The virtues of insularity: Pondering a new chapter in the historical geography of islands

Received: 11 August 2021       Revised: 16 September 2021       Accepted: 23 September 2021

DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12596

ARTICLE

The virtues of insularity: Pondering a new chapter
in the historical geography of islands

Godfrey Baldacchino1                            | Nenad Starc2

Department of Sociology, University of Malta,
1

Msida, Malta                                         Abstract
Institute of Economics, Zagreb, Croatia
2
                                                     We may be on the cusp of a renaissance in small island living.
                                                     The slow but steady decline that characterised much of the
Correspondence
Godfrey Baldacchino, Department of                   industrial age seems to have been halted in some islands and
Sociology, University of Malta, Msida, Malta.        in some countries – including Ireland and Croatia – and even
Email: godfrey.baldacchino@um.edu.mt
                                                     reversed in some places (the Aran Islands). Using a broad
                                                     sweep this exploratory article explains the broad historical
                                                     phenomenon of small island youth outmigration, population
                                                     decline or resettlement; and how this is being replaced with
                                                     a newfound value in ‘splendid isolation’ that, however, boasts
                                                     elements of connectivity (including access to the World
                                                     Wide Web).

                                                     KEYWORDS
                                                     ageing, insularity, pandemic, population decline, virtuous isolation

1 | INTRODUCTION

In 1930, the 36 remaining islanders of St Kilda, islands off the North-West coast of Scotland, were evacuated to the
mainland. They never returned. The “genius”, “dexterity” and overall resilience of the island inhabitants in the face of
dire conditions referenced in the mid-18th century (e.g., Macaulay, 1764) were not enough to beat a long history of
disease and an exceptionally cold winter in 1929. The islanders asked the government to aid them off the island and to
a new life on the mainland. A problem, which could have been resolved differently in a mainland village of comparable
size, was addressed via a wholesale evacuation of an island population (Clegg, 1977; BBC, 2010).
    Two millennia of resilience were not enough to stem the population decline: the St Kilda population was given as
112 in the 1851 Scottish census; 71 in the 1861 census; 74 in 1911; and 37 in 1928. After 1930, a distinct literature
emerged seeking to rationalise this stark death of community, often by (unfairly) caricaturing the islanders as stub-
born and stuck to their old ways, unable to embrace capitalism, a cash economy and other paraphernalia of modernity
(Fleming, 2005). The point that capitalism embraced and captured the islands first and opened it up, bringing diseases
and a growing dependence on the mainland, has received far less attention.

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https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12596

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    Much later, on the other side of the Atlantic, by end December 2019, 52 of the 54 remaining permanent residents
of Little Bay Islands, in the province of Newfoundland & Labrador (NL), Canada, had packed up and left for good. This
closing down of an island community is one of the latest in a long and controversial programme implemented by the
NL provincial government since the 1950s to entice people out of ‘outports’: small coastal and island settlements that
have seen better days but have now become financially and socially unviable (e.g., Hoggart, 1979).
    Like many other NL outports, Little Bay Islands was mortally affected by the cod fish stock collapse and the subse-
quent moratorium on cod fishing imposed in 1992 (Myers et al., 1997). A single, snow crab processing plant hung on;
but was forced to close in 2011. The single school closed in 2018, after 2 years without a single student. The prover-
bial writing was on the wall. The NL provincial government offers each person or family Can$250–270,000 to leave;
enough to purchase a home somewhere else. And so, if at least 90% of a community's permanent residents approve
and vote in favour of their closure, then all essential services – including electricity generation, piped water and the
only ferry service – are shut down, and for good (Lindeman, 2019; Montgomery, 2019). In the case of Little Bay Islands,
only one couple stayed (Mercer, 2019).
    Residual residents in these communities are encouraged to resettle in larger towns and cities where the basic
services expected in modern daily life are available; and enjoyed by a critical mass of clients and citizens, which makes
then less expensive per capita to provide and maintain. These services include health care, electricity, water and sew-
erage, and education. There are also better, more and cooler social, entertainment, sport and leisure facilities.
    The stories of St Kilda and Little Bay Islands are amongst the tales of hundreds of small island communities that
have witnessed a progressive decline of fortune and population the world over in the last two centuries, many reach-
ing a critical tipping point in sustainability. Typically, this would be the closure of the only school; of the main local em-
ployer; or of the only grocery store. However, the abundantly rich variety of “our world of islands” (Baldacchino, 2007)
also offers examples of island communities that have been saved and energised, rather than overwhelmed and aban-
doned, by external factors and the onset of modernity.

