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A Geography of Islands: Small Island Insularity. Stephen
A. Royle. London and New York: Routledge, 2001. Pp. x, 237. £
65 (Cloth).
If ever a book was needed to fill an important pedagogical niche, it is Stephen Royle's A Geography of Islands, which, despite its title, is a comprehensive introduction to small islands around the world, and a welcome addition to the burgeoning field of Island Studies. (The International Small Islands Studies Association will hold its seventh international conference in June 2002 at the University of Prince Edward Island in Canada, with participation from, and papers presented about, islands in all four corners of the globe.) True, there are numerous specialized monographs and anthologies covering specific theoretical issues germane to islands as well as many volumes offering detailed case studies: Lessons from the Political Economy of Small Islands: The Resourcefulness of Jurisdiction, edited by Godfrey Baldacchino and David Milne (London: Macmillan, 2000), is a good example. But a general overview was long overdue and is most welcome to those of us teaching undergraduate courses in Island Studies.
Royle's book treats small islands both as geographic and topographic realities and as cultural and literary constructs, places that have inspired writers such as Shakespeare, Swift, Defoe, Melville, Conrad and Stevenson. (I might add to that list a very few of the many contemporary novelists whose recent works are set on islands: Louis de Bernieres--the Greek island of Cephalonia; Matthew Kneale--the Isle of Man and Tasmania; Alistair MacLeod--Cape Breton; Nicholas Rinaldi--Malta; and Ronald Wright--French Polynesia.) While Royle acknowledges the importance of islands, historically, in the artistic imagination, his main concern, as befits a geographer, is with the "real world" of islands, which is often at some remove from the "island of dreams" conception.
It is the author's contention that every island is impacted in some way by a range of insular constraints, including small scale, size, isolation, and resource availability. He examines the culture, history and demography of small islands and addresses the economic problems posed by peripherality and dearth of resources. Indeed, he seems strongly wedded to the "islands equal powerlessness" paradigm; in his view, peripherality is a permanent, concrete condition, not just a state of mind, and hence unalterable.
Most islands were conquered by one or another of the rival American, European, and Japanese empires during the era of colonialism and were subjected not only to foreign military domination and political rule but also integration into the economic systems of their overlords. Their agricultural plantation and resource-extraction economies were developed to complement and enrich those of the colonial power and even after independence many remained closely integrated into these larger economies. Overly dependent on a single export, their prosperity was subject to the whims of shifting market demand in the metropole. Resource depletion, too, loomed as a constant danger.
So we have in recent decades witnessed the collapse of the cod fishery in Newfoundland, the salt industry in the Turks and Caicos Islands, and flax production on St. Helena. Little wonder that many island inhabitants, finding their lives too insular or economically constricting, emigrated and became part of island diasporas (more Cape Verdeans live abroad than on their islands; more people from Tokalau live in New Zealand than in Tokalau itself). This is why, Royle notes, many small islands became so-called MIRAB economies--dependent for survival on migration, remittances, aid, and bureaucracy.
Diversification has in some cases proved less successful than in others. Despite advances in information and telecommunications technology, which have provided economic spinoffs such as call centres and, more importantly, offshore financial centres, islands are still subject to the "tyranny of distance." Lack of decent services and reliable transportation can be a crucial problem faced by people living on remote specks of land thousands of kilometres away from continental centres of population. How can one make a living in such circumstances? What economic strategies can surmount such disadvantages?
Given "The Geographical Fascination of Islands," as Russell King termed it in a 1993 article, many island states (especially those we think of as "tropical paradises") have attempted to parlay the "island of dreams" image to their advantage, and the tourist industry has become the cornerstone of many island economies. Tourism provides a market for producers of local crafts and other goods, as well as jobs in the service sector catering to visitors. What could be more beneficial for a resource-poor small island, asks Royle rhetorically? But is tourism a panacea for island problems, or instead perhaps a double-edged sword, which can as easily harm an island, with its often unique endemic species of fauna and flora, as support its people? Ecologists, biologists, and meteorologists have tackled such issues in depth and their findings are less than reassuring. The geophysicist Louise B. Young, in her fascinating book Islands: Portraits of Miniature Worlds (New York: W.H. Freeman, 1999), for example, sheds much-needed light on this subject, in terms lay people can understand. Islands, she cautions, are fragile and vulnerable ecosystems; theirs is a delicate balance between the land, people, and other living things, and tourism is a goose whose golden eggs can often contain environmental poison.
