Postcolonialism and islands : introduction

Abstract

No other type of territory has been so affected by the colonial endeavor as islands. Islands, especially the smaller entities, were the first territories to be colonized in the European Age of Discovery, suffered the colonial burden most intimately and thoroughly, and have been the last to seek and obtain independence. Controversially, such a triple heritage may have endowed these locales with the recipe for a particularly benign form of postcolonialism: higher contemporary incomes and better living standards. Perhaps just as dramatically, island societies have been at the forefront in actually struggling to postpone or prevent independence, with considerable success to date. And so, islands also offer the intriguing complication of postcolonialism in a non-post-colonial environment; the hyphen in “post-colonial” inserted to make it mean “after colonialism has ended.” Apart from Gibraltar (an enclave in any case) and Western Sahara, all 16 of the world’s remaining “non-self-governing territories” on the UN’s list—often referred to as “overseas territories”—are islands.