2 | HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY

The historical geography of recent cases of small island revival is still patchy; but their degeneration and collapse are.
Royle (2010, p. 10) presents the vicious “cycle of decline” as algorithm. Many, and especially young, small island resi-
dents are drawn to bigger settlements on the mainland where life is more comfortable, and there is more consumer
choice, better health care, higher quality education, and better and more diverse work prospects. The net effect is a
progressively smaller and older island population which, in turn, reduces consumption and labour supply and which,
in turn, make it less attractive for businesses to open and operate. A smaller population also makes any community
services less viable on a per capita basis: the costs involved in maintaining teaching or health care staff increases as
populations plummet. The reduced provision of goods and services pushes up their costs, often delivered by monopoly
providers who do not enjoy economies of scale. These more expensive commodities, including essential food items,
make the island community less attractive, discouraging newcomers while encouraging those who linger to consider
leaving. Some island residents would try and combine the virtues of isolation with the benefits of urban living, com-
muting to work, study, shop or seek specialist care. But the unpredictability of both weather conditions and ferry
services conspire to make such journeys long, arduous, and hard to plan ahead. And so, the cycle goes on. All it takes is
an environmental disaster, a mainland-derived economic disturbance, or even a policy measure that overlooks island
specificities, to accelerate or catalyse the inexorable dynamic.
    Small islands far and wide have seen a similar story unfold: a slow but steady decline, an ageing of the island
population and eventual death of the community, the latter of which could occur in one day (with an evacuation) or
gradually by relocating older islanders to retirement homes away from the island. Large-scale external disturbances
unsettle smaller islands more than bigger ones. Smaller islands are thus more likely to see accelerated declines than
larger islands. Though, it is worth noting, “near islands” (Starc, 2020), which are typically small islands that are easily

BALDACCHINO and STARC                                                                                               3 of 11

accessed by boat or have a fixed link – a tunnel, bridge or causeway – to a proximate mainland, or to a larger island,
have witnessed a lower population decline.

2.1 | The case of Ireland

Ireland's recent history captures this unfolding of events: we can say so with some confidence because of the quality
and regularity of its population censuses. Between 1841 and 1991, the population of Ireland declined by 37% (from
8.2 to 5.1 million). Pull factors – such as the availability of work in a rapidly industrialising Britain – along with push
factors – such as the potato blight that led to the ‘Great Famine’ which killed many and forced many survivors to emi-
gration and exile (Daly, 2006).
    The narrative unfolding from really small islands that dot the coastline of the much bigger island of Ireland is more
dramatic. The resident population of the small Irish islands – and excluding that of the Irish ‘mainland’ – declined by
75% in the same 150-year period: from 38,100 in 1841 to 9700 in 1991. The number of populated islands around
Ireland also fell dramatically: from 211 to 66 in the same period (Royle, 1999, pp. 27–29). In a more recent paper, the
number of islands with a resident population is given as 53 (Moncada et al., 2010). Irish islands with a fixed link did
somewhat better: in fact, the percentage of Ireland's small island population that lives on islands with ‘fixed links’ that
connect such islands to mainland Ireland has shot up from 14% in 1841 to 39% in 1926 and to 68% in 2016 (Royle &
Scott, 1996: Royle, 2020, p. 20). There was an average decline in population of 77 per cent on 11 offshore Irish islands,
from Donegal to Cork, between 1841 and 2011. This decline continued, but slowed, to 53 per cent between 1992 and
2015 (Siggins, 2017).

