a chamber of ali'i or nobles (chosen by the various districts of the country, and formally appointed members by the king) and a chamber of elected representatives. Each district had a governor, responsible to the king. On July 4, 1875, he was appointed by the king to the new position of prime minister at the age of thirty-four years. Overall, Samoans are satisfied with these measures, and the government led by Steinberger; as the guarantor of their political independence. Soon, Steinberger exercised an almost absolute power in the archipelago. He displeased the minority of settlers by insisting that laws passed by the indigenous parliament apply to all residents of the country, as the parliament restricted the sale of alcohol. The American and British consuls in Samoa, S.S. Foster and S.F. Williams, suspect him of having become essentially an agent in the service of the Germans. Having obtained the assurance that the American government did not support Steinberger, the British and American consuls obtained from King Laupepa on February 8, 1876, that he dismissed his prime minister and ordered his deportation. He is deported to Fiji, British territory, and never returned to Samoa. Repercussions of his dismissal as Prime Minister His dismissal had important repercussions. For having acted on their own initiative, the American and British consuls were themselves sacked by their respective governments. The Samoan parliament, furious that the king thus yielded to foreign pressure, deposed Laupepa, without appointing another king immediately; nor was there a new prime minister to replace Steinberger. Laupepa then organized a rival government. During the next two decades, the country was marked by instability, especially as the British, Americans and Germans sometimes support different factions. These tensions eventually lead to the tripartite treaty of 1899. Samoa was then split between a German colony and an American colony (while Washington and Berlin sold islands to the British in other parts of the Pacific). Controversies The Samoan historian Malama Meleisea believed that Steinberger helped to consolidate a Samoan government in a difficult period (even if it was ultimately a failure), but that his secret agreements with German companies and planters made him a prime minister never fully devoted to the interests of the Samoans. References Robert D. Craig, Historical Dictionary of Polynesia, Scarecrow Press, 2010, (), pp. 261–262 Stephen Statis, "Albert B. Steinberger: President Grant's Man in Samoa", Hawaiian Journal of History, n°16, 1982, p. 87-88 et