AUCKLAND (Tagata Pasifika/Pacific Media Watch): Tagata Pasifika featured New Zealand’s first act of war in 1914 – the capture of the German-occupied colony of Samoa – in an Anzac Day special television programme today marking the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings.
In the lead up to the First World War, Britain asked its colony New Zealand to capture Samoa from the Germans in a bid for control of the Pacific.
A 1400-strong expeditionary force seized German Samoa in New Zealand’s first Act of War on 29 August 1914.
The colony was renamed Western Samoa and the capture led to the entangling of the two Pacific nations – “Entangled Islands”, according to historian and associate professor of Pacific Studies Toeolesulusulu Damon Salesa at the University of Auckland.
Dr Salesa describes how important this non-violent military action was in shaping the entwined futures of New Zealand and Samoa.
He was the first person of Pacific Islands descent to become a Rhodes Scholar to Oxford University.
In 2012, his book Racial Crossings: Race, Intermarriage, and the Victorian British Empire won the international Ernest Scott prize.
“I think historians help us understand our own genealogies. How did we become who we are?," says Dr Salesa.
“Race was one of the ways we were integrated into large societies – empires. We were brought in without being equal despite people professing equality."
Other Tagata Pasifika Anzac stories
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Pacific Media Watch
