Samoa became independent from New Zealand in 1962.
The country achieved independence on 1 January 1962 as the Independent State of Western Samoa, ending the United Nations trusteeship administered by New Zealand. It was the first small-island country in the Pacific to become independent. The legal transition followed New Zealand’s Western Samoa Act of 24 November 1961.
New Zealand had occupied the former German colony in 1914, during the opening of World War I, and later administered it first as a League of Nations mandate and then as a United Nations Trust Territory. Samoa’s independence movement pressed for self-government through decades of colonial rule, while Samoan political traditions shaped the country’s constitutional system.
The country was known internationally as Western Samoa until 1997, when it officially changed its name to Samoa. This helps distinguish it from American Samoa, which remains a United States territory. Samoa later joined the United Nations in 1976, fourteen years after independence.