ABSTRACT
There are hundreds of thousands of islands. They are found in every sea and ocean and display considerable ranges of scale, resource availability, economic opportunities and levels of development (Figures 1.1-1.6). Yet it is this book’s intention to show that, despite such wide distribution and variations, islands everywhere are subject to the impact of a common range of constraints imposed because of their very insularity. Such constraints-remoteness, smallness (absolute and/or relative), isolation, peripherality, etc.—can also affect, singly or together, certain mainland areas, but they are more notable in their effect on the bounded landmasses that are islands. The impact of insularity is, of course, usually more significant on small islands. Thus this book does not deal with islands of the scale of Great Britain, Honshu or Java. Instead, it focuses on smaller places, hence its subtitle: ‘small island insularity’.
