Comparative geography

by Carl Ritter

Islands.

Europe, as a continent, is distinguished by its adjacent islands. Following the irregular coast-line of its many extremities, they lie along, in greater or less number, the satellites, so to speak, of the main land. They are scattered almost everywhere, yet not distant from the coast, like Iceland, but within sight of the shore. In character they resemble the adjacent coast, and form a true part of the main land, except in the one fact of separation. Strabo even called Sicily an insular continuation of Italy, and discriminated between islands found in mid-ocean and those found near the coast, calling the former pelagic and the latter littoral islands. These he regarded as having been at some previous period rent from the main land. The coast islands are by no means, like many of the pelagic islands, mere rocky groups, thrown up by volcanic convulsions, or small, desolate, barren ledges. They are very diverse in character: some are fertile single islands, like Sicily, Candia, Bornholm, Rugen, Negropont; some are double islands, like Britain and Ireland, Zealand and Funen, Corsica and Sardinia; some are island groups, like the 3 Balearic islands, the 3 Maltese islands, the 20 Ionian islands, the 67 Orkneys, the 90 Shetlands, the still more numerous Hebrides, the Aland group, and that of the Grecian archipelago. They are generally of very large size, in comparison with the continent to which they are adjacent; a characteristic not only very rare in islands, but which must exert great influence. They are to be viewed, therefore, as continuations of Europe, not as lands sundered from the main land; they are to be considered as its sea-ports, and the mediators between Europe and the other continents.

In round numbers, the islands of Europe embrace about 175,000 square miles—a twentieth of the continent.

This amount of insular territory has given Europe a great diversity of relations, and has contributed much to its ethnographical character. Imagine only England and her whole group struck out of existence. What impoverishment it would bring! The Danish peninsula, without the adjacent islands of Funen and Zealand, were a mere tongue of sand. Without Sicily to furnish grain, Rome’s history had been entirely different from what it was. What a change it would have made in the development of Italy and Greece, had the Cyclades and Crete not served as a bridge, over which the civilization of Hither Asia might pass! Yet these islands, with their inhabitants, do not stand in necessary dependence on the contiguous main land; they have often in themselves the conditions of independent growth and prosperity. And yet the geological qualities and general features of islands may agree very closely with those of the land hard by; as is the case with the British, Danish, Italian, and Grecian groups. Southern England is a continuation of northern France, Picardy, and the Netherlands, as the geology of these districts shows. Sicily is a continuation of the volcanic soil of Calabria, and Candia of the Morea.

Hence the possibility, despite the separation of islands from the main land, of a close connection in the habits, manners, and culture of the people, thus separated, depending as they do on a common soil, and having the same industries in common. It would be entirely different in Great Britain, for example, if the south end of England were geologically formed like the north end of Scotland. Instead of harmony there would be repulsion, and that mutual interchange of relations would not exist which has so powerful an influence on the whole course of European history.

The remarkable number of islands on the coast of Europe, and their significance and value, formerly escaped attention; or rather their influence on the development of that continent, in comparison with others, was not made a matter of study.

Africa has never enlarged its domain through the aid of adjacent islands. Poor as it is in all coast indentations, it is just as poor in islands. Only a few insignificant ones, which have no close geological connection with the shore, are found here. The sporadic groups found in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans are almost exclusively the product of subterranean forces, and are entirely unlike the stratified lime and sandstone formations of the coast. There is, therefore, no close connection between the inanimate nature of continent and islands and their respective populations; no physical conditions have imposed upon them a common historical development. Only the Canary Islands, southwest of the Atlas Mountain range, and Madagascar, could be regarded as at all exceptional to this. But the nine Canaries are relatively extremely small, embracing but about 3000 square miles in all; much too small to exercise any important influence, or to harbor a large population. Besides, they are separated from the main land by marine currents, which would prevent any very important reaction, however large the islands in themselves might be. The Cape Verd islands, embracing only about 1750 square miles, stand in yet more unfavorable relations to the main land. So, too, the solitary islands of St. Helena and Ascension, and in the Indian Ocean the scattered groups of the Camara, Amirante, and Seychelle islands, embracing all together but 3300 square miles, and Socotra, about 1750 square miles. Only Madagascar would be large enough to enrich the continent essentially, if it were nearer to the main land. But it is separated from it by the broad and dangerous Mozambique Channel; both, therefore, have remained without mutual relations; their populations are entirely unlike, and there has been no exchange of productions between them. Madagascar is, therefore, only apparently, and by the apparent contiguity of the mass, a neighbor of Africa; but, in reality, i.e. as it relates to the organic unity of all the various parts of the globe, it is far more intimately connected by the system of marine currents to the Malayan Archipelago, southeast of Asia, than to Africa.

Entirely different is it with the island system of Asia. The eastern and southern sides are remarkably characterized by the profuse numbers of islands found there. It might be said, that what Africa lacks in this regard, Asia more than supplies. On the Asiatic coast they appear in such vast numbers that they have been called, in contrast with the Old and New Worlds, the Island World, or Polynesia. They appear under the most varied conditions—in long rows, in massive groups, and here and there singly. They begin with the North Polar islands, and pass southward in unbroken succession past the equator as far as the tropic of Capricorn.