2.2 | The case of Croatia

Of 718 islands in the Croatian archipelago, some 50 islands have always been inhabited. A peak population of 173,503
was recorded in the 1921 census; but numbers fell steadily to 114,800 in 1981. The trend worsened due to bouts of
phylloxera that destroyed an economic system revolving around viticulture (Ostroški, 2015, p. 47; Skinner, 2019) and
later by socialist industrialisation that pulled islanders to new mainland industrial centres. Islanders from Korčula,
one of the bigger islands (279 km2), recollect 21 April 1925 when 1200 people (8.6% of the island population) left for
the Americas (Čuka et al., 2017). The collective memory of almost every islander in the archipelago has been burdened
with painful experiences or histories of exile. An extreme example would be the population of Susak (3.75 km2), which
fell from 1760 inhabitants in 1945 to 151 in 2011 (Sokolić & Starc, 2020). Susakians resisted phylloxera but were not
resilient enough to pull through socialist restrictions in the late 1940s and 1950s. Same as in the Irish case, those is-
lands that were larger and very close to the mainland fared somewhat better, due to better logistics and more dynamic
economic development (Čuka & Faričić, 2020, p. 58).

2.3 | And elsewhere

Similar stories have unfolded in other archipelagos, and hard data is sometimes available to substantiate the argument.
Consider these examples from Western France: the island of Ushant, with a population of 1510 in 1811, peaking at
2953 in 1911 and then falling to 835 in 2017 (Wikipedia, 2021a). Groix had 3160 residents in 1968; but down to 2260
in 2015. Bréhat had a peak of 1941 residents in 1846, and was down to 400 residents in 2010 (Wikipedia, 2021b).
    Examples of terminal decline – to the point at which the island faces the prospects of a total evacuation – can be
traced back to the 19th century. In the 1850s, on the Pacific island of Pitcairn, 193 descendants of the HMS Bounty
mutineers asked the British government for a new home. In 1856, they were transported en masse to Norfolk Island;

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however, 40 of these returned to Pitcairn (Hayward, 2006). The population there has hovered at around the 50 mark
over recent decades, perilously perched in a situation where the “end is ever nigh” (Connell, 1988).

3 | REVERSING THE TREND?

However, there is now some clear evidence that this trend of inexorable population decline has been stemmed, even
without external interventions. In some cases, it has even been reversed.
    Between 2001 and 2011, Scottish island populations as a whole grew by 4% to 103,702: the largest increase took
place on the largest islands: Mainland Shetland, Mainland Orkney, Lewis and Harris, and Skye. The latter has a fixed
link to Lochalsh since 1995, and charges no bridge tolls since 2004 (McQuaid & Greig, 2008). In the islands of Croatia,
the trend line also shows an increase of their populations, reaching 125,000 in 2011, and higher numbers are expected
in the 2021 census.
    In Ireland, some islands with a fixed link have seen a growing population of late: such as Haulbowline, Inchydoney
and Inishbeg. But: even some Irish islands without any fixed link have seen a population renaissance of sorts: the best
examples are the three Aran islands: Inis Meáin, Inis Oírr and Inis Mór (Inishmaan, Inisheer and Inishmore).
    Upon closer scrutiny, differences between small and bigger islands emerge. For some 30 years now, bigger islands
in Croatia have been growing in population and income while progressively becoming more attractive to new settle-
ment. In contrast, some 40 small islands (up to 25 km2 in land area and with not more than 300 residents each) have
been stagnating in nearly every aspect, albeit without signs of total decline so far.
    One main explanation for this reversal of fortune is tourism. Island tourism has picked up, and visitors have been
flocking to islands to enjoy their beaches, scenery and somewhat exotic cultures and rituals. On small islands, this
influx of even a few visitors can transform the local economy. Restaurants, taxi operators, tourist guides, hotel and
AirBNB operators have adapted and cashed in, even if tourism is seasonal. Meanwhile, too many tourists to small
islands can cause irreparable damage to infrastructure and environments, thus fuelling requests for sustainable prac-
tices from the embattled locals. In the meantime, island property can prove to be expensive real estate, responding
to an increased interest for second home residences. In Croatia, the overall number of all-year-round island residents
declined by 2.3% over 1971–2011; but the number of dwellings rose by 340% (Čuka & Faričić, 2020, p. 80). By 2011,
the majority of dwellings on all Croatian islands (58.5%) were used only for holidays by ‘part-time residents’ (Čuka &
Faričić, 2020). Seemingly, these residents have not bought the houses solely as holiday homes. Since opening up to
foreign buyers, Croatian island dwellings are seen as valuable investments that are expected to appreciate in value,
even in the short run.
    There are also urban and lifestyle refugees that are willing to settle on islands, even if islanders continue to largely
prefer leaving their islands and just keep them as locations for second homes, or for occasional and nostalgic visits
(e.g., Baldacchino, 2015; Baldacchino & Pleijel, 2010; Siggins, 2017). Tourism would have placed such islands on the
itinerary of these ‘settlers’; they would have progressively realised that they could spend more time on such island get-
aways, and typically invest in island property, becoming seasonal or eventually even full-time residents. The window
of opportunity is open as the spread of technological innovations has finally reached remote regions, including small
islands. Telemedicine has improved prophylaxis and accelerated diagnostics. Energy supply is no longer a technologi-
cal problem, as a variety of solar panels and wind turbines are available and can be installed anywhere, with nearly the
same being said for desalination plants. In this way, the energy needed to provide for potable water can be produced
locally and the island is a few steps towards becoming self-sustaining. Additionally, biological sewage treatment has
advanced and a longstanding small island problem – a viable elementary school – can be, at least partially, addressed
by on-line learning. Broadband has been another recent saviour to sustainable small island populations. The arrival
of reliable internet services has coincided with the digitalisation of various public and private services, reducing the
‘handicap’ associated with island living in the 21st century.

