Clipperton: A History of the Island the World Forgot

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Encounter with an Obscure Pacific Rock
Review: Clipperton Island is little more than one big rock, some hundreds of miles west of the Pacific coast of Mexico. During the early twentieth century there was a delightfully obscure arbitration by the King of Italy over who owned the rock: France or Mexico. France won, but not before the King had procrastinated for over twenty years. The island is named for a pirate; it has long been a stopping point for British and American interests, and various attempts have been made to extract value from it, either as a naval base or a mining stop. Jimmy Skaggs brings Clipperton's eccentric history to life - and also persuasively argues that Clipperton had been visited during Magellan's circumnavigation. What an interesting story about an obscure Pacific rock.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating history on an obscure island
Review: When I first saw Clipperton on a map of the world and I googled it for more information, I was floored to find snippets of abandonment, starvation, rape and murder, and FDR's personal interest in this tiny atoll in the eastern Pacific, and eventually led to me reading this exhaustively researched book.

From many obscure sources, the author did a great job tracking the chronology of discovery, early encounters, attempted development, military history and FDR's interest in the island, and overview of fauna and flora. To me, the most striking chapter was when a group of Mexicans were abandoned on the island; the men perished trying to row for help, and the women remaining on the island were left to starve and deal with the one remaining man on the island who proclaimed himself "king" and raped several of the women.

Unbelievable history for such a small, isolated rock in the middle of nowhere.