Postage stamp set: Samoa 1968 6th Anniversary of Independence Set (4 stamps)

This set of postage stamps from Sāmoa commemorates the sixth anniversary of Sāmoa’s political independence, gained in 1962. It depicts German and English characters associated with the prior colonial period: two major German figures who shaped the commercial and colonial beginning of the German-Samoan colonial legacy, impresario Fritz Marquardt and governor Dr. Wilhelm Solf, as well as John C. Williams, first Christian missionary to visit Sāmoa for the London Missionary Society, and Thomas Trood, entrepreneur and acting British Vice Consul in Sāmoa when it was annexed by Germany in 1900.

Significance

The stamps were collected as part of the co-collecting project Materialising German-Samoan Colonial Legacies (2016). On Te Papa’s behalf, German researcher Philipp Scorch assembled a collection of objects representing the history of the German colonial period in Samoa (1900-1914) and its legacy.

According to Schorch, “Apart from their obvious material mobility, the stamps are remarkable for various reasons. While clearly being Sāmoan material expressions devoted to the celebration of Sāmoan independence, they still portray key personalities reminiscent of the colonial era that is supposed to be overcome. Formerly (widely) condemned colonial pasts, here personified through emblematic individuals, thus become incorporated into the celebratory process of nation-building and heritage-making in the present. This ambivalence of enduring (post) colonial legacies is further complicated by Sāmoa’s multiple colonizing forces and their respective afterlives). In the case of these stamps, figures of both German and British Sāmoan pasts are displayed and (re)appropriated. Furthermore, the term Samoa I Sisifo or Western Sāmoa, until 1997 the official name of the country, alludes to another ambivalent reality: the continuing separation of the two Sāmoas – Western Sāmoa and American Sāmoa.”

Acquisition History

This set of postage stamps was collected for Te Papa by Philipp Schorch as part of the co-collecting project Materialising German-Samoan Colonial Legacies (2016).

Reference

Schorch, Philipp, Sean Mallon and Nina Tonga Materialising German -Samoan Colonial Legacies in Schorch, Philipp et al. (2020) Refocusing Ethnographic Museums through Oceanic Lenses. University of Hawaii Press pp.121-147