Island at the End of the World: The Turbulent History of Easter Island

by Steven Roger Fischer

On a long stretch of green coast in the South Pacific, hundreds of enormous, impassive stone heads stand guard against the ravages of time, war, and disease that have attempted over the centuries to conquer Easter Island. Steven Roger Fischer offers the first English-language history of Easter Island in Island at the End of the World , a fascinating chronicle of adversity, triumph, and the enduring monumentality of the island's stone guards.

A small canoe with Polynesians brought the first humans to Easter Island in 700 CE, and when boat travel in the South Pacific drastically decreased around 1500, the Easter Islanders were forced to adapt in order to survive their isolation. Adaptation, Fischer asserts, was a continuous thread in the life of Easter Island: the first European visitors, who viewed the awe-inspiring monolithic busts in 1722, set off hundreds of years of violent warfare, trade, and disease—from the smallpox, wars, and Great Death that decimated the island to the late nineteenth-century Catholic missionaries who tried to "save" it to a despotic Frenchman who declared sole claim of the island and was soon killed by the remaining 111 islanders. The rituals, leaders, and religions of the Easter Islanders evolved with all of these events, and Fischer is just as attentive to the island's cultural developments as he is to its foreign invasions.

Bringing his history into the modern era, Fischer examines the colonization and annexation of Easter Island by Chile, including the Rapanui people's push for civil rights in 1964 and 1965, by which they gained full citizenship and freedom of movement on the island. As travel to and interest in the island rapidly expand, Island at the End of the World is an essential history of this mysterious site.

Genres: History, Nonfiction

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Bob · Rating 4 out of 5]

The topic makes this book, though Fischer keeps his narrative clear of bias. The Rapanui are simply people, neither noble savages victimized by white colonialism nor greedy opportunists who had destroyed their environment and, in the ensuing chaos, nearly destroyed the vestiges of their remarkable culture. Even more interesting is that, because Easter Island is so small and the population had, in the late 1800's, fallen to only a hundred individuals, Fischer is able to treat the regeneration of a World Heritage area and culture as local history. The construction of school houses, the succession of missionary priests, the exploits of the first Rapanui who perfgormed military service or went to University, are, in fact, significant to the history of the people as a whole. There are very good suggestions for further reading.

[Anna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half stars really. I don't read enough of history and did not think there is a lot of it on Easter Island. I was wrong. I enjoyed reading about how it became a modern tourism point and why it is so bare. However, I feel sorry for the ingenious people, who live there as they have never really known what it is like to be free.

[Kevin McAvoy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting history of the Rapa Nui.

[Judith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Comprehensive and interesting history of Rapa Nui and the Rapanui. I’d be really interested in reading an updated version as this is now 20 years old.

[Kate Whiting · Rating 4 out of 5]

read this for my history class and it was a great balance of nonfiction with a narrative format - helped it be much less dense than a regular text book!

[Dominic Krile · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fascinating look at one of the most unique places on the planet. The book provides a comprehensive look at the development of Easter Island’s society from the initial residents who sailed from Polynesia, through the island’s colonial occupation by Chile, to its status today as a major tourist destination. This book has only further piqued my interest in visiting the island myself one day so I can see this fascinating history come to life.

[Harvey · Rating 5 out of 5]

- first settled by Polynesians around 700 A.D., the island's population topped 12,000 in the early 1700's and then fell to only 111 in 1866.
- deforestation is addressed
- 'the great death'
- tribal violence
- smallpox
- slave-hunters
- and those breath-taking monumental sculptures
- top-secret U.S. Satellite Tracking Station was hidden there
- tourism: 1967 - 444 tourists
1991 - 2,000 tourists
2001 - 20,000 tourists
- the most comprehensive history of the island that I have ever read (and I've read a few)