This book is a researched study of land issues in American Samoa that analyzes the impact of
U.S. colonialism and empire building in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Carefully
tracing changes in land laws up to the present this volume also draws on a careful examination
of legal traditions administrative decisions court cases and rising tensions between
indigenous customary land tenure practices in American Samoa and Western notions of individual
private ownership. It also highlights how unusual the status of American Samoa is in its
relationship with the U.S. namely as the only unincorporated and unorganized overseas
territory and aims to expand the U.S. empire-building scholarship to include and recognize
American Samoa into the vernacular of Americanization projects.
