Independence of Western Samoa, the first Pacific island nation
- Date
- 1 January 1962
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Oceania (Samoa)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
On 1 January 1962 Western Samoa became the first Pacific island country to achieve full political independence in the twentieth century, ending more than four decades of New Zealand administration that had begun under a League of Nations mandate (1920) and continued after 1946 as a United Nations Trust Territory.
Independence followed a UN-supervised plebiscite held on 9 May 1961, in which voters overwhelmingly approved both a newly drafted Westminster-style constitution and the transition to statehood, with the New Zealand Western Samoa Act of 24 November 1961 formally terminating the trusteeship. The new Independent State of Western Samoa retained Samoan custom (faʻa Samoa) at the heart of its institutions, restricting candidacy and most voting to matai (chiefly title-holders) and installing two paramount chiefs, Tupua Tamasese Meaʻole and Malietoa Tanumafili II, as joint heads of state for life. The achievement crowned a long struggle for self-determination rooted in the Mau resistance movement of the 1920s and 1930s. As the first decolonised Pacific nation, Western Samoa set a precedent for the wave of South Pacific independence that followed in the 1960s and 1970s, and it signed a Treaty of Friendship with New Zealand the same year. The country was renamed simply Samoa in 1997.
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Empires active in 1 January 1962
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- French Colonial Empire (Second)1830 CE – 1962 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Spanish Empire1492 CE – 1976 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Solomonic dynasty1270 CE – 1974 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Construction of the Berlin Wall13 August 1961
- Founding of the People's Republic of China1 October 1949
- Establishment of Apartheid in South Africa1948
- Independence and Partition of British India14–15 August 1947
- Iranian RevolutionJanuary–February 1979
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
Further reading
The wider story
A History of the Pacific Islands
The standard accessible overview of Oceania from settlement to the modern era.
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