BALDACCHINO and STARC                                                                                                  5 of 11

4 | ENTER THE PANDEMIC

With the onset of SARS-COV-2 as a global pandemic in 2020, various small islands found themselves wielding their
geophysical isolation as a welcome but also fragile advantage. The virus originated deep in the mainland and exploded
in all directions with varying speed, depending on means of transmission, main corridors and flows of people. As in
numerous occasions in island history, the sea proved to be a barrier and islands made good use of it. It was indeed pos-
sible for some island jurisdictions to remain Covid-19-free for long periods. As of 27 June 2021, three small Pacific is-
land states have avoided recording even a single coronavirus infection: Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu (Koryogroup, 2021).
Other sub-national level data is sketchy, but such ‘Covid-free’ islands certainly exist elsewhere too. Nonetheless, the
overall outbreak of the virus was penetrating enough and reached quite a few islands. In some cases, the experience
has been all the more stark as the virus reached across the sea and imploded on small islands, causing relatively more
infections and deaths. In April 2020, the Estonian island county of Saaremaa (population 31,000) ended up with 50%
of its residents infected after several mass events, including a volleyball match against an Italian team from Milano
that was accompanied by supporters (ERR News, 2020). The Croatian island of Brač offers a somewhat different ex-
ample. In May 2020, with a lockdown imminent, second-home owners from the mainland descended upon the island
bringing their relatives and friends. They felt safe … until an islander caught the virus and brought it home. The news
spread quickly, and the perception of the island as a refuge changed overnight. The queue of vehicles at the ferry port
trying to leave the ‘island trap’ was kilometres long (Orovic, 2020).
    It should be noted that the two examples come from islands which belong to national administrative systems that
are largely mainlands; whereas Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu are sovereign island states. As suggested by the UPEI project
COVID-19 Island Insights Series, the success in fighting the virus may largely depend on prerogatives that local, island
authorities have in creating and implementing epidemic measures (UPEI News, 2021). Islands that are able to craft
and implement their own measures were more successful than islands that had to indiscriminately implement entire,
nation-wide epidemic policies devised on the mainland.
    In addition, small island residents in Italy and Greece are being given priority to get vaccinated and thus be in a
better position to open up to tourism in summer 2021 (Greece Is, 2021; Schengen Visa Info, 2021). Some island states
have gone even further: Barbados is offering ‘teleworking’ visas to entice rich potential settlers to take up residence in
the country while continuing their work remotely, via a reliable internet connection (Insider, 2020). The proliferation
of working on-line and remotely post-pandemic has opened up strong possibilities for a new wave of migrant workers:
the ‘digital nomads’ who can now seriously consider quality of life issues (as would come with living in a small island
community) without sacrificing careers and well-paying jobs (Hermann & Paris, 2020).

