The Samoan Crisis
The History of the Military Standoff Between the United States, Germany, and Great Britain over the Samoan Islands
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Narrated by:
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Ryan Durham
About this listen
Samoa is a group of about 20 islands in the South Pacific Ocean, totaling slightly over 1,100 square miles, about a fifth the size of Hawai’i. The ancestors of the Samoans arrived there many centuries ago. Archaeological artifacts suggest Polynesians arrived perhaps three thousand years before the present, or perhaps even earlier (O’Connor, 2017).
Samoans remained part of an isolated Pacific Ocean region for a very long time, with trade and social links with the people of the Fiji and Tonga islands. That inter-island world was not “discovered” by European explorers until 1722, when a Dutch ship, captained by Joseph Roggeveen, visited. The next European view of the Samoan islands was in 1778 by a French expedition, commanded by Louis-Antoine de Bougainville. A later French expedition under La Perouse found the islands far from congenial; a fight erupted and the French lost 12 men (O’Connor, 2017).
The pace of contact with the outside world quickened by the end of the 1700s. Explorers visited, naval expeditions checked out Samoa and other islands, a few European beachcombers arrived, and so did missionaries. Samoa, like many other Pacific Island groups, attracted outside interest for several reasons. Missionaries found souls to save. Whaling ships found places to resupply themselves with food, water, sometimes crew, and for rest and recreation. As navies converted to steam, islands became useful as coaling stations, and as the Industrial Revolution spread, islands offered raw materials and goods for potential profit. The Pacific Islands also became pawns in what is best described as a global imperial competition.
Samoa eventually proved to have one product that interested the rest of the world: copra, which is dried coconut that can be pressed to produce palm oil. That oil had multiple uses, including soap, personal products, and industrial materials. German merchants began to develop the copra trade in the 1850s, well before the consolidation of the German Empire under Prussian leadership in 1871. There was some American interest in the trade, but the principal American interest proved to be the harbor at Pago Pago on Tutuila Island.
Native Samoan politics were based on competition between royal families and the accumulation of several traditional titles by a leader. There was no king of all the islands as such, although historical accounts usually use the term “king” to describe the most powerful chief. Samoa might be described as ruled by tradition, interpreted by several important chiefs who were sometimes rivals and who sometimes cooperated. The Germans and Americans tended to back different candidates, with the British as interested observers, often siding with the Americans. There were confrontations between the Samoan sides, and an actual civil war resulted.
Both the Germans and the Americans relied on gunboat diplomacy in Samoa for decades, with consuls frequently requesting warships to come visit. The gunboats usually had some marines on board, so the range of violent options included bombarding villages, armed landing parties, arming supporters, and the burning of villages.
In early 1889, it was more than gunboats that came at the consuls’ requests: three German and three American warships faced each other in the crowded Apia Harbor. German backing of their candidate for principal chief resulted in considerable violence, and Americans backed their candidate. A British warship was also in the harbor.
How these remote islands became important on the world stage and how they resulted in an angry naval confrontation in 1889 between Imperial Germany and the United States that came very close to war is a complicated but fascinating story.
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Overall
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What if the year we have long commemorated as America’s defining moment was in fact misleading? What if the real events that signaled the historic shift from colony to country took place earlier, and that the true story of our nation’s emergence reveals a more complicated - and divisive - birth process? In this major new work, iconoclastic historian and political chronicler Kevin Phillips upends the conventional reading of the American Revolution by puncturing the myth that 1776 was the struggle’s watershed year. Mythology and omission have elevated 1776, but the most important year, rarely recognized, was 1775.
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Boring--couldn't finish it
- By Sean on 04-01-13
By: Kevin Phillips
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The Great Sea
- A Human History of the Mediterranean
- By: David Abulafia
- Narrated by: Jason Culp
- Length: 29 hrs and 25 mins
- Unabridged
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Ranging from prehistory to the 21st century, The Great Sea is above all the history of human interaction across a region that has brought together many of the great civilizations of antiquity as well as the rival empires of medieval and modern times.
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American Narration at it's Most Disapointing
- By Anonymous User on 03-26-18
By: David Abulafia
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The Opium Wars: A History from Beginning to End
- By: Hourly History
- Narrated by: Stephen Paul Aulridge Jr
- Length: 1 hr and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Violent confrontation between armed groups over the supply of illegal narcotics is something we commonly associate with criminal gangs in modern cities, but in the mid-19th century Great Britain went to war with Imperial China in order to continue to supply Chinese addicts with opium. The two wars that followed have become known as the Opium Wars, and they led to the utter defeat of China, the establishment of a British colony in Hong Kong, and the continuation of a narcotics trade that was worth millions of pounds each year to the British.
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short comprehensive overview, well narrated
- By R K on 01-02-22
By: Hourly History
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The Spanish-American War
- A Captivating Guide to the Armed Conflict Between the United States of America and Spain That Took Place After the US Intervened in the Cuban War of Independence
- By: Captivating History
- Narrated by: Jason Zenobia
- Length: 3 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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The Spanish-American War really only lasted about ten weeks (the buildup and decision to go to war took longer than the war itself), but a peace treaty was not signed until December of 1898. This was an event that was the tipping point for the end of the Spanish Empire and the rise of the US as a formidable player on the world stage. Not all Americans were happy with the change, with famous Americans like Mark Twain speaking out about the US occupation of the lands that it was meant to save.
