Samoan Civil War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The neutrality of this article is disputed.
Please see the discussion on the talk page.

The Samoan Civil Wars is a Western definition of political activity in the Samoa Islands of the South Pacific in the late 19th century. By this non-Samoan definition, the Samoan Civil Wars were a series of wars between Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, ending in the partitioning of the island chain in 1899. The concluding event was the Second Samoan Civil War.The first Samoan Civil War lasted for eight years. The warring Samoan parties were supplied arms, training and sometimes even combat troops by Germany, Britain and The United States. The three powers were playing them off against each other as each country wanted Samoa as a refueling station for coal fired shipping. They also wanted Samoa due to the scarcity of unclaimed territory from 1870 onwards to gain more power in Europe. In fact, the so-called Civil Wars was a series of conflicts between the Samoan people and the Western powers, during which each of the Western powers engaged in unlawful land claims, imprisonment of important Samoan leaders, confiscation of arms, and armed engagement with vastly superior armament.