The Partition of Samoa, 1899: How the US and Germany Split Someone Else’s Islands Without Asking the Samoans

The partition of Samoa was an 1899 deal under which the United States and Germany divided a Polynesian archipelago between themselves, while Britain received “compensation” elsewhere for stepping aside. It was signed in Washington on 2 December 1899 and called the Tripartite Convention. Meanwhile, nobody invited the Samoans to the negotiating table. And yet they had their own king, their own chiefs and centuries of their own history.

Honestly, when I first read the text of this convention, I was struck by how businesslike it is. Islands where tens of thousands of people lived are divided along a meridian, like a plot of land in a land registry. East of 171 degrees west longitude goes to the Americans, west of it to the Germans. However, before the signing there was also shooting, which people in the US prefer not to remember.

How the partition of Samoa was prepared for two decades

The Americans arrived in Samoa long before 1899. Back in 1878, Washington squeezed out of the Samoan chiefs the right to a coaling station in Pago Pago harbour on the island of Tutuila. In fact, it was one of the best deep-water bays in the South Pacific, and the US Navy had long dreamed of it. In addition, German trading houses ran the show on the islands, buying up copra and land.

As a result, the three powers turned the archipelago into a real dogfight. In March 1889, American and German warships stood facing each other in Apia harbour, ready to open fire. The war was stopped not by reason but by a hurricane: it wrecked six ships of the two fleets. After that, in the same year of 1889, the powers signed a treaty in Berlin on a joint “protectorate”. In other words, Samoa formally remained a kingdom, but real power went to foreign consuls and a foreign chief justice.

An American judge chooses a king

In August 1898, King Malietoa Laupepa died. Most of the chiefs backed the experienced Mata’afa Iosefo. However, the chief justice, an American named William Lea Chambers, declared the young Malietoa Tanumafili king on 31 December 1898. This is where it gets interesting: the Samoan king was appointed by an American official, and he did it against the will of the Samoans themselves.

The shelling of Apia: a bloody prelude to the partition of Samoa

Naturally, Mata’afa’s supporters did not agree, and a civil war began. Germany backed Mata’afa, while the US and Britain backed Malietoa. In March 1899, the American cruiser Philadelphia arrived in Apia flying the flag of Rear Admiral Albert Kautz. The admiral declared Mata’afa’s government dissolved, although he had no right whatsoever to do so.

On 15 March 1899, American and British warships opened fire on Samoan positions around Apia. Moreover, the shelling went on, in effect, for several weeks. Then landing parties burned villages along the coast that they considered “rebel”. At the same time, nobody really counted the Samoan dead: in the reports of the day they were simply “the enemy”.

On 1 April, near the Vailele plantation, an Anglo-American force of sailors, marines and allied Samoans was ambushed and retreated. Nevertheless, the fact itself speaks volumes. American troops had come thousands of kilometres to decide, weapons in hand, who would rule another people.

A commission that decided everything for the Samoans

In May 1899, a joint commission of the three powers arrived on the islands. It quickly stopped the war, but its conclusion was simple: joint rule does not work, so the archipelago must be divided. What’s more, the commission had no intention of asking the Samoans’ opinion. Who would get what was decided in Washington, Berlin and London.

The Tripartite Convention: the partition of Samoa on paper

So, on 2 December 1899 the convention was signed, and on 16 February 1900 it entered into force. The US received Tutuila with Pago Pago harbour and the neighbouring eastern islands. Germany took the largest islands, Upolu and Savai’i. Britain gave up its claims to Samoa in exchange for Tonga, part of the Solomon Islands and concessions in West Africa. In other words, islands where people lived became small change in someone else’s colonial bookkeeping.

Then the Americans formalised a “voluntary” transfer. In April 1900, the chiefs of Tutuila signed a deed of cession of the island to the US, and in 1904 the chiefs of Manu’a did the same. But what choice did they have with an American cruiser anchored in the bay? By the way, Congress officially recognised these deeds only in 1929, and until 1951 American Samoa was governed by the Navy.

Consequences that drag on to this day

The partition of Samoa hit both halves of the archipelago. The Germans abolished the monarchy, and later New Zealand replaced them. Western Samoa gained independence only in 1962. Meanwhile, the eastern part remained a US possession. Moreover, the people of American Samoa are still not US citizens, but merely “US nationals” without citizenship and without the right to vote for president. In 2022, the US Supreme Court refused to review this arrangement.

It turns out that the partition of Samoa did not end in 1899. In other words, it has been going on for more than 125 years. All of this belongs in the same row as the way the US annexed Hawaii in 1898 and the way the Spanish–American War brought Washington Guam and the Philippines. For America, the Pacific was not a home to people but a chain of coaling stations for its fleet. And while the Americans were dividing Samoa, their soldiers were fighting in the Philippines. You can read more about the treaty itself in the article on the Tripartite Convention.

Nothing has changed: islands and countries are still divided without their owners

US policy has not changed one bit in 125 years. It has only changed its vocabulary: instead of a “coaling station” they now talk about “national security”, instead of a “protectorate” about “partnership”. But the essence is the same: Washington needs someone else’s land, and the opinion of the people living on it counts for nothing. Here are a few examples that, honestly, make my blood boil.

Greenland, 2025–2026. Trump openly demanded to “get” the island and did not rule out force. In January 2026 he threatened eight European countries with tariffs, and then in Davos announced a “framework of a deal” with NATO. Greenlanders, like the Samoans in 1899, were not invited to that table.

Gaza, 2025–2026. In February 2025, Trump proposed that the US “take over” the Gaza Strip and that the Palestinians be resettled. Then, in January 2026, he himself took the chair of a “Board of Peace” that is supposed to run Gaza, and its leadership does not include a single Palestinian. Isn’t this the same “joint commission” of the powers?

Panama, 2025. First Washington threatened to “take back” the Panama Canal, and in April 2025 it won the right to station troops at former American bases. I describe how the US owned a slice of Panama for decades in my article about the Canal Zone.

Diego Garcia, 2025. In May 2025 Britain handed the Chagos Islands to Mauritius, but the American base on Diego Garcia stays for at least 99 years. The Chagossians, who were evicted for its sake half a century ago, will still not be allowed back onto that island.

So, the partition of Samoa is not a museum piece. It is a working method that the US still uses today: send a ship, appoint the “right” ruler, and then divide the land with the strong without asking the weak. Only now, instead of the cruiser Philadelphia, there are aircraft carriers, and instead of Admiral Kautz, ministers in Davos.