Book Reviews
| Date | 01 July 1968 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1002/j.1099-162X.1968.tb00343.x |
| Published date | 01 July 1968 |
Book Reviews
Samoa
ma
Samoa:
The
Emergence
of
the
Independent
State
of
Western
Samoa,
by J.W. DAVIDSON; Oxford University
Press,
Melbourne,
1967, pp. xii, 467, endpaper maps; $A9.75.
In a review in the January issue of this Journal, Professor W. J. M.
Mackenzie wrote: "Fifteen years ago no one (however extreme) would have
had any patience with the notion of independent Gambia, independent
Barbados, independent Malta. These were not 'viable' ". Since then, as he
points out, we have entered on the less inhibited era of "liberate and be
damned"; one result has been the proliferation of micro-states.
Such a state is Western Samoa, whose domain is a pair of mountainous
tropical islands about two-thirds of the way north from New Zealand to the
Equator.
It
became legally independent on rst January 1962. It had been
in turn a League of Nations mandated territory and a U.N. trust territory
under New Zealand administration, and before that a German colony from
1900to 1914, under a partition of the whole Samoan group between Germany
and the United States. But the group had been subject to continuous
European influence and somesettlement since 1830,giving time for a complete
conversion of the inhabitants to Christianity, a partial conversion of the
economy to a Western plantation and overseas trading system, and the
attainment of universal literacy well before self-government became a reality.
At the time
of
independence, the population of Western Samoa was just
under 120,000, but rising at the rate of 3 per cent per annum; the economy
was self-supporting showing doubtful potentiality for being able to keep up
with population growth; and there had never been any substantial dependency
on external financial aid. After independence, the New Zealand government
by treaty undertook to help Western Samoa in the conduct of its external
relations; at the same time the latter's government decided not to establish
any defence forces, "since they would not possess the strength to repel any
likelyaggressor". They also decided not to seek membership of the Common-
wealth, fearing opposition by some existing members, nor to join the United
Nations, because of the cost of representation.
If
"viability" concerned the
architects of independence in this case, its only canon was the framing
of
a
workable constitution, on the evidence of this book.
Professor Davidson has written a comprehensive and, with one important
qualification, a definitive history of Western Samoa's transition from colonial
rule to independence, based on an exhaustive examination of a surprising
wealth of written sources. After a briefsurveyof the whole period of European
contact and its impact on the structure of Samoan society, two-thirds of the
work deals in detail with constitutional evolution through self-government to
independence since 1946. One chapter in this part discusses, with a somewhat
muted sense
of
urgency, the rather perfunctory approach of New Zealand and
Samoan politicians alike to the needed modernisation of an extremely
conservative economic system. Another describes the abortive attempt,
during the 1940's and
1950'S,
to reconstruct the neglected and essentially
474
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