German-Samoan Colonial Legacies - Hoisting of the German flag on Mulinu’u Peninsula

These photographs depict the hoisting of the imperial German flag at Mulinu’u Peninsula on the island of Upolu in Samoa on March 1, 1900. They capture the act and moment which made imperial Germany the internationally recognized ruler of Samoa after years of internal strife among Samoan chiefly lineages in response to, and association with, the colonial bickering – both diplomatically and violently – among the world powers of Germany, Great Britain and the Unites States of America aimed at carving out a share of this territorially small yet geopolitically significant piece of land in the Pacific.

Empire and Colonialism

At first sight and thought, then, the hoisting of the flag could be seen as symbolically reflecting these large or rather overwhelming forces of empire and colonialism. Samoa’s destiny would be sealed and the whole story told. However, if we take the flag as a specific ‘material maker(s) of relationships’ then we can zoom in on concrete ‘transactions and transformations’  between the people and places involved. What can such a view illuminate?

For example, we discover that the photographs were taken by Thomas Andrew, a New Zealand photographer who lived and worked in Samoa and whose images made their way to the collection of Te Papa. To a certain extent, his photos present a New Zealand perspective on the unfolding event, thus hinting at New Zealand’s role in the ‘Samoan tangle’  as another player with its own colonial ambitions.

Mulinu'u Peninsula 

We can also discover more about the photographs’ locality, Mulinu’u Peninsula. This is the place where the German side memorialized – through a monument – their casualties suffered in the Samoan crisis in 1888 during fighting of their forces in support of Samoan chief and proclaimed tafa’ifa, or king, Tamasese against his chiefly and kingly opponent Mata’afa supported by the opposing imperial powers of the UK and USA. Mulinu’u was also the site where the same Mata’afa – following diplomatic efforts culminating in the partition of Samoa – metamorphosed from German enemy to ally by being named ali’i sili, or paramount chief, the governmental link between the German administration and Samoan people. The associated ceremony on June 8, 1901, involved – according to Samoan customary practices – the distribution of fine mats, thus giving a colonial procedure a distinctively Samoan-German flair.

Political Tensions

This brief excursion to related events taking place at the Mulinu’u Peninsula prior and after the hoisting of the German imperial flag served to hint at the complexity of cross-cultural relations and negotiations underpinning and enacting such seemingly overwhelming phenomena such as empire and colonialism. But let us return to the photographs at hand. The photos show a carefully orchestrated ceremony in which German officials, sailors and policeman assume center stage, standing in the first row and relegating seated Samoans to the second row in the background. At first sight and thought, once again, the colonial power structure seems clear-cut. However, newspaper articles around the time of the event hint at ‘serious native dissension’, both among the Samoan chiefly fractions and in their relation to the German regime, which could (re)erupt into open resistance and violent conflict at any given moment when the acceptable scope of cooperation seemed overstretched.  ‘Each ceremony’, as Christopher B. Balme sums up, ‘for all its outward festive appearance and harmony, concealed an underlying dramatic tension and potential for disaster’.

Importantly, such dramatic tension and potential for disaster existed even on the German side alone. These internal conflicts were mostly not externally communicated by, for example, a newspaper article mapping the spatial design of the ceremony and giving official voice to its protagonists. Here, the main German characters, governor Wilhelm Solf and navy captain Hugo Emsmann, appear as holding glorifying speeches seemingly committed to a common cause.   Internal documents, however, reveal a major and at times vicious conflict between both actors and their civically and militarily minded interpretation of colonial governance.  Emsmann, being ‘shocked’ that a civilian bureaucrat rather than a military figure would be named governor, continued to protest by even temporarily switching sides and conspiring with Mata’afa (who (re)appears in yet another context), while Solf – thanks to diplomatic skill and political connections – achieved ‘victory in these skirmishes’ and ‘successfully insisted that he personally raise the black-white-red flag of the empire’. 

These traces of cross-cultural transactions and mutual transformations – visibly depicted and invisibly captured in the photographs – seem to indicate that there was not a German but a Samoan-German flag hoisted. And given the plurality of claims and interventions on both sides as well as the spaces in-between, we can even say that there was not just one but many flags hoisted.

Philipp Schorch (2016)