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The Euro-American Psyche and the Imaging of Samoa in the Early 20th Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 May 2025

Max Quanchi
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Drawing on English language sources and material from Western Samoa (now Samoa), this examination of photographically illustrated serial encyclopaedia and magazines proposes an alternative historical analysis of the colonial photographs of Samoa, the most extensively covered field in Oceanic photographic studies. Photographs published between the 1890s and World War II were not necessarily from that era, and despite claims in the text of illustrated publications of an unchanged, enduring, archaic tradition in Samoa, the amazing variety of content and subject matter often offered contradictory evidence, depicting a modern, adaptive and progressive Samoa. Contrary to orthodox historical analysis, the images of Samoa in illustrated magazines and encyclopaedia were not limited to a small, repetitive gallery of partially clothed women and costumed chiefs.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , January 2007 , e5
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Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
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Copyright © The Authors 2007

References

Notes

1. Alison Nordström, “Paradise recycled; photographs of Samoa in changing contexts”, Exposure, 28, 3, 1991/1992, 15.

2. For typical, profusely illustrated articles, see Basil Thompson, “British empire in Australasia; island life in the strange South Seas” in Peoples of all nations, Volume 2, 897-975; and Basil Thompson, “South Sea Islands; palm fringed Edens of Oceania”, Countries of the World, 1925, Volume 37, 2925, 3768, 3789 and 3753-56 and the cover.

3. AHR Moncrieff, ed, The World of today, (6 volumes) (London 1907).

4. The naming of portraits was often random and confused by overlapping use of given name, title and honorific, as well as misspelling. For example, a John Davis portrait c1895 is named “Princess Fa'ane” (Casey Blanton, ed, Picturing paradise; colonial photography of Samoa 1875 to 1925, [Daytona Beach 1995], illustration 29, page 71) but is named “Sao Tama'ita'i Faamu, daughter of Malietoa Laupepa” in a slightly different pose in another portrait (Malama Meleisea, Lagaga; a short history of Western Samoa, [Suva 1987], plate 1). Her full name is Fa'amusami Malietoa. Fa'amu; the shortened version of Fa'amusami, is misspelled Fa'ane on the Davis portrait. (I thank Lau Asofou So'o for alerting me to the spelling error). An early 1900s postcard made from the same photograph was anonymously captioned “A Samoan Dancing Girl”. (I thank Max Shekleton for alerting me to this postcard; in the private collection of Max Shekleton, Noumea). Nordström notes the use of a portrait of Fa'amusami on a Muir and Moodie postcard from New Zealand, c1910 and on prints held by museums in the USA. (Nordström, “Paradise recycled”,10 and 11-12.). For a more recent use see “Taupou”, T Chande Lutu Drabble, Tusi Pese Fatuga Tuai a Samoa, (Pago Pago 2000), 128.

5. For Andrews portraits used as covers see Anne Maxwell, Colonial photography and exhibitions; representations of the native and the making of European identities (Leicester 1999) and Jeanette Mageo, ed, Cultural memory; reconfiguring history and identity in the postcolonial Pacific (Honolulu 2001). The print and postcard collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney (Anne Stephen, ed, Pirating the Pacific; images of trade, travel and tourism, Sydney 1993, 40) and the pictorial collection of the National Library of Australia have similar portraits; Judy Annear J, ed, Portraits of Oceania (Sydney 1997) 97. See also Blanton, Picturing paradise, 71, 86 and 127.

6. This ‘alia appears in Augustin Kramer, The Samoa Islands; an outline of a monograph with particular consideration of German Samoa, 2 volumes, translated by Theodore Verhaaren, (Honolulu, 1902-1903), Vol 2, 282; Anon., Cyclopedia of Fiji, 1907, 184; Anon., Cyclopedia of Samoa, Tonga, Tahiti and the Cook Islands (Sydney 1907), 15; JA Hammerton, ed, People of all nations, 9 volumes (London 1926), 4394 and AC Haddon and J Hornell, Canoes of Oceania (Honolulu 1936-38), 242. Kramer and the Cyclopedia of Samoa randomly used photographs from both Fiji and Samoa, of the ‘alia cited above, pap paw and bananas and dance groups; Kramer, The Samoan Islands, 165, 171, 282 and 367; Cyclopedia of Samoa, 12, 15, and 87.

7. Haddon and Hornell, Canoes of Oceania, 1936, 234. In Walkabout in 1946 this same photograph of a va'a alo was used as the opening or contextualising image; Lawrence Maine, “Report on Samoa”, Walkabout, Feb 1946, 15.

8. Lawrence Maine, “Report on Samoa, ”15-18; for other illustrated Walkabout articles, see HJ Manton-Hall, “Memories of Samoa”, Walkabout, June 1936, 41-43; Myra Drummond, “Apia; pearl of the Pacific”, Walkabout, March 1941, 13; and Eleanor Fleming, “Western Samoa”, Walkabout, April 1951, 14-16.

9. Nordström notes that known US repositories hold 15000 photographs of Samoa dated 1870-1925; Alison Nordström, “Photography of Samoa; production, dissemination and use” in Blanton, Picturing paradise, 11.

10. Flaherty's wife Francis also published a series of photographically illustrated articles in the journal Asia in 1925. See Francis Flaherty, “Samoan immortals; Pictorial” Asia, 25, 5, 1925, 393-400; “Setting up house and shop in Samoa” Asia, 25, 8, 1925, 639-51 and 709-11; “Behind the scenes with our Samoan stars” Asia, 25, 9, 1925, 747-53; “A search for animal and sea sequences” Asia, 25, 11, 1925, 954-62 and 1000-1004; “Fa'a Samoa” Asia, 25, 12, 1925, 1085-90.

