Berlin Samoa Conference
The Berlin Samoa Conference 1889 took place from 29 April to 14 June 1889 at the invitation of German Foreign Minister Count Herbert von Bismarck in Berlin instead. At the Samoa Conference, the long-standing power struggles between the German Empire , Great Britain and the United States over the Samoa Islands were initially settled. The Samoa Agreement established governance over the islands shared by the three interested powers. Samoa was declared a formally independent, neutral kingdom under the Protectorate of the Three Powers . The final document of the conference, the Samoa Act, formed the basis for the administration of the archipelago for the next ten years.
background
The Hamburg trading house Joh. Ces. Godeffroy & Sohn had gained considerable influence on the South Pacific island group since 1855 through the establishment of several trading stations and a trading post . In 1878 the South Sea property was handed over to the newly founded German Trading and Plantation Company of the South Sea Islands in Hamburg (DHPG). In addition to Joh. Ces. Godeffroy and son or the DHPG also settled American and British merchants on the Samoan Islands. While American influence predominated in the east of the archipelago, Great Britain and the German Empire competed for dominance in the copra trade in the west . The three great powers also tried to take advantage of the rivalries within Samoa to exert influence over the struggle for the head of the Samoans and each supported its own candidate.
On September 2, 1879, the Three Powers declared the capital Apia on the north coast of Upolu Island and the area surrounding the city to be a neutral zone under the equal, joint administration of the consuls of these states. This municipal administration had the task of protecting the trade of Europeans and regulating the relations between Europeans and Samoans.
In 1881 conflicts arose again in connection with the election of the king. The British supported Malietoa Laupepa while the Germans supported Tupua Tamasese Titimaea. When there was a clash between Germans and Samoans during an Emperor's birthday party in 1887, Laupepa was caught and sent into exile in the German colony of Cameroon . The British and American representatives, offended by this diplomatic defeat, proclaimed Mataafa Josefo on the side island of Savai'i to be the anti-king.
On July 26, 1887, the three rival powers met in Washington, DC for the first Samoa conference . It remained unsuccessful because the other powers refused to recognize a German mandate over Samoa.
During the Samoa Crisis in 1889, American and German warships faced each other for the first time. It is likely that in this tense situation there would have been fighting if a cyclone off Apia from March 13th to 17th, 1889 had not destroyed the warships anchored in the bay, already ready to fight, and killed 54 American and 92 German sailors would have lost. The USS Trenton , the USS Vandalia and the USS Nipsic as well as the SMS Eber , SMS Olga and SMS Adler collided, stranded or crashed on the reef. Only the British HMS Calliope saved itself in the eye of the hurricane.
Samoa Conference 1889
The Samoa Conference was proposed by the German Foreign Minister Herbert von Bismarck in order to resume negotiations after the failed attempts. The conference met on April 29, 1889 in Berlin. Germany was represented by Herbert von Bismarck and the members of the Foreign Office: Friedrich von Holstein and Richard Krauel . The UK Legation consisted of Ambassador Edward Malet , Charles Stewart Scott and Joseph Archer Crowe ; Special Envoy John A. Kasson , William Walter Phelps and George H. Bates were sent from the United States .
The three great powers decided to convert the neutral territory around Apia into a municipal district. Like the Chief Justice of Great Britain, the United States and Germany, the President of the Municipal Administration was jointly appointed. Should it not be possible to reach an agreement on the filling of government offices, the King of Sweden was appointed as arbitrator.
A German official presided over the municipal council. The first president of the municipal council of Apia was Arnold Freiherr Senfft von Pilsach , who arrived in Apia in April 1891. His successor was Ernst Schmidt-Dargitz in 1894 , followed by John Raffel in 1897 and Wilhelm Solf in 1899 .
The judiciary was in the hands of the British and the Americans. English was the language of the courts, and Anglo-Saxon law in its Australian form applied. The Chief Justice was the appellate body in international matters and arbitrator in matters of succession. The Swede Otto Conrad Waldemar Cedercrantz took up his post as the first chief judge on January 2, 1891. On November 3, 1893, he was followed by Henry Clay Ide, who was replaced on May 13, 1897 by William Lee Chambers. The last chief judge was Luther Wood Osborn from July 1899 to March 1, 1900.
The Berlin conference upheld the fiction of an autonomous Samoan administration. The independence and neutrality of the government of Samoa was guaranteed, the three great powers decided to guarantee a free election of the Tupu and the disarmament of all Samoans. In addition, public finances have been reorganized. Malietoa Laupepa, defeated by Mataafa Josefo in autumn 1887, was reinstated.
The treaty was signed in Berlin by the three powers on June 14, 1889; Ratifications were exchanged on April 12, 1890, and the Samoa government approved the treaty on April 19, 1890.
Further development
This tridominium functioned more poorly than properly until 1899. There was constant unrest and turmoil, tribal trades and trader quarrels. After the bombing of Apias, the capital of Samoa, by the British and Americans in early 1899, which was directed against their former protégé Mataafa, the Samoa Treaty was signed on November 14, 1899 . The Samoan Islands were divided between Germany and America along the 171st degree of longitude. With the islands of Upolu and Savaiʻi, Germany received the greater part of the archipelago, which from 1900 onwards formed the colony of German Samoa . Great Britain renounced its sphere of influence on Samoa, but had its rights to Tonga recognized and received from Germany the Solomon Islands Ysabel , Choiseul , Ontong Java , the Shortland Islands and border corrections in the German colony Togo . The agreement of 1889 was annulled.
The Berlin conference was the first not to work in the traditional diplomatic language of French. At a suggestion by Otto von Bismarck, negotiations were held in English.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Liane Werner: History of the German colonial area in Melanesia . (Thesis, filmed and published by the Pacific Manuscripts Bureau, Canberra, PMB 514). [Humboldt University, Berlin 1965], Part I, p. 58.
- ^ Norbert Wagner (ed.): Archive of German Colonial Law. Convention of September 2, 1879 regarding the municipal administration of Apia. (RT-Vhdl., 4th LP, 3rd session, vol. 65, file number 101, p. 728; PDF; 2.0 MB) p. 311.
- ↑ Gunar Ortlepp: (November 18, 1985) Something is rotten in the Garden of Eden Der Spiegel (accessed December 22, 2010)
- ^ To the Samoa Conference. Official press of Prussia: Latest communications. VIII. Year. No. 31. Latest news. Responsible editor: Dr. H. Klee. Berlin, Wednesday, April 24, 1889.
- ^ A b Neutrality and Autonomous Government in Samoa (General Act of Berlin). In: Charles Irving Bevans (ed.): Treaties and Other International Agreements of the United States of America, 1776-1949: Volume 1 Multilateral, 1776-1917. United States Department of State, Washington DC 1968
- ↑ Anneliese von der Groeben: XIV 8 - Memories of my parents' house. In Theodore Radkte (ed.): Senfft von Pilsach, part 3.
- ^ Samoa WorldStatesmen.org, Samoa
- ^ British instrument of ratification of the Samoa Treaty, Foreign Office, Archives, Samoa Treaty