By the 1870s modern economic conditions were well established and accepted by the Samoans, who had just enough of a government that could be manipulated at will by the foreign business interests in Samoa. After the United States concluded a friendship treaty with Samoa in 1878, Germany negotiated her own Favorite Nation Treaty in 1879 with the same Samoan faction as the U.S., while later in 1879 the Anglo-Samoan treaty was completed with a rival faction. Contentions among the whites in Samoa, plus native factional strife led to side-choosing that became deadly warring with the introduction of modern weapons. Washington conference of 1887 To attempt to resolve some of the problems, the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom agreed to a conference at Washington in June 1887. After the surfacing of serious disagreements among the parties, the conference adjourned without results. Fighting by nationals of the three powers with their factional local allies led to a conflict that was only tempered by the Apia hurricane of 1889 that wrecked warships on the verge of hostilities. Treaty of Berlin of 1889 The seriousness of the situation was finally recognized and German foreign minister Count Herbert von Bismarck proposed to reconvene the adjourned Washington conference of 1887. He invited U.S. and British representatives to Berlin in April 1889. Bismarck's pragmatic approach proposed protection for life, property, and commerce of the treaty participants and relegated native government and their unstable "kings" to the Samoans, with which the British concurred. The United States insisted on a three powers authority while preserving native rights. In the Treaty of Berlin of 1889 thus a joint protectorate or condominium was declared, with a European/American chief justice, a municipal council for Apia, and with the "free right of the natives to elect their Chief or King" as the signatory to the act, thus the treaty professed to recognize a Samoan independent government. No sooner was the native royal figurehead appointed, and after disturbances restored, the other chiefs went into rebellion and civil war ensued. By the end of the 19th century, the failure of the arrangement was freely admitted by the governments of the three powers since the principal protagonists in Samoa acted directly for their own interests, frequently overruling the officials of the condominium. A dissolution of the condominium created by the "entangling alliance" was now in play.
The Tripartite Convention of 1899
The German government "had never made a secret of their belief that international control of Samoa was visionary and impractical... and they began a series of diplomatic moves intended to eliminate it altogether." German diplomats in Washington had ascertained during the summer of 1899 that the United States administration was satisfied with obtaining the island of Tutuila with its key asset, the existing coaling station at Pago Pago. With "partitioning of Samoa" by then the prevailing understanding, the United States expressed no objections to Britain and Germany "coming to a preliminary agreement." Kaiser Wilhelm II had accepted an invitation to visit England in November 1899 and his government insisted that an agreement on Samoa should be concluded before his departure for Britain. A settlement was reached at London by 9 November and signed on 14 November. It was therefore this Anglo-German agreement on Samoa in tandem with the informal understanding with the United States that partitioned Samoa. It only remained for the three powers to negotiate a tripartite convention in order to secure the approval of the United States to the whole agreement. The Tripartite Convention of 1899 was duly constituted and documents were signed at Washington on 2 December 1899 by the U.S. Secretary of StateJohn Hay, Baron Theodor von Holleben, German ambassador to the United States, and Sir Julian Pauncefote, British ambassador to the United States, with ratifications exchanged on 16 February 1900.
Positions as a result of the Tripartite Convention of 1899
United States: German Empire: United Kingdom: These treaty arrangements of the Tripartite Convention of 1899 stayed in place until the outbreak of World War I in 1914.
