A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, credited to Robert Louis Stevenson, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson. Read in English by Alister. CONTENT WARNING: THIS WORK INCORPORATES QUOTATIONS CONTAINING RACIST SLURS. IF YOU WANT TO CREATE A BOWDLERIZED COPY, SEE BETWEEN ABOUT 07.47 AND 07.50, AND AGAIN BETWEEN 11.00 AND 11.08, OF SECTION 9 / CHAPTER 8. There is no single experience with imperialism. The world over, every country subjected to foreign influence or subjugated to foreign control has their own story shaped by economics, civics, development, environment, culture, geography, diplomacy and people. There is no single experience with imperialism, and yet I suspect most people would not judge Samoa’s experience to be particularly exceptional either. Robert Louis Stephenson’s A Footnote to History is a particularly engaging account for being a pedestrian’s-eye view of imperialism at work. In Stephenson’s own words, his story is largely “. . . one of rapacity, intrigue and the triumphs of temper”. There is that. Cultures clash. Ordinary people are caught in the gears—while others are simply spectators, swept along. There are schemers too. Those seeking to shape the world to their own designs. Those who wrought this Samoan Crisis. Many of them are caught in the gears too. Stephenson’s treatment of many of the subjects who populate this account is penetrating and sympathetic—be that the irascible Colonel Henry de Coetlogon, the savvy and resolute chief Mataafa or the upright but unbending Captain Eugen Brandeis to name but a few. Why all this fuss? What great riches would bring industrial behemoths like the Germany and the United States to the brink of war? For what bounty do they contend in these islands, so far from their own shores? They contend for the commercial production of copra—dried coconut meat from which coconut oil can be extracted. Coconut oil is an ingredient which can be used in margarine. During the late 19th century, copra was produced across the region including in the Philippines, Tonga, the Dutch East Indies and New Guinea. Lurking behind men like Heinrich Becker and Wilhelm Knappe, Richard Phillips Leary and Harold Marsh Sewall, ever-present are the interests of certain business groups as perhaps embodied on the ground by men like Theodor Weber (Misi Ueba), and Stevenson’s own friend Harry Jay Moors (Misimoa)—whom he described in a letter as the “ablest, wealthiest and best-informed trader in Samoa”. From lobbying in Washington to smuggling in and directly supplying Mataafa’s forces with ammunition, traders like Moors were no mere bystanders but power players. Ultimately, for all the acquisitiveness and power games of man—there is no more apt reminder of where in the schema of our world that true power lies than the first Samoan civil war. “Do not let us weep,” said one Samoan in 1887 before Laupepa’s exile, “We have no cause for shame. We do not yield to Tamasese, but to the invincible strangers.” The strangers with their science and their industry would prove to be quite vincible, after all. Whenever Nature unleashes even a desultory shadow of shattering violence of which it is truly capable, even the mighty tremble and our contentions fall away. At least for a time. (Summary by Alister)

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
• Author credits: Robert Louis Stevenson
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 15
• Listed recording duration: 7:05:17

Catalogue topics

• Samoa
• imperialism
• polynesia
• german empire
• apia
• mataafa iosefo
• gunboat diplomacy
• tupua tamasese titimaea

Track guide

1. 00 - Preface — 2:10
2. 01 - Chapter 1—The Elements of Discord: Native — 22:14
3. 02 - Chapter 2—The Elements of Discord: Foreign — 26:27
4. 03 - Chapter 3a—The Sorrows of Laupepa, 1883 to 1887, Part 1 — 33:16
5. 04 - Chapter 3b—The Sorrows of Laupepa, 1883 to 1887, Part 2 — 29:52
6. 05 - Chapter 4—Brandeis — 40:13
7. 06 - Chapter 5—The Battle of Matautu — 29:37
8. 07 - Chapter 6—Last Exploits of Becker — 45:44
9. 08 - Chapter 7—The Samoan Camps — 19:05
10. 09 - Chapter 8—Affairs of Laulii and Fangalii — 38:10
11. 10 - Chapter 9—"Furor Consularis" — 34:22
12. 11 - Chapter 10—The Hurricane — 30:58
13. 12 - Chapter 11a—Laupepa and Mataafa, Part 1 — 16:48
14. 13 - Chapter 11b—Laupepa and Mataafa, Part 2 — 29:10
15. 14 - Chapter 11c—Laupepa and Mataafa, Part 3 — 27:11

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This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.