Consulate
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Search complete. 32 mentions across 4 episodes found for "Consulate".
Sep 22, 2026
AlistairNARRATOR
It was thus a game of beggar my neighbour between a large merchant and some small ones.
AlistairNARRATOR
Had it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel; but when the Consulate appeared to be concerned, when the warships of the German Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the rage of the independent traders broke beyond restraint; and, largely from the national touchiness and intemperate speech of German clerks, this scramble among dollar-hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial war.
AlistairNARRATOR
The firm, with the indomitable Weber at its head and the Consulate at its back, there has been the chief enemy at Samoa.
AlistairNARRATOR
No English reader can fail to be reminded of John Company; and if the Germans appear to have been not so successful, we can only wonder that our own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished.
AlistairNARRATOR
Even on the field of Samoa, though German faults and aggressions make up the burthen of my story, they have been nowise alone.
James KamarasamyHOST
So what do you make then of this decision? I think it is unprecedented, isn't it?
Richard DaltonGUEST
Well, I think it's for the British government to take firm steps in response at the right time, having first encouraged Israel to reconsider and maintained the British legal position that Israel is not sovereign over the Consulate General in Jerusalem.
Richard DaltonGUEST
The Consulate General is not accredited to the State of Israel.
Richard DaltonGUEST
And we should maintain, for the sake of international legality, the same issues of the importance of international law to Britain that are driving our attitude towards an eventual settlement and our opposition to Israeli colonisation of the West Bank and Jerusalem.
Richard DaltonGUEST
We should maintain our legal position for as long as we can.
AlistairNARRATOR
The man who, in a native word of praise, is mata'aiga,— 'a race-regarder,' has his hand always open to his kindred; the man who is not, in a native term of contempt noa knows always where to turn in any pinch of want or extremity of laziness Beggary within the family, and by the less self respecting without it, has thus grown into a custom and a scourge and the dictionary teems with evidence of its abuse Special words signify the begging of food, of uncooked food, of fish, of pigs, of pigs for travellers, of pigs for stock, of taro, of taro tops, of taro tops for planting, of tools, of fly hooks, of implements for netting pigeons and of mats It is true the beggar was supposed in time to make a return somewhat as by the Roman contract of mutuum but the obligation was only moral; it could not be or was not enforced As a matter of fact it was disregarded The language had recently to borrow from the Tahitians a word for debt while by a significant accident it possessed a native expression for the failure to pay To omit to make a return for property begged Conceive now the position of the householder besieged by harpies and all defence denied him by the laws of honour The sacramental gesture of his refusal His last and single resource Was supposed to signify My house is destitute Until that point was reached In other words Conduct prescribed For a Samoan Was to give And continue giving But it does not appear He was at all expected To give With a good grace The dictionary Is well stocked With expressions Standing ready Like missiles To be discharged Upon the locusts Troop Of shamefaced ones You draw in your head like a tern you make your voice small like a whistle pipe you beg like one delirious and the verb pogatai to look cross is equipped with the pregnant rider as at the sight of beggars This insolence of beggars and the weakness of proprietors can only be illustrated by examples We have a girl in our service to whom we had given some finery That she might wait at the table and At her own request Some warm clothing against the cold mornings of the bush She went on a visit to her family and returned in an old tablecloth the whole wardrobe having been divided out among relatives in the course of twenty four hours A pastor in the province of Atua being a handy busy man bought a boat for a hundred dollars fifty of which he paid down Presently after relatives came to him upon a visit and took a fancy to his new possession We have long been wanting a boat said they Give us this one So when the visit was done They departed in the boat The pastor meanwhile travelled to Savaii the best way he could sold a parcel of land and begged mats among his relatives to pay the remainder of the price of the boat Which was No longer his You might think this was enough but some months later the harpies Having broken athwart Brought back the boat to be repaired and repainted By the original owner Such customs it might be argued Being double edged Will ultimately right themselves But it is otherwise in practice such folk as the Pastor’s harpy relatives will generally have a boat and will never have paid for it such men as the pastor may have sometimes Paid for a boat But will never Have one It is there As it is with Us at home The measure of Abuse of either system Is the blackness Of the Individual heart The same Man Who would Drive his poor Relatives From his door In England Would besiege in Samoa The doors of the rich and the essence of dishonesty in either case is to pursue one's own advantage and to be indifferent to the losses of one's neighbours but the particular drawback of the Polynesian system is to depress and stagger industry to work more is there only to be more pillaged to save is impossible the family has then made a good day of it when all are filled and nothing remains over for the crew of freebooters and the injustice of the system begins to be recognised even in Samoa One Native is Said to have Massed a certain Fortune Two clever lads have individually expressed to us their discontent with a system which taxes industry to pamper idleness i hear that in one village of Sava'i a law has been passed forbidding gifts under the penalty of a sharp fine Under this economic regimen the unpopularity of taxes which strike all at the same time which expose the industrious to a perfect siege of mendicancy and the lazy to be actually condemned to a day's labour may be imagined without words.
