Mau movement

The Mau movement was a Samoan campaign of nonviolent resistance to New Zealand’s colonial administration that sought self-government and helped lead to Samoa’s independence in 1962.

German Samoa: The German colonial territory established in Samoa in 1900 and taken over by New Zealand in 1914. New Zealand’s administration inherited a colony whose foreign rule had already provoked Samoan resistance.
Civil disobedience: The deliberate refusal to obey specific laws or commands as a form of political protest. The Mau used noncooperation to weaken the administration’s authority without waging war.
Olaf Frederick Nelson: A Samoan-born merchant and political leader who became a prominent organizer of the Mau movement. Nelson helped turn widespread grievances into a coordinated national campaign.
Black Saturday (Samoa): The 28 December 1929 killing of Mau demonstrators by New Zealand police in Apia. The deaths of protesters, including Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III, exposed the violence behind colonial rule.
Mau a Pule: A Samoan resistance movement in Savaiʻi that opposed German colonial rule in the early twentieth century. Its name and resistance tradition preceded the later national Mau campaign.
Samoan boycott of colonial institutions: A campaign of noncooperation in which Samoans avoided colonial courts, taxes, and official services. Boycotts turned the movement’s nonviolent principles into sustained pressure on the government.
Tupua Tamasese Lealofi III: A Samoan paramount chief and Mau leader killed by New Zealand police in 1929. His death during a peaceful procession became a defining loss for the movement.
Nelson deportation: The New Zealand government’s deportation of Mau leader Olaf Frederick Nelson from Samoa in 1928. The expulsion demonstrated how the administration tried to suppress the movement’s leadership.
Mataʻafa Iosefo: A Samoan high chief who opposed German rule and led resistance in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His resistance helped establish a precedent for organized opposition to foreign authority.
Samoan village councils: Local Samoan governing bodies that organize village affairs and exercise customary authority. Village organization helped coordinate collective noncooperation across communities.

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