Timeline: Samoa

A chronology of key events

1722 - Dutch navigator Jacob Roggeveen is the first European to explore Samoa.

Samoa is regarded by some as the cradle of Polynesian culture

1830 - London Missionary Society arrives in Samoa.

1899 - Germany annexes Western Samoa (now called the Independent State of Samoa, or just Samoa), the US takes over eastern Samoa (American Samoa) and Britain withdraws its claim to the islands in accordance with treaty between Germany, Britain and the US.

1914 - New Zealand occupies Western Samoa during World War I and continues to administer it after the war by virtue of a League of Nations mandate (and a United Nations mandate after World War II).

1928 - New Zealand authorities shoot dead 11 members of the mau passive resistance movement.

1939-45 - US troops stationed in Western Samoa during World War II, but no battles are fought on the islands.

Independence

1962 - Western Samoa becomes independent, the first Pacific island nation to do so.

1990 - Voters narrowly approve universal suffrage for parliament and increase the legislature's term from three to five years; 10,000 people are left homeless by Cyclone Ofa.

1997 - Western Samoa changes its name to Samoa, a move which causes some tension with American Samoa.

1998 - Government imposes stringent restrictions on media freedom.

2000 - Two former cabinet ministers are sentenced to death for the murder of a fellow politician who had threatened to expose a corruption scandal, but the death sentences are commuted.

UN lists Samoa as one of the world's least-developed countries

2001 March - Prime Minister Tuila'epa Sailele Malielegaoi is re-elected for a second term after a cliff-hanger election. His Human Rights Protection Party (HRPP) claims 28 seats in the 49-seat parliament.

2002 June - New Zealand formally apologises to Samoa for its poor treatment of Samoan citizens in colonial times. Prime Minister Helen Clark makes the apology at a ceremony in Apia marking 40 years of independence.

2004 February - Australia says it will give Samoa $7m to help train its security forces.

2006 April - Prime Minister Tuila'epa's ruling HRPP wins parliamentary elections.

2007 March - The rights group Mau Sitiseni prepares to take its fight for most indigenous Samoans to be granted New Zealand citizenship to the UN.

2007 May - King Malietoa Tanumafili II dies aged 94, after 45 years on the throne. He was appointed king for life at independence in 1962. He was the world's third-longest reigning monarch, after King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand and Britain's Queen Elizabeth.

2009 September - Samoa switches to driving on the left, becoming the first country since since the 1970s to change the side of the road on which cars are driven. The government brought about the change to bring Samoa into line with other South Pacific countries.

Tsunamis caused by a powerful earthquake in the Pacific kill more than 100 people in Samoa, American Samoa and Tonga.