AlistairNARRATOR
It is more important to note the concurrent relaxation of all sense of property from applying for help to kinsmen who are scarce permitted to refuse, it is but a step from taking from them in the dictionary phrase 'without permission', from that to theft at large is but a hair's breadth End of section one Section two of A Footnote to History Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa By Robert Louis Stevenson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Read by Alistair Chapter 2 The Elements of Discord Foreign The huge majority of Samoans like other God-fearing folk in other countries are perfectly content with their own manners And upon one condition—it is plain they might enjoy themselves far beyond the average man Seated in islands very rich in food the idleness of the many idle would scarce matter; and the provinces might continue to bestow their names upon rival pretenders and fall into war (and enjoy that awhile) and drop into peace again (and enjoy that also), in a manner highly to be envied But the condition —that they should be let alone Is no longer possible More than a hundred years ago and following closely on the heels of Cook an irregular invasion of adventurers began to swarm about the isles where the Pacific the Seven Sleepers of Polynesia stand still but half aroused In the midst of the century of competition! And the island races comparable to a shop full of crockery launched upon the stream of time now fall To make their desperate voyage Among pots of brass and adamant Apia, the port and mart, is the seat of the political sickness of Samoa At the foot of a peaked woody mountain the coast makes a deep indent roughly semicircular In front the reef is broken by the fresh water of streams If the swell be from the north it enters almost without diminution and the warships roll dizzily at their moorings and along the fringing coral which follows the configuration of the beach the surf Breaks With a continuous uproar In wild weather as the world knows the roads are untenable Along the whole shore which is everywhere green and level and overlooked by inland mountaintops the town lies drawn out in strings and clusters The western horn is Mulinuu the eastern Matautu and from one to the other of these extremes I ask the reader to walk He will find more of the history of Samoa spread before his eyes in that excursion Than has yet been collected in the blue books or white books of the world Mulinuu Where the walk is to begin is a flat windswept promontory planted with palms backed against a swamp of mangroves and occupied by a rather miserable village The reader is informed that this is the proper residence of the Samoan kings he will be more surprised to observe a board set up and to read that this historic village is the property of the German firm But these boards Which are among the commonest feature of the landscape May be rather taken to imply That the claim has been disputed A little farther east he skirts the stores offices and barracks of the firm itself Thence he will pass through matafele—the one really townlike portion of this long string of villages by German bars and stores and the German consulate and reach the Catholic mission and cathedral standing by the mouth of a small river The bridge which crosses here [The Bridge of Mulivai] Is a frontier Behind is Matafele Beyond Apia proper behind the Germans are supreme beyond with but few exceptions All is Anglo Saxon Here the reader will go forward past the stores of Mr Moore’s American Past the English Mission The office of the English newspaper The English church And the old American Consulate Till he reaches the mouth of a large river The Vaisingano Beyond in Matauta His way takes him in the shade Of many trees and by scattered dwellings and presently brings him beside a great range of officers the place and monument of a German who fought the German firm during his life His house Now he is dead Remains pointed Like a discharged cannon At the citadel of his old enemies fittingly enough it is at present leased and occupied by Englishmen A little further and the reader gains the eastern flanking angle of the bay where stands the pilot-house and signal post and whence he can see On the line of the main coast of the island The British and New American consulates The course of his walk Will have been enlivened by a considerable to and fro of pleasure and business He will have encountered many varieties of whites Sailors Merchants Clerks Priests Protestant missionaries in their pith helmets And the nondescript hangerson of any Island beach And the sailors Are sometimes in Considerable force But not the residents He will think at times there are more signboards than men to own them It may chance it is a full day in the harbour He will have seen all manner of ships From Men of War And Deep Sea packets To the Labour vessels of the German Firm And if he be of an arithmetical turn, he may calculate that there are more whites afloat in Apia Bay than whites ashore in the whole archipelago.
AlistairNARRATOR
On the other hand, he will have encountered all ranks of natives—chiefs and pastors in their scrupulous white clothes; perhaps the king himself attended by guards in uniform; smiling policemen with their pewter stars; girls, women, crowds of cheerful children —and he will have asked himself with some surprise where these reside.
AlistairNARRATOR
Here and there in the backyards of European establishments he may have had a glimpse of a native house elbowed in a corner.
16 MINS LATER
AlistairNARRATOR
The firm began to look askance at such a consul; and worse was behind.
AlistairNARRATOR
A number of deeds being brought to the consulate for registration, Zemsch detected certain transfers of land in which the date, the boundaries, the measure, and the consideration were all blank.
