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A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
Author	Robert Louis Stevenson
Language	English
Subject	Samoan Civil War
Publisher	Cassell
Publication date	1892
Media type	book
Pages	322
ISBN	0-8248-1857-1
OCLC	227258432

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.^[1]

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.^[2]

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!"^[3]

A contemporary review of the book noted:

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.^[4]