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Elementary, Sloppy, and with an Agenda
- By Drew in Florida on 10-10-20
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Unfinished Empire
- The Global Expansion of Britain
- By: John Darwin
- Narrated by: Alex Hyde-White
- Length: 18 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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In Unfinished Empire, he marshals his gifts to deliver a monumental one-volume history of Britain's imperium - a work that is sure to stand as the most authoritative, most compelling treatment of the subject for a generation.
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Perfect
- By gogojimmy on 01-27-15
By: John Darwin
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The Napoleonic Wars
- By: Alexander Mikaberidze
- Narrated by: Steven Crossley
- Length: 35 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
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The Napoleonic Wars saw fighting on an unprecedented scale in Europe and the Americas. It took the wealth of the British Empire, combined with the might of the continental armies, almost two decades to bring down one of the world's greatest military leaders and the empire that he had created. Napoleon's ultimate defeat was to determine the history of Europe for almost 100 years. From the frozen wastelands of Russia, through the brutal fighting in the Peninsula to the blood-soaked battlefield of Waterloo, this book tells the story of the dramatic rise and fall of the Napoleonic Empire.
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No description of battles
- By John Gaston on 01-15-21
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The Greek Revolution
- 1821 and the Making of Modern Europe
- By: Mark Mazower
- Narrated by: John Lee, Mark Mazower
- Length: 20 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
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As Mark Mazower shows us in his enthralling and definitive new account, myths about the Greek War of Independence outpaced the facts from the very beginning, and for good reason. This was an unlikely cause, against long odds, a disorganized collection of Greek patriots up against what was still one of the most storied empires in the world, the Ottomans. The revolutionaries needed all the help they could get.
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Excellent, had it not been for the narrator
- By Jean N on 05-15-22
By: Mark Mazower
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Brothers at Arms
- American Independence and the Men of France and Spain Who Saved It
- By: Larrie D. Ferreiro
- Narrated by: David Colacci
- Length: 16 hrs and 36 mins
- Unabridged
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In this groundbreaking, revisionist history, Larrie D. Ferreiro shows that at the time the first shots were fired at Lexington and Concord the colonists had little chance, if any, of militarily defeating the British. The nascent American nation had no navy, little in the way of artillery, and a militia bereft even of gunpowder. In his detailed accounts, Ferreiro shows that without the extensive military and financial support of the French and Spanish, the American cause would never have succeeded.
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Seapower States
- Maritime Culture, Continental Empires, and the Conflict That Made the Modern World
- By: Andrew Lambert
- Narrated by: Julian Elfer
- Length: 13 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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Andrew Lambert, author of The Challenge - winner of the prestigious Anderson Medal - turns his attention to Athens, Carthage, Venice, the Dutch Republic, and Britain, examining how their identities as "seapowers" informed their actions and enabled them to achieve success disproportionate to their size. Lambert demonstrates how creating maritime identities made these states more dynamic, open, and inclusive than their lumbering continental rivals. Only when they forgot this aspect of their identity did these nations begin to decline.
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only got 1 hour or so through
- By fm2 on 01-14-19
By: Andrew Lambert
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The Ottoman Age of Exploration
- By: Giancarlo Casale
- Narrated by: James Adams
- Length: 11 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim "the Grim" conquered Egypt and brought his empire for the first time in history into direct contact with the trading world of the Indian Ocean. During the decades that followed, the Ottomans became progressively more engaged in the affairs of this vast and previously unfamiliar region, eventually to the point of launching a systematic ideological, military and commercial challenge to the Portuguese Empire, their main rival for control of the lucrative trade routes of maritime Asia.
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Fascinating History-- keep a map handy
- By Colin on 04-27-12
By: Giancarlo Casale
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Everything Under the Heavens
- How the Past Helps Shape China's Push for Global Power
- By: Howard W. French
- Narrated by: Nicholas Hormann
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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For many years after its reform and opening in 1978, China maintained an attitude of false modesty about its ambitions. That role, reports Howard French, has been set aside. China has asserted its place among the global heavyweights, revealing its plans for pan-Asian dominance by building its navy, increasing territorial claims to areas like the South China Sea, and diplomatically bullying smaller players.
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Unique Concept
- By John on 02-24-20
By: Howard W. French
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The Pursuit of Power
- Technology, Armed Force, and Society since A.D. 1000
- By: William H. McNeill
- Narrated by: Chris Andrew Ciulla
- Length: 15 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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In this magnificent synthesis of military, technological, and social history, William H. McNeill explores a whole millennium of human upheaval and traces the path by which we have arrived at the frightening dilemmas that now confront us. McNeill moves with equal mastery from the crossbow - banned by the Church in 1139 as too lethal for Christians to use against one another - to the nuclear missile, from the sociological consequences of drill in the 17th century to the emergence of the military-industrial complex in the 20th.
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Brilliant, lucid history
- By Ariel on 07-04-22