Tautai: Sāmoa, World History, and the Life of Taʻisi O.F. Nelson

Tautai is the story of a man who came from the edge of a mighty empire and then challenged it at its very heart. This biography of Ta'isi O. F. Nelson chronicles the life of a man described as the "archenemy" of New Zealand and its greater whole, the British Empire. He was Samoa's richest man who used his wealth and unique international access to further the Samoan cause and was financially ruined in the process. In the aftermath of the hyper-violence of the First World War, Ta'isi embraced nonviolent resistance as a means to combat a colonial surge in the Pacific that gripped his country for nearly two decades. This surge was manned by heroes of New Zealand's war campaign, who attempted to hold the line against the groundswell of challenges to the imperial order in the former German colony of Samoa that became a League of Nations mandate in 1921. Stillborn Samoan hopes for greater freedoms under this system precipitated a crisis of empire.^