Note 952 — Chapter XIII · —Island Peoples

In the Malay Archipelago, an oceanic climate and tropical location have combined to stimulate fertility to the greatest extent; but this local wealth has been exploited in the highest degree in the smaller islands having relatively the longest coastline and amplest contact with the sea. The great continent-like areas of Borneo, New Guinea and Sumatra show a correspondingly sparse population; Java, smaller than the smallest of these and coated with mud from its fertilizing volcanoes, supports 587 inhabitants to the square mile; but this exceptional average is due to rare local productivity. Java's little neighbors to the east, Bali and Lombok, each with an area of only about 2100 square miles, have a density respectively of 338 and 195 to the square mile. This density rises suddenly in small Amboina (area 264 square miles), the isle of the famous clove monopoly, to 1000,952 drops in the other Moluccas, where Papuan influences are strong, even to 20, but rises again in the pure Malayan Philippines to 69. In the Philippines a distinct connection is to be traced between the density of population and smallness of area. The explanation lies in the attraction of the coast for the sea-faring Malay race, and the mathematical law of increase of shoreline with decrease of insular area. Since 65 per cent. of the whole Philippine population inhabits coastal municipalities, it is not surprising that the 73 islands from ten to a hundred square miles in area count 127 inhabitants to the square mile, and those of less than ten square miles, of which there are nearly a thousand, have a density of 238.953