11. Margaret Jolly, “From Point Venus to Bali Ha'i; eroticism and exoticism in representations of the Pacific” in L Manderson and M Jolly, eds., Sites of desire; economies of pleasure; sexualities in Asia and the Pacific (Chicago, 1997), 99.

12. Alison Nordström, “Wood nymphs and patriots; depictions of Samoans in the National Geographic”, Visual Sociology, 7, 2, 1992, 49. See also, H Abramson, National Geographic; behind America's lens on the world (New York, 1987) and C Lutz and J Collins, “Fashions in the ethnic other” in their Reading National Geographic (Chicago, 1993), 119-54.

13. Peter Hempenstall, “The colonial imagination and the making and re-making of the Samoan people”, in HJ Hiery and JM Mackenzie, eds, European impact and Pacific influence (London, 1997), 65.

14. Ibid., 66.

15. Serge Tcheckezoff, First contacts in Polynesia; the Samoan case 1722-1848, Western misunderstandings about sexuality and divinity (Canberra 2004) 10.

16. Jocelyn Linnekin, “Ignoble savages and other European visions; the La Pérouse affair in Samoan history”, Journal of Pacific History, 26, 1, 3-26. See also Virginia Webb, “Illuminated views; photographs of Samoa by Rev George Brown”, in Blanton, Picturing paradise, 59-68; and Virginia Webb, “Manipulated images; European photographs of Pacific peoples”, in E Barkan and R Bush, eds., Prehistories of the future; the Primitivist project and the culture of modernism, (Stanford 1995), 175-201.

17. This film and book have a critical and controversial historiography separate from any image-making role they played in Euro-American knowing of Samoa as a place; see Jolly, “From Point Venus to Bali Ha'i”; Sharon Tiffany, “Imagining the South Seas; thoughts on the sexual politics of paradise in Samoa”, Pacific Studies, 24, 3-4, 2001, 19-50; and Jeanette Mageo, “The third meaning in cultural memory; history, identity and spirit possession in Samoa”, in Mageo, Cultural memory, 58-80.

18. Nordström, “Wood nymphs and patriots”, 51. See also Alison Nordström, “Samoa; stereoviews and stereotypes”, Stereo World, 18, 4, 1991, 4-12.

19. Jolly, “Point Venus to Bali Ha'i”, 100.

20. Alison Nordström, “Early photography in Samoa; marketing stereotypes of paradise”, History of Photography, 15, 4, 1991b, 277. None of the photographs discussed by Nordström appear, for example, in a sample including the magazines and serial encyclopaedia The World of Today, The New World of Today, People of all nations, Asia, National Geographic Magazine or Walkabout.

21. This comment is repeated in Nordström, “Paradise recycled”, 6-15 and Nordström, “Photography of Samoa”, 15.

22. Paul Fox, “Portraits of Oceania”, in Annear, Portraits of Oceania, 15.

23. Elizabeth Edwards, “Time and space on the quarter deck; two Samoan photographs by Captain W Acland” in her Raw histories; photographs, Anthropology and museums, Berg, Oxford, 2001, 116-17; also see, Elizabeth Edwards, “Visuality and history; a contemplation on two photographs of Samoa by Capt W Acland, Royal Navy”, in Blanton, Picturing paradise, 1997, 49-58; and Elizabeth Edwards, “Negotiating spaces; some photographic incidents in the Western Pacific 1883-84” in Joan Schwartz and James Ryan, eds, Picturing place; photography and the geographical imagination (London 2003), 261-80.

24. Nordström, “Wood nymphs and patriots”; H Webster, “Samoa; Navigators Islands”, The National Geographic Magazine, 10, 1899, 207-17; LM Quinn, “America's South Sea soldiers”, The National Geographic Magazine, 36, 1919, 267-74; Truman Bailey, “Samoa—South Seas outpost of the US Navy”, The National Geographic Magazine, 79, 5, 1941, 615-30.

25. I thank Peter Hempenstall and Andrea Schmidt for alerting me to the range of illustrated publications in Germany.

26. JA Hammerton, “From the editor's desk”, Countries of the world, Vol 37, (London 1925), ii and iii.

27. Peoples of all nations, Vol 6, 1926; (Peru) 4042; (Philippines) 4106; (Rhodesia) 4213 and (Rhodesia) 4219.

28. Frank Fox, “Samoa” in Peoples of all nations, Volume 6, (Educational Book Company c1926) 4391-4415.

29. Peter Mesenhöller, “Ethnography considers history; some examples from Samoa”, Blanton, Picturing paradise, 42-44. 18% of images were of villages or dwellings and 15% of everyday Samoan activities. When the National Library of New Zealand collected 130 prints from Thomas Andrew c 1940, portraits were less dominant and European activities and scenic views featured more prominently; see Nordström, “Early photography in Samoa”, 280.

30. Nordström, “Early photography in Samoa”, 274.

31. Ibid., 281.

32. Phrases in the following paragraph are from Nordström, “Photography of Samoa”, 11; Edwards, Raw histories, 108; Maxwell, Colonial photography and exhibitions, 11.

33. Edwards, Raw histories, 109.

34. As claimed in Maxwell, Colonial photography and exhibitions, 165.

35. Ibid., 166 (my phrase added in italics) and 178.

36. Nordström, “Wood nymphs and patriots”, 51.

37. Edwards, Raw histories, 12.

38. Ibid., 109.

39. Frank Fox, “Samoa” in Hammerton, Peoples of all nations, Volume 6, 4407.