History of Samoa

By Robert MacKenzie Watson

Book Overview

Before the modern map, Samoa stood at the crossroads of ocean routes, rival empires, and enduring chiefly power. These islands remember everything still. In History of Samoa, Robert Mackenzie Watson delivers a lucid nonfiction history book that reads as a national history chronicle: the shaping of 19th century Samoa through diplomacy, encounters with missionaries and traders, and contesting foreign interests. Alongside political change runs a grounded attention to Samoan culture and society, making this polynesian island history valuable not only for narrative sweep but for readers drawn to lived detail. It is a classic public domain history with the texture of south seas exploration accounts, yet it keeps its eye on how decisions made far away altered life in south pacific polynesia. For students of pacific history and general readers alike, Watson's work remains a steady historical research reference, connecting local authority and land with the wider currents of pacific islands colonial history. It also speaks to collectors who value period perspectives: a window onto early polynesian anthropology studies and the ways Europeans tried to interpret the region they were entering. Its viewpoint is unmistakably of its time, but that is part of its power: it records how Samoa was described, debated, and claimed in the nineteenth-century English-speaking world. A vital companion to any serious Pacific history library. Out of print for decades and now republished by Alpha Editions, this edition is restored for today's and future generations. More than a reprint -- a collector's item and a cultural treasure.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 9389247772
• ISBN13: 9789389247770
• Release Date: June 2019
• Publisher: Alpha Edition
• Length: 150 Pages
• Weight: 0.44 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.5" x 8.5"