Lingering colonial outlier yet miniature continent : notes from the Sicilian archipelago

Abstract

The fortunes of the wider Mediterranean Sea, the world’s largest, have never rested on Sicily, its largest island. A stubbornly peripheral region, and possibly the world’s most bridgeable island, Sicily has been largely neglected within the field of Island Studies. The physically largest island with the largest population in the region, and housing Europe’s most active volcano, Sicily has moved from being a hinterland for warring factions (Sparta/Athens, Carthage/Rome), to a more centrist stage befitting its location, although still remaining a political outlier in the modern era. Unlike many even smaller islands with smaller populations, however, Sicily has remained an appendage to a larger, and largely dysfunctional, state. The Maltese islands are part of ‘the Sicilian archipelago’, and it was a whim of Charles V of Spain that politically cut off Malta from this node in the 1520s, but not culturally. This article will review some of the multiple representations of this island, and its changing fortunes.