American Samoa 🇦🇸

American Samoa is a territory in Polynesia, and it is not a sovereign state in its own right. Government sits in Pago Pago.

The land area is 199 km², which ranks it 221st of the 249 countries and territories in this dataset — just behind the Cook Islands and just ahead of the Marshall Islands. Put next to a territory most people can picture, it is around a quarter larger than Liechtenstein.

The population is about 46,765, placing it 211th of 249 by population — between Saint Kitts and Nevis above it and the Turks and Caicos Islands below. Among the 10 entries in Polynesia it ranks 6th by area and 4th by population.

American Samoa does not hold a United Nations seat of its own. It is administered as a dependency or overseas territory rather than as a sovereign state, which is why it sits outside the 192 member states while still appearing among the 249 entries on this site.

Not holding a UN seat is not the same as having no self-government, and the administrative details make that clear. American Samoa has 5 of the five markers of separate administration tracked on this page — its own currency, its own dialling code, its own internet domain, its own iso codes and a designated capital. In day-to-day terms it is run substantially as its own jurisdiction.

• Its own currencyUSD
• Its own dialling code+1684
• Its own internet domain.as
• Its own ISO codesas / ASM
• A designated capitalPago Pago

Plotted on a globe it falls at 14.3° south, 170.0° west, which puts it in the southern hemisphere, roughly 1,596 km from the equator, in what geographers would call tropical latitudes.

Follow that same latitude east or west and you reach Angola, Zambia and Malawi — places that share its distance from the equator but little else.

No land border connects it to another territory. That puts it among the 85 entries of 249 here with no land neighbours, a group made up mostly of islands and island groups.

American Samoa has no land border with any country, which changes what "nearby" means. Measured centre to centre in a straight line, the closest other entry on this site is Samoa, roughly 270 km away. These are approximate distances between representative points, not the shortest crossing between two shorelines, so treat them as a sense of scale rather than a sailing chart.

No land border also means no land crossing: everything and everyone arrives by sea or by air. That single fact drives a lot of what follows on this page, from how goods reach the shops to why American Samoa's dialling code and internet domain are worth knowing before you travel.

Population divided by land area gives roughly 235 people per square kilometre, which makes it densely populated. Half the entries in this dataset fall below roughly 91 per square kilometre.

People from American Samoa are called American Samoans.

It recognises 2 languages: English and Samoan. English, the first listed, is shared with 90 other entries worldwide.

Against Oceania as a whole it is the 14th most populous of 27 entries, and it accounts for 6.8% of everyone living in Polynesia.

American Samoa does not have the United States dollar to itself. It is one of 19 entries on this site that use the currency, whose code is USD, and the others include listed below. A shared currency usually points at something real — a monetary union, a currency board, a former colonial administration, or a small economy pegging itself to a large neighbour's money — and it means a price quoted in USD travels further than you might expect.

Language reaches wider still. English is listed for 91 entries here, American Samoa among them, so a visitor who speaks it can be understood across a large part of the map. Shared language tends to outlive the empires, trade routes and migrations that spread it, which is why the linguistic map and the political one rarely line up.

Zoom in from the world to Polynesia and American Samoa sits 4th of 10 by population and 6th by area. Its immediate company in that ordering is Tonga just above and Cook Islands just below, which is a more honest comparison set than a global league table.

French Polynesia is the largest of the group by population, and every entry in Polynesia has its own page here if you want to work through the whole neighbourhood rather than one country at a time.

• 🇹🇴 Tonga
• 🇨🇰 Cook Islands
• 🇵🇫 French Polynesia

Money there is the United States dollar ($, USD). Another 18 entries use the same currency — the Bahamas, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the British Virgin Islands, Cambodia and the Caribbean Netherlands among them — so exchange rates move for reasons that have nothing to do with American Samoa.

Pago Pago is the seat of government and the answer most quizzes are looking for.

Websites there use the .as domain. To phone it from abroad you dial +1684. Its ISO codes are as and ASM, which is what most databases and flag files use.

American Samoa is not a UN member state. The dataset does not record which state administers it, so this page does not guess. Of the 249 entries here, 57 are territories or observers rather than member states.