colony · North America and Oceania
American Samoa
Origins
The Tripartite Convention of 1899 ended the Kingdom of Samoa and gave the islands east of longitude 171 west to the United States, which prized the harbour of Pago Pago as a coaling station. Chiefs of Tutuila and Aunuʻu signed a deed of cession in 1900, and the rulers of the Kingdom of Manuʻa ceded their islands in 1904.
Rule and society
The US Navy governed the territory until 1951 through naval commandants, leaving village affairs and land to the matai, the chiefs of extended families. A local Mau movement in the 1920s protested naval rule. Authority passed to the Department of the Interior in 1951, and a constitution adopted in 1960 was revised in 1967. Tuna canning became the main industry.
To the present
American Samoans elected their first governor, Peter Tali Coleman, in 1977. The territory remains unincorporated and unorganised; its people are US nationals rather than citizens, an arrangement many defend as protecting communal land and the faʻa Samoa way of life.
Lineage
On the connections map
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- American Samoa was a colony of United States1900 CE – 2030 CE
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Cite this page
- APA
- The Epoch Institute. (2026). American Samoa. In The Epoch Institute States Register. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/american-samoa
- MLA
- “American Samoa.” The Epoch Institute States Register, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/american-samoa. Accessed .
- Chicago
- The Epoch Institute. “American Samoa.” The Epoch Institute States Register. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/american-samoa.
- Harvard
- The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘American Samoa’, The Epoch Institute States Register. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/state/american-samoa (Accessed: ).
Last reviewed October 2026Random state ↻