AlistairNARRATOR
He refused them with an indignation which he does not seem to have been able to keep to himself ; and whether or not by his fault some of these unfortunate documents became public , it was plain that the relations between the two flanks of the German invasion,—the diplomatic and the commercial,--were strained to bursting .But Webber was a man ill to conquer.Zemsh was recalled, and from that time forth --whether through influence at home or by the solicitations of Webb on the spot--the German Consulate has shown itself very apt to play the game of the German Firm.That game [we may say] was twofold : the first part even praiseworthy, the second at least natural.On the one part they desired an efficient native administration –to open up the country and punish crime-.They wished on the other to extend their own provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals.In the first they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites.In the second they had all whites banded together against them -for their lives and livelihoods.-It was thus a game of beggar my neighbour between a large merchant and some small ones Had it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel; but when the Consulate appeared to be concerned — when the warships of the German Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm—the rage of the independent traders broke beyond restraint.
AlistairNARRATOR
And largely from the national touchiness and intemperate speech of German clerks this scramble among dollar hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial war The firm with the indomitable Webber at its head and the Consulate at its back there has been the chief enemy at Samoa no English reader can fail to be reminded of John Company: and if the Germans appear to have been not so successful we can only wonder that our own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished Even on the field of Samoa though German faults and aggressors make up the burthen of my story they have been nowise alone Three nations were engaged in this infinitesimal affray and not one appears with credit They figure but as the three ruffians of the elder playwrights The United States have the cleanest hands and even theirs are not immaculate It was an ambiguous business when a private American adventurer was landed with his pieces of artillery from an American warship and became Prime Minister to the King It is true (even if he were ever really supported) that he was soon dropped and had soon sold himself for money to the German firm I will leave it to the reader whether this trait dignifies or not the wretched story And the end of it splattered the credit alike of England and the States When this man the premier of a friendly sovereign was kidnapped and deported on the requisition of an American consul by the captain of an English warship! I shall have to tell as I proceed of villages shelled on very trifling grounds by Germans the like has been done of late years though in a better quarrel by ourselves of England I shall have to tell of how the Germans landed and shed blood at Fagari it was only in 1876 that we British had our own misconceived little massacre at Milanu'u I shall have to tell how the Germans bludgeoned Malietoa with a sudden call for money it was something of the suddenness that Sir Arthur Gordon himself smarting under a sensible public affront made and enforced a somewhat similar demand End of Section II Section III of A Footnote to History Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa By Robert Louis Stevenson This LibriVox recording is in the public domain Read by Alistair Chapter III.A THE SORROWS OF LAUPEPA [1883–1887] Part One You ride in a German plantation and see no bush no soul stirring only acres of sward miles of cocoa nut alley a desert of food In the eyes of the Samoan the place has the attraction of a park for the holiday schoolboy of a granary for mice We must add the yet more lively allurement of a haunted house For over these empty and silent miles there broods the fear of the negrito cannibal For the Samoan besides there is something barbaric unhandsome and absurd in the idea of thus growing food only to send it from the land and sell it A man at home who should turn all Yorkshire into one wheatfield and annually burn his harvest on the altar of Mumbo Jumbo might impress ourselves not much otherwise And the firm which does these things is quite extraneous a wen that might be excised tomorrow without loss but to itself few natives drawing from it so much as a day’s wages and the rest beholding in it only the occupier of their acres The nearest villagers have suffered most they see over the hedge the lands of their ancestors waving with the useless coco palms and the sales were often questionable and must still more often appear so to regretful natives spinning and improving yarns about the evening lamp At the worst then to help oneself from the plantation will seem to a Samoan very much like orchard breaking to the British schoolboy at the best it will be thought a gallant Robin Hoodish readjustment of a public wrong And there is more behind Not only is theft from the plantations regarded rather as a lark and a peccadillo the idea of theft itself is not very clearly present to these communists And as to the punishment of crime in general a great gulf of opinion divides the natives from ourselves Indigenous punishments were short and sharp death deportation by the primitive method of setting the criminal to sea in a canoe fines and in Samoa itself the penalty of publicly biting a hot ill smelling root comparable to a rash forfeit in a children’s game These are approved the offender is killed or punished and forgiven We on the other hand harbour malice for a period of years Continuous shame attaches to the criminal even when he is doing his best even when he is submitting to the worst form of torture regular work He is to stand aside from life and from his family in dreadful isolation These ideas most Polynesians have accepted in appearance as they accept other ideas of the whites in practice they reduce it to a farce I have heard the French resident in the Marquesses, in talk with the French jailer of Taiohai.
AlistairNARRATOR
The thought of the money sunk, the sight of these costly and beautiful plantations menaced yearly by the returning forest, and the responsibility of administering with one hand so many conjunct fortunes might well nerve the manager of such a company for desperate and questionable deeds.
