‘Purely of their own manufacture’: the adoption and appropriation of cricket in Samoa, c. 1879-1939

This thesis considers how Samoans embraced and reshaped the game of cricket following its introduction to the islands in 1879. Almost as soon as they began playing the sport, Samoans recast cricket as the distinctive Samoan game of kirikiti. This act of appropriation established the pitch as a 'contested space' between Samoans and foreigners, who were wary of kirikiti's association with Samoan politics and 'wasteful' customary exchange. The struggle over cricket was not neatly divided between colonisers and colonised, however. Instead, the game's history in Samoa reflected the complexities and blurred boundaries created by imperial expansion and subsequent colonial rule.