Yearbook 2004
Samoa. The total population in Samoa is 198,425 people in 2020. Hundreds of Samoans demonstrated in March outside New Zealand’s parliament demanding that the entire Samoa population be granted New Zealand citizenship. A petition signed by about 90,000 people was handed over to the responsible minister for ethnic issues. The automatic right to citizenship in the former colonial power of New Zealand was taken away from the Samoans in 1982. The protesters declared that they wanted to be able to travel freely between Samoa and New Zealand.
Samoa, one of the world’s least developed countries, hosted a summit in August between leaders from 14 small nations in the Pacific, as well as Australia and New Zealand.
Samoa was discovered in 1722 by the Dutch Roggeveen and found in 1768 by L.-A. de Bougainville, who called them Islands of the Navigators. there were J.-F.-G. de La Pérouse, Edwards C. Wilkes. The interior was crossed by missionaries, to whom we owe the total conversion of the islanders.
Until the middle of the century. XIX the Samoa Islands remained governed by their tribal chiefs; then subjected together to a king of all the islands. After 1870, however, European, North American and New Zealand penetration began; and in 1879 the king of Samoa, with three different treaties concluded with Germany, the United States and England, granted each nation a port as a coal station, practically creating a kind of protectorate of the three powers; but internal life nevertheless continues to depend on local leaders. Ten years later, following the civil wars, on June 14, 1889, the Treaty of Berlin establishes the neutralization of the islands, that is, excludes the establishment of military or naval bases in them, while confirming the protectorate.
At the outbreak of the World War in August 1914, the German part of Samoa was occupied by New Zealand troops; and Zeeland the former Germanic Samoa was given, as a mandate, by the League of Nations, in December 1920.
From the examination of the bathymetric map, there is no apparent link in Samoa with the closest groups of islands, as they rise, entirely surrounded by depths greater than 4000 m., On a very narrow plateau; only towards N. the Union Islands and the Fenice Islands have some connection, as regards the depths around them, but they are all coral or madreporic islands, while the Samoa are totally of volcanic origin, as evidenced by the basaltic rocks and trachytes that are widespread there. Volcanism is also well represented with remains of eruptive materials, recent as in Upolu, where the rich vegetation leaves lava tracts uncovered, and most of all with the presence in the center of Savaii of an active volcanic cone of 1860 m. Samoa is the
The relief of the major islands is varied, tending to form a continuous ridge between Savaii and Upolu, where there are the greatest heights, two peaks of 1620 and 1500 m. in Savaii and one of 1000 in Upolu, while in Tutuila the arrangement of the mountains is less clear, and they only touch 700 m. in height.
The development of coral constructions follows a well-defined direction, from east to west, which is characteristic: in fact in Savaii the coasts are not yet completely surrounded by a barrier, on the contrary the southern coast is entirely free, and the rest with incipient reefs, while in Upolu not only the whole nearby sea is invaded by corals, but in some points there is a real barrier, due to the development assumed by their constructions. The same phenomenon occurs in Tutuila, with increasing importance in the eastern islets, up to the Rose Islands.