🇼🇸 Samoa

National Flag

Geography & Borders

This country has no land borders.

Introduction & Background

Samoa,note 1 officially the Independent State of Samoanote 2 and until 1997 known as Western Samoa, is a Polynesian island country consisting of two main islands (Savai'i and Upolu); two smaller, inhabited islands (Manono and Apolima); and several smaller, uninhabited islands, including the Aleipata Islands (Nu'utele, Nu'ulua, Fanuatapu and Namua). Samoa is located 64km (40mi) west of American Samoa, 889km (552mi) northeast of Tonga (closest foreign country), 1,152km (716mi) northeast of Fiji, 483km (300mi) east of Wallis and Futuna, 1,151km (715mi) southeast of Tuvalu, 519km (322mi) south of Tokelau, 4,190km (2,600mi) southwest of Hawaii, and 610km (380mi) northwest of Niue. The capital city is Apia. The Lapita people discovered and settled the Samoan Islands around 3,500 years ago. They developed a Samoan language and Samoan cultural identity.

Samoa is a unitary parliamentary democracy with 11 administrative divisions. It is a sovereign state and a member of the Commonwealth of Nations. Western Samoa was admitted to the United Nations on 15 December 1976.13 Because of the Samoans' seafaring skills, pre-20th-century European explorers referred to the entire island group (which includes American Samoa) as the "Navigator Islands".1415 The country was a colony of the German Empire from 1899 to 1915, then came under a joint British and New Zealand colonial administration until 1 January 1962, when it became independent.