The History Guy podcast

Counterfactuals: Samoan Crisis of 1889

2/10/2026

The History Guy

0:00

55:39

On today’s episode, we talk about the beautiful islands of Samoa, which were the background to a clash between the relatively nascent empires of the United States and Germany in the 1880s. As the crisis came to a head, however, nature put a dramatic end to human ambition. But what if it had gone differently?

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Counterfactuals: Samoan Crisis of 1889
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55:39
On today’s episode, we talk about the beautiful islands of Samoa, which were the background to a clash between the relatively nascent empires of the United States and Germany in the 1880s. As the crisis came to a head, however, nature put a dramatic end to human ambition. But what if it had gone differently?
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