Royle, too, adds a cautionary note to those who think tourism will be the "magic bullet" that might compensate for disadvantages of scale, resources, and distance; but it is, he reminds us, now the world's largest industry, and it is unrealistic to ask otherwise poverty-stricken islands with declining populations and little in the way of other prospects to forego using their natural beauty, saltwater beaches, and warm weather to attract paying visitors as a way to extract economic benefits from the outside world.
As a political scientist, I found Royle's chapter on "Politics and Small Islands" particularly interesting. Even today, many of the world's smallest and weakest islands remain colonies of one sort or another, whether under the rubric of "overseas territory," "overseas department," "Commonwealth territory," "associate state," or some other euphemism. Others govern themselves under "home rule" or other federacy arrangements with larger states. However, most small islands attained independence after the 1960s. A significant feature about many of these sovereign islands, which may in the long run have beneficial economic ramifications, has been their ability to maintain democratic political systems, something which still eludes many larger Third World countries. Some scholars attribute the attachment to democratic politics of small island nations to their homogeneity, social cohesion and sense of community, to the shared interests, closeness and intimacy found in a small society. The former British colonies in particular have done very well on indices of political and civil rights and have suffered relatively little civil disorder. The basic framework of the Westminster-Whitehall system of government, including a representative parliament, competitive party system, open and honest elections, the exclusion of the military from politics, and a neutral civil service, has been largely preserved.
Other researchers, however, have examined some of the negative features of small island states. Their relatively small population base, coupled with large-scale emigration, has left many states with a paucity of seasoned public servants and forced them to depend on external intellectual resources. As well, the lack of anonymity on small islands can foster nepotism, cronyism, patronage, and political clientism. The Lusophone island states of Cape Verde and Sao Tomé e Príncipe have experienced prolonged periods of one party non-democratic misrule, while in Equatorial Guinea, which includes the island of Bioko (Fernando Po), opposition political activity is systematically repressed, and torture and human rights violations are common. In the Indian Ocean, the Comoros, Maldives and Seychelles have all suffered from failed mercenary-led coups, while considerable violence accompanied elections in semi-autonomous Zanzibar in 2000, leading to calls in some quarters to dismantle the union with the mainland that created Tanzania in 1964.
"Islandness" is also no protection against severe ethno-cultural cleavages, as has been made very clear in bifurcated countries with plural social systems. Indeed, given their small size and the proximity within which communities are forced to co-exist, such tensions may be aggravated. This is evident in Cyprus, partitioned between its Greek and Turkish communities since 1974; Trinidad and Tobago, which has from time to time suffered from severe ethnically based political conflict between its communities of African and South Asian ancestry; Fiji, where three coups in 1987 and 2000 attempted to preserve the political hegemony of the indigenous (taukei) Melanesian Fijians over the numerically almost-equal Indo-Fijian community, descendants of 19th century indentured labourers from India; and even Mauritius, where the francophone Creole and other communities have become minorities in a population now predominantly of Indian origin. In New Caledonia, indigenous Melanesian Kanaks face opposition from French settlers in their struggle to attain independence from France.
There have also been numerous secessionist movements, often on outlying islands that feel ignored and economically marginalized by the more populous centre. The island of Tokelau split away from Western Samoa in 1962 and Anguilla from St. Christopher and Nevis in 1967. Separatists on the island of Bougainville, part of Papua New Guinea, declared a "Republic of the North Solomons" in 1975 and sporadic fighting has continued ever since; Rotuma attempted to secede from Fiji in 1988. The Comoros have been destabilized by secessionists; the island of Mayotte never joined the federation, and in 1997 Anjouan and Moheni declared unilateral independence. Nevis, which tried to separate from St. Christopher in a referendum in 1998, is the most recent example. Barbudans have sought at times to quit their partnership with Antigua, Tobagans theirs with Trinidad, and the people of Rodrigues theirs with Mauritius. Secessionist threats have also been voiced on the islands of Espiritu Santo and Tanna in Vanuatu, in the Marquesas Islands chain of French Polynesia, and on islands in Kiribati, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, the Solomons, and Tuvalu.
Certainly the sense of isolation and feeling of distinctiveness which living on an island typically inculcates in its inhabitants facilitates the existence of an insular form of nationalism, even on non-sovereign islands. Royle, who had already visited and studied 320 islands in all of the world's oceans at the time of writing his book, goes a long way in helping us understand why this is the case.
University of Prince Edward Island
HENRY F. SREBRNIK
© 2002 Henry Srebrnik
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