Note 932 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

In the wide Pacific world comprising Australia and Oceanica, islands take up fifteen per cent. of the total land area, but they contain forty-four per cent. of the population.932 The insular empire of Japan, despite the paucity of its arable soil, has a density of population nearly twice that of China, nearly three times that of Korea, and exceeding that of any political subdivision of continental Asia; but Japan, in turn, is surpassed in congestion only by Java, with a density of 587 to the square mile,933 which almost equals that of Belgium (643) and England (600). Great Britain has a density of population (453 to the square mile) only exceeded in continental Europe by that of Belgium, but surpassed nearly threefold by that of the little Channel Isles, which amounts to 1254 to the square mile.934 If the average density of the United Kingdom is greatly diminished in Ireland, just as Italy's is in Sardinia and France's in Corsica, this fact is due primarily to a side-tracked or overshadowed location and adverse topography, combined with misgovernment.