Note 877 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

Islands are detached areas physically and readily detached politically. Though insularity gives them some measure of protection, their relatively small size and consequently small populations make them easy victims for a conquering sea power, and easy to hold in subjection. The security of an island habitat against aggression therefore, increases with its size, its efficiency in naval warfare, and its degree of isolation, the last of which factors depends in turn upon its location as thalassic or oceanic. Islands of enclosed seas, necessarily small and never far from the close encircling lands, are engulfed by every tide of conquest emanating from the nearby shores. Oesel and Dago have been held in succession by every Baltic power, by the Teutonic Orders, Denmark, Sweden and Russia. Gotland has acknowledged allegiance to the Hanseatic League, to Denmark and Sweden. Sardinia, occupying the center of the western Mediterranean, has figured in a varied series of political combinations,—with ancient Carthage, Rome, the Saracens of North Africa, with Sicily, Pisa, Aragon, Piedmont, and finally now with united Italy.877 To the land-bred Teutonic hordes which swept over western Europe in the early centuries of our era, a narrow strip of sea was some protection for Sicily, Corsica, Sardinia, Malta and the Balearic Isles. Hence we find these islands slow in succumbing to their non-maritime conquerors, and readily regained by the energetic Justinian. Later they fell victim to the sea-wise Saracens, but again gravitated back to their closer and more natural European connections.