A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa

{{Short description|1892 Book by Robert Louis Stevenson}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{infobox book

| name = A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa

| image = A Footnote to History - Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa.jpg

| caption =

| author = Robert Louis Stevenson

| illustrator =

| cover_artist =

| country =

| language = English

| series =

| subject = Samoan Civil War

| genre =

| publisher = Cassell

| pub_date = 1892

| english_pub_date =

| media_type = book

| pages = 322

| isbn = 0-8248-1857-1

| oclc = 227258432

| preceded_by =

| followed_by =

}}

A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa is an 1892 historical non-fiction work by Scottish-born author Robert Louis Stevenson describing the contemporary Samoan Civil War.{{cite news |title= R.L Stevenson on Samoa |url= https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1892/08/14/104143166.pdf |format=A contemporary book review. |newspaper=The New York Times |date=August 14, 1892 |accessdate=January 23, 2015}}

Robert Louis Stevenson arrived in Samoa in 1889 and built a house at Vailima. He quickly became passionately interested, and involved, in the attendant political machinations. These involved the three great powers battling for influence in Samoa – the United States, Germany and Britain – and the political machinations of the various Samoan factions within their indigenous political system. The book covers the period from 1882 to 1892.{{cite web|url=http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/other-writing/22-footnote-to-history |title=A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa, 1892 |publisher=RLS website |accessdate=January 23, 2015 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150109161424/http://www.robert-louis-stevenson.org/other-writing/22-footnote-to-history |archive-date=January 9, 2015 }}

The book served as such a stinging protest against existing conditions that it resulted in the recall of two officials, and Stevenson for a time feared that it would result in his own deportation. When things had finally blown over he wrote to Sidney Colvin, who came from a family of distinguished colonial administrators, "I used to think meanly of the plumber; but how he shines beside the politician!"Letter to Sidney Colvin, April 17, 1893, Vailima Letters, Chapter XXVIII.

A contemporary review of the book noted:

{{blockquote|For the many who take a personal interest in Mr. Stevenson's career the book will have an additional interest in the spectacle of a master of fiction struggling, on the whole successfully, with the trammels of fact.{{cite journal|title=Review of A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa by Robert Louis Stevenson|journal=The Athenaeum|issue=3385|date=September 10, 1892|pages=343–344|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=TC9JAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA343}}}}