TimeLines
Cards (15)
- NZ sent a replacement Relief Force of 360 men unsuitable for frontline war work to Samoa.
- NZ authorities allowed a ship with influenza sufferers let passengers off in Apia, triggering a preventable epidemic causing death to 22% of Samoans (30% of Samoan men died). Offer of medical help by American Samoa was rejected by Colonel Robert Logan, New Zealand’s first administrator.
- •League of Nations allocated the mandate of Samoa to New Zealand, despite Samoan opposition.
- 28 Samoan MPs on a powerless Advisory Council petitioned for self-governance. Rejected!
- •Samoan Offenders Ordinance Act banished 50 Samoan leaders including Tupua Tamasese from their villages and removed esteemed traditional titles for refusal to comply with New Zealand administrators.
- •George Richardson became New Zealand’s third Administrator in Western Samoa. Ignoring Samoan culture and its land system, he tried to replace Samoan villages with ‘model villages’ of his design.
- ‘Maintenance of Authority in Native Affairs Ordinance’ made it illegal to ‘endeavour to incite disaffection’ towards New Zealand authority. A Citizen’s Committee meeting and wide Mau opposition led to 59 banishment orders and two years exile for Olaf Nelson and two other European supporters.
- Exiled Olaf Nelson tried to present a Samoan petition to the League of Nations Mandates Commission, asking them to end New Zealand’s mandate. He was denied a hearing. New Administrator, Colonel Stephen Allen, arrived with 74 armed SMPs (Samoa Police Force). Hundreds of Mau arrested, filling prisons and detention centres until they had to be released. Refusal to pay taxes was a key Mau strategy; Tama Tamasese was sent to New Zealand for a six-month jail sentence.
- Black Saturday! Began with a Mau welcome parade for the returning exiled people. Mau opposition to a police arrest was met with police gunfire and a WWI machine gun, killing 11, including Mau leader Tupua Tamasese while he urged ‘filemu, peace’. Fifty others were injured and one New Zealand constable died. As Tamasese died he urged: “My blood has been spilt for Samoa. I am proud to give it. Do not dream of avenging it, as it was spilt in maintaining peace. If I die, peace must be maintained at any price.”
- Samoa Seditious Organisation Regulations made it illegal to identify with or express approval of Mau. The penalty for appearing to do so was a year in prison.
- – Olaf Nelson was tried and found guilty of ‘aiding and abetting the Mau’; exiled for 10 years.
- Labour PM Savage’s Samoa administrator rejected Samoa’s request for protectorate status to give Samoa autonomy over its internal affairs, but by 1936 the Mau was recognised as a legitimate political organisation, electing their own representatives. Nelson’s exile was overturned and he was welcomed back to Apia by 15 000 people. As conditions improved, Mau ‘faded from the scene’.
- •Samoa achieved political independence and signed a Friendship Treaty with New Zealand. It’s 60th anniversary was celebrated by both Prime Ministers and others in Apia in 2021.
- •PM Helen Clark apologised in Apia on the 40th anniversary of Samoa’s independence, for harm during New Zealand’s rule, particularly mismanagement of the 1918 flu epidemic, banishment of Mau leaders and police shootings on Black Saturday 1929. She also thanked Samoans for their many valued contributions to New Zealand.
- Samoa’s 60th anniversary of independence and the Friendship Treaty with New Zealand was celebrated by both Prime Ministers and others in Apia.