The highest point in the Gambiers is Mount Duff, on Mangareva, rising to 441 metres (1,447 ft) along the island's south coast.

[4] The first European to visit Mangareva was a British captain, James Wilson, who arrived in 1797 on the ship Duff.

[5] Wilson named the island group in honour of Admiral James Gambier, who had helped him to equip his vessel.

On 4 February 1870, the Mangarevan government and its prince regent, Arone Teikatoara, formally withdrew the protectorate request and asked the French not to intervene in the kingdom's affairs.

However, after Father Honoré Laval was removed to Tahiti, the native government changed its stance: On 30 November 1871, Prince Regent Arone and the French colonial authority in Tahiti signed an agreement reaffirming the islands’ protectorate status.

[7] In the 20th century, in July 1966, the Mangareviens were exposed to radioactive fallout due to the French military's nuclear tests at Moruroa and Fangataufa.

Painter and author Robert Lee Eskridge's book Manga Reva: The Forgotten Islands (Bobbs Merrill; 1931) offers first-hand observations of the environment, peoples, and traditions of Mangareva.

In 1962, the adventure-fiction writer Garland Roark acknowledged Eskridge's work in a foreword to his novel, The Witch of Manga Reva.

Eskridge also wrote and illustrated a children's book about his visit to Mangareva: South Sea Playmates (Bobbs Merrill; 1933).

(Bill) Crealock describes in his book Cloud of Islands a visit to Mangareva, which he considered the ideal island, on the yacht Arthur Rogers, in the company of Diana and Tom Hepworth, whose lives were later recounted in the book Faraway by Lucy Irvine.