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‘Guardians and Wards’ : (A study of the origins, causes, and the first two years of the Mau in Western Samoa.)

Missionaries and Copra

Missionaries and Copra

After Malietoa's conversion in 1830, the protestant brand of christianity spread quickly throughout Samoa. It's growth was facilitated by a period of political stability and peace, and Malietoa's protection. By 1840, the London Missionary Society had consolidated its position by establishing congregations in strategic villages around the coast. The fear of French Catholicism increased the tempo of the Protestant crusade.10 Even though the page 11 conversion of the ‘benighted heathen’ was superficial, there were, by 1850, only a few die-hard forts of chiefly paganism left.

The growth of trade accompanied this process of christianisation. The new converts' thirst, not only for Jehovah and muskets, but for the other ‘goods’ of the papalagi, increased. This encouraged the growth of trade. To pay for European goods, the Samoans, at first, supplied ships with foodstuffs. But these were not sufficient. The growing demand in Europe for oil - (for soap and candles) - led to and stimulated the growth of the copra trade. Till by 1850 every village was producing copra.11

The effects of trade and missionary endeavour soon became physically evident. Concrete churches anchored villages to the malae; trading stores seemed to accompany each new church built, and Apia soon became the centre of Samoan life because it was becoming the commercial centre. These two activities also opened up, to the Samoans, a greater view of the papalagi world beyond the reef.

During the late eighteen forties, however, the hitherto uninterrupted mushrooming of churches and stores ran into difficulties in relation to the Tumua-Pule struggle. 1830 to 1841 was a period of political stability. This peace gave A'ana time to recover its strength. When Malietoa died in 1841, A'ana started intriguing to regain the Tafa'ifa. The missionaries and traders, concerned by the effects a civil war would have on their ‘enterprises’, attempted to heal the breach. But war broke out in 1848, and, from this year till partition in 1899, the Tumua-Pule rivalry again dominated the scene, frustrating every attempt, by the foreign powers, to establish a workable national government.