Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier
Encyclopedia
Jean-Baptiste Dutrou-Bornier (died 1876) was a French mariner who settled on Easter Island
Easter Island
Easter Island is a Polynesian island in the southeastern Pacific Ocean, at the southeasternmost point of the Polynesian triangle. A special territory of Chile that was annexed in 1888, Easter Island is famous for its 887 extant monumental statues, called moai, created by the early Rapanui people...

 in 1868, purchased much of the island, removed many of the Rapanui
Rapanui
The Rapa Nui or Rapanui are the native Polynesian inhabitants of Easter Island, or Rapa Nui, in the Pacific Ocean. The easternmost Polynesian culture, the Rapa Nui people make up 60% of Easter Island's population, with some living also in mainland Chile...

 and turned the island into a sheep ranch.

Early life

Dutrou-Bornier served as an artillery officer in the Crimean War
Crimean War
The Crimean War was a conflict fought between the Russian Empire and an alliance of the French Empire, the British Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia. The war was part of a long-running contest between the major European powers for influence over territories of the declining...

, and by 1860 had become a master mariner. He abandoned his wife and young son in France, and in 1865 bought a one-third share in the schooner Tampico. He sailed to Peru
Peru
Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

, where he was arrested, accused of arms-dealing and sentenced to death. Released on the intervention of the French consul, he sailed to Tahiti
Tahiti
Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...

, where he began recruiting labour from the islands of East Polynesia for coconut plantations.

Arrival on Easter Island

In November 1866 Dutrou-Bornier transported two missionaries, Kaspar Zumbohm and Theodore Escolan, to Easter Island. He visited the island again in March 1867 to recruit labourers, but he then amassed huge gambling debts and, as a result of some fraudulent deals, forfeited his share of the Tampico. He acquired the yacht Aora'i, and arrived on Easter Island in April 1868, where the yacht was burnt.

He set up residence at Mataveri, began buying up land from the Rapanui. In 1869 he seized Koreto, the wife of a Rapanui, and married her. He tried to persuade France to make the island a protectorate
Protectorate
In history, the term protectorate has two different meanings. In its earliest inception, which has been adopted by modern international law, it is an autonomous territory that is protected diplomatically or militarily against third parties by a stronger state or entity...

, and recruited a faction of Rapanui whom he allowed to abandon their Christian
Christian
A Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...

ity and revert to their previous faith. With rifle
Rifle
A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

s, a cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...

, and hut burning
House demolition
House demolition is primarily a military tactic which has been used in many conflicts for a variety of purposes. It has been employed as a scorched earth tactic to deprive an advancing enemy of food and shelter, or to wreck an enemy's economy and infrastructure. It has also been used for purposes...

, he and his supporters ran the island for several years as "governor", appointing Koreto Queen
Queen regnant
A queen regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right, in contrast to a queen consort, who is the wife of a reigning king. An empress regnant is a female monarch who reigns in her own right over an empire....

.

Dutrou-Bornier aimed to cleanse the island of most of the Rapanui and turn the island into a sheep ranch
Ranch
A ranch is an area of landscape, including various structures, given primarily to the practice of ranching, the practice of raising grazing livestock such as cattle or sheep for meat or wool. The word most often applies to livestock-raising operations in the western United States and Canada, though...

. He bought up all of the island apart from the missionaries' area around Hanga Roa
Hanga Roa
Hanga Roa is the main town, harbour and capital of the Chilean province of Easter Island. It is located in the southern part of the island's west coast, in the lowlands between the extinct volcanoes of Terevaka and Rano Kau....

 and moved a couple hundred Rapanui to Tahiti to work for his backers. In 1871 the missionaries, having fallen out with Dutrou-Bornier, evacuated all but 171 Rapanui to the Gambier islands
Gambier Islands
There was a time when the Gambiers hosted a population of several thousand people and traded with other island groups including the Marquesas, the Society Islands and Pitcairn Islands...

. Those who remained were mostly older men. Six years later, there were just 111 people living on Easter Island, and only 36 of them had any offspring.

Death

In 1876 Dutrou-Bornier was killed in an argument over a dress, though his kidnapping
Kidnapping
In criminal law, kidnapping is the taking away or transportation of a person against that person's will, usually to hold the person in false imprisonment, a confinement without legal authority...

 of pubescent girls
Ephebophilia
Ephebophilia is the sexual preference of adults for mid-to-late adolescents, generally ages 15 to 19. The term was originally used in the late 19th to mid 20th century, and has been more recently revisited by Ray Blanchard. It is one of a number of sexual preferences across age groups subsumed...

 may also have motivated his killers.

Legacy

From that point on and into the present day, the island's population slowly recovered. But with over 97% of the population dead or left in less than a decade, much of the island's cultural knowledge had been lost.

Neither his first wife back in France, who was heir under French law, nor his second wife on the island, who briefly installed their daughter Caroline as Queen, were to keep much from his estate. But to this day much of the island is a ranch controlled from off-island, and for more than a century real power on the island was usually exercised by resident non-Rapanui living at Mataveri. An unusual number of shipwreck
Shipwreck
A shipwreck is what remains of a ship that has wrecked, either sunk or beached. Whatever the cause, a sunken ship or a wrecked ship is a physical example of the event: this explains why the two concepts are often overlapping in English....

s had left the island better supplied with wood
Wood
Wood is a hard, fibrous tissue found in many trees. It has been used for hundreds of thousands of years for both fuel and as a construction material. It is an organic material, a natural composite of cellulose fibers embedded in a matrix of lignin which resists compression...

than for many generations, whilst legal wrangles over his land deals were to complicate the island's history for decades to come.
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