AlistairNARRATOR
Upon this scale commercial sharpness has an air of patriotism And I can imagine the man So far from haggling over the scourge For a few Solomon Islanders Prepared to oppress rival firms Overthrow inconvenient monarchs And let loose the dogs of war Whatever he may decide He will not want for backing Every clerk will be eager To be up and strike a blow And most Germans in the group Whatever they may babble Of the firm over the walnuts and the wine Will rally round the national concern At the approach of difficulty They are so few I am ashamed to give their number It were to challenge contradiction They are so few And the amount of national capital Buried at their feet Is so vast That we must not wonder If they seem oppressed With greatness In the sense of empire Other whites take part in our brabbles While temper holds out With a certain schoolboy entertainment In the Germans alone No trace of humour is to be observed And their solemnity Is accompanied By a touchiness Often beyond belief Patriotism flies in arms About a hem And if you comment upon The colour of a Dutch umbrella You have cast a stone Against the German emperor I give one instance Typical although extreme One who had returned From Tutuila On the mail cutter Complained of the vermin With which she is infested He was suddenly And sharply brought To a stand The ship of which he spoke He was reminded Was a German ship John Kaiser Godefroy himself Had never visited the islands His sons and nephews came Indeed But scarcely to reap laurels And the mainspring and headpiece Of this great concern Until death took him Was a certain remarkable man Of the name of Theodore Weber He was an artful and commanding character In the smallest thing or the greatest Without fear or scruple Equally able to affect Equally ready to adopt The most engaging politeness Or the most imperious airs Of domination It was he Who did the most damage To rival traders It was he Who most harried the Samoans And yet I never met anyone White or native Who did not respect his memory All felt it was A gallant battle And the man a great fighter And now when he is dead And the war seems To have gone against him Many can scarce remember Without a kind of regret How much devotion and audacity Have been spent in vain His name still lives In the songs of Samoa One that I have heard Tells of Missy Ueber And a biscuit box The suggesting incident Being long since forgotten Another sings plaintively How all things Land and food and property Pass progressively As by a law of nature Into the hands of Missy Ueber And soon nothing will be left For Samoans This is an epitaph The man would have enjoyed At one period of his career Weber combined the offices of director of the firm and consul for the city of Hamburg no question but he then drove very hard germans admit that the combination was unfortunate it was a german who procured its overthrow captain zempch superseded him with an imperial appointment one still remembered in samoa as the gentleman who acted justly there was no house to be found and the new consul must take up his quarters at first under the same roof with webber on several questions in which the firm was vitally interested zempch embraced the contrary opinion riding one day with an englishman in the vailele plantation he was startled by a burst screaming leaped from the saddle ran round a house and found an overseer beating one of the thralls he punished the overseer and being a kindly and perhaps not very diplomatic man talked high of what he felt and what he might consider it his duty to forbid or to enforce the firm began to look askance at such a consul and worse was behind a number of deeds being brought to the consulate for registration zempch detected certain transfers of land in which the date the boundaries the measure and the consideration were all blank he refused them with an indignation which he does not seem to have been able to keep to himself and whether or not by his fault some of these unfortunate documents became public it was plain that the relations between the two flanks of the german invasion the diplomatic and the commercial were strained to bursting but webber was a man ill to conquer zempch was recalled and from that time forth whether through influence at home or by the solicitations of webber on the spot the german consulate has shown itself very apt to play the game of the german firm that game we may say was twofold the first part even praiseworthy the second at least natural on the one part they desired an efficient native administration to open up the country and punish crime they wished on the other to extend their own provinces and to curtail the dealings of their rivals in the first they had the jealous and diffident sympathy of all whites in the second they had all whites banded together against them for their lives and livelihoods it was thus a game of beggar my neighbour between a large merchant and some small ones Had it so remained, it would still have been a cut-throat quarrel; but when the Consulate appeared to be concerned, when the warships of the German Empire were thought to fetch and carry for the firm, the rage of the independent traders broke beyond restraint.
AlistairNARRATOR
And largely from the national touchiness and intemperate speech of German clerks this scramble among dollar-hunters assumed the appearance of an inter-racial war.
AlistairNARRATOR
The firm with the indomitable Weber at its head and the consulate at its back—there has been the chief enemy at Samoa: no English reader can fail to be reminded of John Company; and if the Germans appear to have been not so successful we can only wonder that our own blunders and brutalities were less severely punished.
8 MINS LATER
AlistairNARRATOR
Public feeling ran unanimous and high.
AlistairNARRATOR
Prisoners who escaped from the private gaol were not recaptured or not returned, and Maliatoa hastened to build a new prison of his own whither he conveyed (or pretended to convey) the fugitives.
AlistairNARRATOR
In October 1885 a trenchant State paper issued from the German Consulate.
AlistairNARRATOR
Twenty prisoners, the Consul wrote, had now been at large for eight months from Weber’s Prison.