Apia
Capital and chief port of Samoa, on the north coast of Upolu; population (2001) 38,800. Copra, bananas, and cocoa beans are exported. There is a high-power radio communication station and an observatory. The town is built on a curving bay, backed by a conical hill, Vaea, beyond which is a mountain range.
Foreign consulates were set up in Apia in the 1880s, a step which so exacerbated the traditional rivalry among the local clans as to lead to a crisis, and Britain, the USA, and Germany sent warships to Apia in 1889.
Western Samoa became an independent state in 1962, with Apia as its capital, and changed its name to Samoa in 1997.
| The Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson is buried at Vaea. |
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