Introduction

This volume is dedicated to a crucial dimension of island history that has so far often been missing from these accounts: their natural environment. The work of anthropologists, literary scholars and cultural historians has taught us a lot about how islands have been imagined, lived on and represented by different cultures at different times. In this volume, we ask what role the islands’ environment, and human interactions with and perceptions of this environment, have played in their history. We argue that to understand why an island became a penal colony, an atomic test site, a sugarcane plantation or a tourist destination we must take a close look at its geology, its topography, its climate and ecology, and its position vis-à-vis other places. We also cannot understand an island’s place in history without considering the changing ways in which its materiality has been perceived, used, valued or dismissed, protected or mistreated over time.