Language/French/Culture/Clipperton-Island-Timeline

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History of Clipperton Island
Clipperton-Island-Timeline-PolyglotClub.png

Discovery (1706-1711)[edit | edit source]

The discovery of the island was said to have been made by the English buccaneer, pirate and naturalist John Clipperton in 1704, when he had just defected from William Dampier's expedition. However, no evidence of its passage near the atoll has been preserved. The first attested landing on Clipperton took place on Good Friday April 3, 1711. The French Mathieu Martin de Chassiron16 and Michel Dubocage, respectively commanding the frigates La Princesse17 and la Découverte18, landed there and made the first map. In memory of this day, they baptized it “Island of the Passion”, in reference to the Passion of Christ.

Mention in the maps[edit | edit source]

The fact is that neither the Iberian portulans, like that of Andreas Homen in 1559, nor the Portuguese planisphere of 1585 mention this island; not more than the atlas of Dieppois Jean Guérard in 1634, yet very aware of the Spanish discoveries. Likewise, neither the French atlas by Sanson d'Abbeville in 1667, nor the map of southern America by Père Feuillée of 1714 make no mention of a Clipperton Island in this area. It appears under the name of Passion Island on the reduced map of the South Sea drawn in 1753 by Bellin, marine engineer, king's hydrographer, name taken up in his French Hydrography of 1755. The Malte-Brun Atlas of 1812 confirms this designation. It was in 1835, on a map of Oceania drawn up by the geographer AR Fremin for the English atlas of Arrowsmith, that it appears under the name of Clipperton Island, while Arrowsmith himself had it. shown as Passion Island on its 1835 map of North America as well.

Confusion sets in to such an extent that, on her Atlas of 1850, Berthe positions a Passion Island in the Revillagigredo archipelago off Cape Corrientes, a Cliporton island further south; and even lower, a Passion Rock, ancient Isla Medanos, discovered in 1527 by the Spanish navigator Alvaro Saabreda, and which Mexicans confuse today with the Passion Island. Amboise Tardieu, in 1850, and Bouillet, in 1865, restore the situation by mentioning only the Passion Island alone.

Strategic interest[edit | edit source]

Interested not by the phosphate of the island but by its strategic position in the Pacific facing the Isthmus of Panama with the prospect of a future breakthrough, Victor Édouard Le Coat de Kerveguen took possession on behalf of France, this which was officially confirmed by an imperial decree dated November 17, 1858, and by publication in various newspapers, without any state contesting this possession at that time. The project was to make the island a stopover port for steamboats, the construction of a lighthouse on the “Rocher” (highest point of the island) which would be visible at 30 nautical miles, the piercing of the passes near the "Rock".

United States, Mexico and France compete for possession (1895-1931)[edit | edit source]

The survivors of Clipperton. In 1895, the Pacific Islands Company, an American company, moved to the island to mine guano. In 1897, Mexico occupied it, then in 1906, built a lighthouse there and left a keeper there19. In 1907, the Mexican President, General Porfirio Díaz, dispatched a small troop of ten soldiers and their wives there under the command of Captain Ramón Arnaud, descendant of a French family, to claim Mexican sovereignty. The Mexican navy was supposed to come and refuel them about every four months.

Clipperton's forgotten (1914-1917)[edit | edit source]

In February 1914, a cyclone destroyed the vegetable gardens of the small garrison15 of eleven soldiers installed there with women and children since 1906. May's supply boat did not arrive. At the end of July, the USS Cleveland came to rescue the island, but the head of the garrison refused to board an enemy ship. The troops are then decimated by famine and scurvy. In May 1915, there were only three men, six women and eight children. Two of the men died trying to reach a passing ship. The last surviving man, keeper of the lighthouse, then causes others to suffer an ordeal and behaves like a dictator. He was murdered with hammers by the surviving women on July 17, 1917. The next day the USS Yorktown saves them; he had come to check that no German ship was hiding there. Some encyclopedias have long indicated that Clipperton Island had about fifty inhabitants, remaining at this 1914 figure.

International Arbitration of 1931[edit | edit source]

Tank landing craft USS LST-563 beached on Passion Island in 1944. On March 2, 1909, France and Mexico decided to arbitrate their disagreement over the sovereignty of the island.

Mexico could not provide written documents proving the anteriority of the discovery of Clipperton Island by the Spaniards any more than the English could in turn. In the presence of the only written evidence provided to international arbitration, namely the logbooks of Le Havrais Michel Dubocage and Rochelais Mathieu Martin de Chassiron containing the first survey of the island, and although the islet never had of French population, the sovereignty of France was recognized on January 28, 1931 by arbitration by the International Court and King Victor-Emmanuel III of Italy. The Court recognizes the terra nullius character of the territory at the time of French possession, and the effectiveness of this.

Mexico definitively recognized French sovereignty over the island in 1959.

In 1944, the United States occupied the island of authority. They opened a pass in the crown (which they closed on leaving) and leveled an airstrip which could easily be put back into service. Following a protest from France, which had just been liberated, led by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Georges Bidault, the United States returned the territory to France on March 21, 1945.

Fisheries agreements with Mexico (2007-2027)[edit | edit source]

Before 2007, Mexican boats fished in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) illegally from the French point of view. France and Mexico signed a fishing agreement in 2007 for a period of 10 years. The agreement was signed following the April 26, 2005 incident that saw a French warship board and destroy the weaponry of a Mexican fishing vessel accidentally caught fishing illegally in the economic zone. French exclusive. The 2007 agreement provides for a maximum volume of fishing. However, it appears that no checks are carried out, as Mexican vessels may refuse checks.

The agreement was renewed under the same conditions in 2017.

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