Indigenous Protest in Colonial Sāmoa: The Mau Movements and the Response of the London Missionary Society, 1900-1935
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2017-12
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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The two Sāmoan-led pro-nationalist movements, Mau a Pule and Mau, have dominated Sāmoan historiography. The word Mau represented a firm “opinion” of Sāmoans against both Germany and New Zealand’s colonial regimes. Before the two recognized movements, Sāmoan clergymen successfully protested in various maus of their own against the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.), and challenged European mission leadership, which resulted in multiple reforms and the Sāmoanization of the L.M.S. At the start of the 20th century, Sāmoans experienced a peaceful period, and had proven their potential ability to govern themselves politically, economically, and religiously. Despite Sāmoa’s move toward modernization, the L.M.S. church and colonial institutions attempted to limit agency in leadership, implement colonial policies against fa’a-sāmoa (Sāmoan customs and traditions), and disregard Sāmoa’s nonviolent attempts to instigate changes. Although intense at times, the different mau movements reflected a Christian society under the authority of titled chiefs or matai who maintained peace. The aim of this study is twofold. The first is to investigate whether a hybridity between fa’a-sāmoa and the civilizing mission by missionaries and colonizers produced a civil society within the colonial context that organized nonviolent protests to effect reforms within the foreign institutions. The second is to explore the link between the Mau movements and the L.M.S. While there has been plenty of research on the Mau movements, few studies have focused on the mau protests within the L.M.S., or their response to the Mau a Pule and Mau. This reexamination places the Sāmoan Mau movements within the wider discourse of protest studies in Oceania, and the rise of an indigenous civil society within the colonial context.
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