ABSTRACT
The acts of selling and/or swapping do not just suggest solutions to island disputes; they may also exacerbate the very same disputes, in spite of noble intentions. This chapter examines the manner in which islands can and have been sold or bartered in this way. The bartering can also include other islands, so in such cases we deal with the swapping of one or more islands with alternative pieces of real estate which could also be islands. These 'transactions' are especially viable when there are no island populations involved in the swap. However, the most dramatic case of all involves two island units that each had a resident population which was summarily 'betrayed' in the context of superpower negotiation in the late nineteenth century. Islanders on two continents, far apart, both found themselves swapped, ceded to another power, in a clinical exchange that was handled almost like a 'book balancing', accounting exercise.
