The great importance of such islands has been due solely to their location. Their size and resources are negligible quantities, but their natural position as way stations lent them preeminence so long as navigation held to short "laps," and was restricted to enclosed seas. In the wide expanse of the open ocean, similar sparsely scattered isles, like Ascension, St. Helena, the Canaries and Hawaii, assumed importance in proportion to their scarcity. Though never the centers of rife intercourse like Delos and Gotland, those lying conspicuously in the track of commerce have succeeded in drawing to themselves the typical polyglot nodal population. Mauritius, located at the southwestern entrance of the Indian Ocean about equally distant from Aden, Ceylon, Bombay, Singapore and West Australia, and possessing the best harbor within many hundred miles, has been held successively by Dutch, French and English, and to-day has a dense population of French, English and Hindus.[867] A situation at the northeast entrance to the Caribbean Sea, keystone of the vast arch formed by the Greater and Lesser Antilles, made the island of St. Thomas a natural distributing point for this whole basin. Facing that much traveled Virgin Passage, and forming the first objective of vessels bound from Europe to Panama, it became a great ship rendezvous, and assumed strategic and commercial importance from early times. We find the same political owners here as in Mauritius and in the same order—Dutch, French and English, though in 1671 the island was occupied by the Danes, then from 1807 to 1815 by the English again, and finally secured by the Danes.[868] The history of the Falkland Islands is a significant reflection of their location on the south oceanic trade route, where they command the entrance to the Magellan Straits and the passage round the Horn, Here on the outskirts of the world, where they form the only break in the wide blank surface of the South Atlantic, they have been coveted and held in turn by the chief European powers having colonies in the Orient,—by France, Spain, England, Spain again, England again, by Argentine in 1820, and finally by England since 1833. Their possession was of especial advantage to Great Britain, which had no other base in this part of the world intermediate between England and New Zealand.
Thalassic islands as goals of expansion.
Islands located in enclosed seas display the transitional character of border districts. They are outposts of the surrounding shores, and become therefore the first objective of every expanding movement, whether commercial or political, setting out from the adjacent coasts. Such islands are swept by successive waves of conquest or colonization, and they carry in their people and language evidences of the wrack left behind on their shores. This has been the history of Aegina, Cyprus, Rhodes, Crete, Malta, Corfu, Sicily and Sardinia. That of Cyprus is typical. It was the first island base for the ancient Tyrian fleets, and had its Phoenician settlements in 1045 B. C. From that time it was one of the many prizes in the Mediterranean grab-bag for the surrounding nations. After the decline of Tyre, it was occupied by Greeks, then passed in turn to Assyrians, Egyptians, Persians, Romans, Saracens, Byzantines, and in 1191 was seized by the Crusaders. Later it fell to Egypt again; but in 1373 was taken by Genoa, in 1463 by Venice, in 1571 by the Turks, and finally in 1878 was consigned to England.[ 869] All these successive occupants have left their mark upon its people, speech, culture and architecture. In the same way Sicily, located at the waist of the Mediterranean, has received the imprint of Greeks, Carthagenians, Romans, Saracens, Normans, Spaniards and Italians.[ 870] Its architectural remains bear the stamp of these successive occupants in every degree of purity and blending. The Sicilians of to-day are a mixture of all these intrusive stocks and speak a form of Italian corrupted by the infusion of Arabic words.[871] In 1071 when the Normans laid siege to Palermo, five languages were spoken on the island,—Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Arabic and vulgar Sicilian, evidence enough that it was the meeting ground of the nations of Europe, Asia and North Africa.[872] Polyglot Malta to-day tells the same story of successive conquests, the same shuttlecock history.[873] Almost every language of Europe is spoken here; but the native Maltese speech is a corrupt form of Arabic mixed with modern Italian and ancient Phoenician words.[874] The whole island is ethnographically a border hybrid of Europe and North Africa. The Channel Isles are to-day the only spot in Europe where French and English survive side by side as official and commercial languages. French and Italian meet on equal terms in Corsica. Chinese, Japanese and Malays have traded and warred and treated on the debatable land of Formosa. The Aru, Ke, and other small archipelagoes of the Banda Sea link together the pure Malay and the pure Papuan districts, between which they lie.
From the border character of many islands there follow often far-reaching historical effects. Like all border regions they are natural battlegrounds. Their historical episodes are small, often slow and insidious in their movement, but large in their final content; for they are prone to end in a sudden dramatic denouement that draws the startled gaze of all the neighboring world. It was the destiny of Sicily to make and unmake the fortunes of ancient Carthage. Ceylon, from the dawn of history, lured traders who enriched and conquerors who oppressed peninsular India. The advance of Spain to the Canary Isles was the drowsy prologue to the brilliant drama of American discovery. The island of Tsushima in the Korean Strait was seized by the forces of Kublai Khan in 1280 as the base of their attack upon Japan;[875] and when in 1857 the Russian bear tried to plant a foot on this island, Japan saw danger in the movement and ordered him off.[876] Now we find Japan newly established in Sakhalin, the Elliot Islands and Formosa, by means of which and her own archipelago she blankets the coast of Asia for twenty-two hundred miles. This geographical situation may be productive of history.
Political detachability of islands.
Islands are detached areas physically and readily detached politically. Though insularity gives them some measure of protection, their relatively small size and consequently small populations make them easy victims for a conquering sea power, and easy to hold in subjection. The security of an island habitat against aggression therefore, increases with its size, its efficiency in naval warfare, and its degree of isolation, the last of which factors depends in turn upon its location as thalassic or oceanic. Islands of enclosed seas, necessarily small and never far from the close encircling lands, are engulfed by every tide of conquest emanating from the nearby shores. Oesel and Dago have been held in succession by every Baltic power, by the Teutonic Orders, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. Gotland has acknowledged allegiance to the Hanseatic League, to Denmark and Sweden. Sardinia, occupying the center of the western Mediterranean, has figured in a varied series of political combinations,—with ancient Carthage, Rome, the Saracens of North Africa, with Sicily, Pisa, Aragon, Piedmont, and finally now with united Italy.[877] To the land-bred Teutonic hordes which swept over western Europe in the early centuries of our era, a narrow strip of sea was some protection for Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearic Isles. Hence we find these islands slow in succumbing to their non-maritime conquerors, and readily regained by the energetic Justinian. Later they fell victim to the sea-wise Saracens, but again gravitated back to their closer and more natural European connections.
Insular weakness due to small area.