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Flags of Samoa

Samoan society has been organized for centuries under the fa'amatai system — chiefly titles (matai) held by heads of extended families and exercised through village and district councils (fono) — a real, living system of governance that still operates today alongside the modern state, not a relic replaced by it. No single flag-bearing polity unified the archipelago before the colonial era, and none is invented here to stand in for one.

Germany and the United States split the Samoan islands between themselves in 1899; this page follows only the western islands, the line that leads to the modern independent state. Western Samoa's 1962 independence from New Zealand administration was the first in the Pacific's 20th-century wave of decolonization, and the flag adopted in 1949 has flown, unchanged, through independence and the country's 1997 renaming to simply Samoa.

Scope of this page: the western Samoan islands that became the modern state of Samoa, pre-1900 to present, five entries. American Samoa, the eastern islands assigned to the United States in 1899, is a separate US territory outside this page's scope. Part of a larger atlas — see the map and linked pages at the bottom.

One archipelago, five flags over it

Savai'i and Upolu's own real coastlines, traced whole — the two main western islands answered to the same government in every era below, so there's no genuinely separate internal region to carve out honestly. Press play, or drag the slider, to watch who held it all at once.

This is a single-region page. The one genuine partition in Samoan history — the 1899 Tripartite Convention's line between these western islands and American Samoa to the east — is a division between two different countries, not within this one, and this page is scoped to the western islands alone (see the note above). Within that scope, Savai'i and Upolu were never separately governed.

pre-1900

Samoan chiefdom system (fa'amatai)

Real traced coastline, Savai'i and Upolu, no internal partition — see the rule box above for why.

red field, blue canton, Southern Cross — unchanged since 1949

1997 – present

Independent Samoa

Independent stateMalietoa Tanumafili IIChristian (no single established denomination)

Ruling house:Malietoa (paramount title)

Who & why: in 1997 the country formally renames itself from "Western Samoa" to simply "Samoa," dropping the qualifier that had distinguished it from American Samoa since the 1899 partition. The change is constitutional and diplomatic, not territorial; the flag itself does not change.

What it represents: the red field and Southern Cross stars carry forward unaltered from the 1949 design; the fa'amatai chiefly system continues to operate at the village and district level alongside the national parliament, one of the atlas's clearer examples of an indigenous governing tradition persisting into the present rather than being fully displaced.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutRed field, blue canton in upper hoist with five white Southern Cross stars.

Red#A4302A

Blue#002B7F

White#F4EFE1

the same flag, adopted 1949, carried into independence

1962 – 1997

Independent Western Samoa

Independent stateMalietoa Tanumafili IIChristian (Congregationalist-majority)

Migration & conquest:Emigration: to New Zealand (1960s–)

Ruling house:Malietoa (paramount title)

Who & why: Western Samoa becomes independent from New Zealand administration on 1 January 1962 — the first Pacific Island nation to achieve independence in the 20th-century wave of decolonization, a real point of regional distinction. Malietoa Tanumafili II, one of two paramount chiefs (the O le Ao o le Malo) at independence, becomes head of state.

What it represents: the flag, first adopted for internal self-government in 1949 and unaltered at independence, carries the same red field, blue canton, and Southern Cross that the country still flies today under its later, shorter name.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutRed field, blue canton in upper hoist with five white Southern Cross stars.

Red#A4302A

Blue#002B7F

New Zealand's own ensign, flown as administering power

1914 – 1962

New Zealand administration

Mandate / trust territoryRobert LoganNo official state religion (Christian-majority)

Migration & conquest:Conquered by: New Zealand (1914)

Ruling house:House of Windsor

Who & why: New Zealand occupies German Samoa militarily within weeks of the outbreak of WWI in August 1914, then administers it as a League of Nations mandate from 1920 and a United Nations trust territory from 1946, right through to 1962 independence — nearly half a century of external administration under three different legal frameworks.

What it represents: New Zealand's own Southern Cross ensign flew over the territory as the administering power's flag; no separate Samoan flag existed during most of this period, though a local self-government flag emerged in the final years before 1962.

Paint guide

Proportions1:2.

LayoutBlue field, Union Jack canton, two visible red/white Southern Cross stars.

Blue#00247D

Red#A4302A

German colonial flag, imperial tricolor with eagle motif

1900 – 1914

German Samoa

ColonyWilhelm SolfNo official state religion (Christian-majority)

Migration & conquest:Conquered by: Germany (1900)Immigration: Chinese contract laborers (from 1903)

Ruling house:House of Hohenzollern

Who & why: the 1899 Tripartite Convention, signed by Germany, the United States, and Britain, ends a period of three-way rivalry by partitioning the Samoan archipelago: Germany takes the larger western islands (this page's territory), the United States takes the eastern islands as American Samoa, and Britain withdraws its claim in exchange for concessions elsewhere in the Pacific. German colonial administration of Western Samoa begins in 1900.

What it represents: the German imperial colonial flag — a white field with the black-white-red imperial tricolor and eagle device in the canton or fly, the same basic family of flag flown over Germany's other Pacific and African colonies — represents just fourteen years of direct German rule before New Zealand's wartime occupation ends it in 1914.

Paint guide

ProportionsNo fixed civil ratio recorded for the colonial flag; shown at 3:2.

LayoutWhite field, black-white-red imperial German tricolor canton with eagle motif.

White#F4EFE1

Black#1A1A1A

Red#A4302A

placeholder — pre-partition era, no single flag

pre-1900

Samoan chiefdom system (fa'amatai)

Indigenous chiefdoms, pre-contactNo single ruler documentedIndigenous religion (aitu); Christianized from 1830

Who & why: Samoan society organized itself, for centuries before European contact and for a long time after it, through the fa'amatai system: matai (chiefly titles) held by heads of extended families ('āiga), exercised collectively through village and district fono (councils), and competed for among several paramount titles. No single unified Samoan flag-bearing state existed; political authority was distributed across these councils and titleholders rather than concentrated in one crown.

What it represents: no securely documented single flag survives from this era, because none was needed under fa'amatai governance. Shown here honestly blank rather than invented — and notably, the fa'amatai system itself did not end with colonization or independence; it continues to operate today.

Paint guide

ProportionsN/A — no attested flag.

Reading the tags

Indigenous chiefdoms, pre-contact — fa'amatai governance, no single flag

Colony — under a foreign power's direct administration

Mandate / trust territory — League of Nations or UN oversight

Independent state — fully sovereign

Leader — the named ruler most associated with the era's start

State religion — the official/established faith, not the population's

Find the records

Family history research for Samoa lives in a different project, Record Atlas, which maps which archive actually holds the paper for a given place and era.

Search Record Atlas for Samoa →

More of the atlas

This page is one lineage in a larger set. See the region-wide hub and the other countries here:

Flags Atlas indexSearch every country and hub Pacific hubFourteen countries, Oceania