Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
In the 1880s and 1890s, the Pacific island of Samoa became a bloody chessboard where three empires clashed. Germany, Britain, and the United States vied for control, and the native population found themselves trapped between colonial ambitions they could neither understand nor resist. Robert Louis Stevenson, the man who gave us Treasure Island and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, witnessed this catastrophe firsthand and refused to look away. He lived in Samoa from 1890 until his death in 1894, became entangled in its politics, and wrote this fierce, granular account of what empire actually looks when you stand on the ground rather than survey it from a ministry in London or Berlin. The book crackles with his literary gifts applied to real events: the intrigue, the betrayals, the casual devastation of a culture that had thrived for millennia. Stevenson had no illusions about the 'civilizing' missions of Europe. This is an eyewitness indictment dressed in beautiful prose, a footnote to the grand histories of empire that somehow tells you everything that matters about them.
Editions
Link to this book
Add a free, dofollow link to Lex on your blog, forum, syllabus, or reading list.
<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506b"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506b)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506b][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506bCite this book
Reading this edition for a paper or guide? Copy a citation.
Stevenson, Robert Louis. Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. Lex, lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506b.Stevenson, R. L. (n.d.). Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506bStevenson, Robert Louis. Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/footnote-to-history-eight-years-of-trouble-in-samoa-32a96e7a-7e7d-4aec-8416-ebfd9c54506b.
