading business into the Samoan Islands, which were then known as the Navigator Islands.

The Germans, in particular, have begun to show great commercial interest in the Samoan Islands, especially on the island of Upolu, where German firms have monopolized copra and cocoa bean processing.

The United States lays its own claim, based on commercial shipping interests in Pearl River in Hawaii and Pago Pago Bay in Eastern Samoa, and forced alliances, most conspicuously on the islands of Tutuila and Manu'a, which will become American Samoa.

Britain also sends troops to protect British business enterprise, harbor rights, and consulate office.

This is followed by an eight-year civil war, during which each of the three powers will supply arms, training and in some cases combat troops to the warring Samoan parties.

French, British, German, and American vessels routinely stop at Samoa by the late nineteenth century, as they value Pago Pago Harbor as a refueling station for coal-fired shipping and whaling.

The United Kingdom, Germany and the United States all claim parts of the kingdom of Samoa, and have established trading posts in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

The rivalry between these powers exacerbates the indigenous factions that are struggling to preserve their ancient political system.

Britain also sends troops to protect British business enterprise, harbor rights, and the consulate office in 1886.

There follows an eight-year civil war, where each of the three powers will supply arms, training, and in some cases, combat troops to the warring Samoan parties.

The United States had begun operations at the excellent Samoan harbor of Pago Pago on Tutuila in 1877 and formed alliances with local native chieftains, most conspicuously on the islands of Tutuila and Manu'a (which will later be formally annexed as American Samoa).

British business enterprises, harbor rights, and consulate office are the basis on which the United Kingdom had cause to intervene in Samoa.

The Samoan crisis comes to a critical juncture in March 1889 when all three colonial contenders sent warships into Apia harbor, and a larger-scale war seems imminent.

A massive storm on March 15, 1889 damages or destroys the warships, ending the military conflict.

Tensions caused in part by the conflicting interests of the German traders and plantation owners and British business enterprises and American business interests led to the first Samoan Civil War.

The war was fought roughly between 1886 and 1894, primarily between Samoans though the German military intervened on several occasions.

The United States and the United Kingdom opposed the German activity which led to a confrontation in Apia Harbour in 1887.

Robert Louis Stevenson, in A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa (1892), details the activities of the great powers battling for influence in Samoa—the United States, Germany and Britain —and the political machinations of the various Samoan factions within their indigenous political system.

Even as they descend into ever greater interclan warfare, what most alarms Stevenson is the Samoans' economic innocence.

In 1894 just months before his death, he addresses the island chiefs:
       There is but one way to defend Samoa. Hear it before it is too late. It is to make roads, and gardens, and care for your trees, and sell their produce wisely, and, in one word, to occupy and use your country... if you do not occupy and use your country, others will. It will not continue to be yours or your children’s, if you occupy it for nothing. You and your children will in that case be cast out into outer darkness".

He had "seen these judgments of God," in Hawaii where abandoned native churches stood like tombstones "over a grave, in the midst of the white men’s sugar fields".