5 | DISCUSSION

Isolation has undergone an interesting volte face in recent decades. No longer does island life conjure up images of
forlorn, rugged yet archaic people, moulded by the “shared hardships and enforced self-sufficiency associated with
residence in isolated communities” (Burholt et al., 2013, p. 1), eviscerated from modernity and globalisation, starved of
the benefits, comforts and pleasures of the contemporary age. Instead, “contemporary islander identities are founded
on the positively perceived isolation of islands” (Burholt et al., 2013; my emphasis). Islands are being sought deliberate-
ly as places of exception; sites of security, enclaves of refuge, escape and authentic traditional values that can still offer
a level of connectivity expected and yearned for by current generations (Baldacchino, 2010).
    The islanders' “splendid isolation” is also relative and in sharp contrast to other isolated communities: remote
rural settlements, mountain villages, desert oases … unlike all these, islanders are typically just a ferry away from ma-
jor centres of population, and where specialised health care may be available (Agius et al., 2021). We need to dismiss
the figure of the ‘isolated island’ as largely a caricature, and instead reframe ‘isolation’ as precisely the consequence
of distinctive, localised, comings together of relations which create a ‘separated’ or ‘isolated’ (island) space. Islands'

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isolation, along with their distinctiveness and separateness, are the product of specific materialisations of complex
spatial and temporal inter-relations in a particular (island) locale, rendered possible by the engirdling and entangling
sea (Baldacchino, 2018; Daou & Pérez-Ramos, 2016; Pugh & Chandler, 2021).
    The island(er)s' strong and lingering sense of community, real or perceived, also offers an experience of intima-
cy and gemeinschaft that has been irrevocably eliminated in the bustling and anonymous metropolis of the present
post-industrial epoch (Baldacchino & Veenendaal, 2018). After all, islands continue to “symbolise real community and
the kind of values that so easily dissolve in the acidic anomie of mainland life” (Bonnett, 2020, p. 198). To make things
worse, city residents have now been rendered even more suspicious of strangers because of the collapse of bridging
social capital and the social distancing imposed to brake the spread of the current pandemic (Baldacchino, 2020; Vis-
entin et al., 2021; Vuoso, 2019). Yet, it is encouraging to note that enforced self-sufficiency, one of the main character-
istics of small islanders and their open economies, can be observed amongst new islanders. They may disembark onto
islands with mainland expectations; but new islanders either quickly give up and return to the mainland; or else they
stay doggedly on, giving up mainland expectations and instead start to build a local store of self-sufficiency.
    The historical geography of island decline is well-known. The plans that mainland(er)s have hatched for islands
usually involved housing bad and other undesirable folk: such as criminals and lepers, and travellers possibly infected
with the plague.
    Thus, islands have been straddled with a negative brand, made worse by a systematic haemorrhage of their young
and ambitious. But: perhaps not any more. Former neglected island property can now be expensive real estate. There
are urban and lifestyle refugees that are willing to settle on islands, even if some islanders continue to largely prefer
leaving their islands and just keep them for second homes, and for occasional and nostalgic visits. So, the historical
geography narrative can finally be shifted away from the celebrated cases of St Kilda and Little Bay Islands to those
of young enterprising professionals who can live on a small island yet work with the best (via broadband). The empty
stone houses of St Kilda are now attracting tourists, and the islands host an army outpost. Kish is no longer an exclu-
sive Iranian royal family resort, but a tourist destination.
    The transformation is not without its critics, detractors or inbuilt tensions. The threat of depopulation may be
staved off, or postponed, with a stop to net outmigration; however, other, new challenges rear their head. ‘Native ver-
sus settler’ animosities are likely to dominate local politics (e.g., Houbert, 1992). ‘Blow ins’, ‘non-belongers’ or those
who ‘come from away’ can easily feel left out and marginalised in so-called welcoming small island communities (Bal-
dacchino, 2012; Marshall, 2008). On the other hand, the profile of new islanders may be distinctive or even odd. A
closer look at the slow, thought promising, repopulation of small Croatian islands reveals marginalized people incom-
patible with the social group they lived in, who eventually set out in search of an alternative community. Here, outliers
meet outliers; these types of new islanders can be found on the outer edges of the archipelago.
    Gentrification nevertheless poses a serious threat to small islands. Population time series showing the stagnation
obscure the fact that the island population is also not being renewed, and a population that is getting older means
getting closer to a demographic collapse, even if this occurs gradually. Nevertheless, it is clear that the future of small
islands, for better or for worse, depends on migration from across the sea. This poses a serious dilemma for island
residents, however: would the island elderly shun and refuse to engage with ‘newcomers’ and thus risk a shut-down of
the local community, starved of investment and new blood? Or would they welcome newcomers, but then risk an ap-
preciation in the cost of local property, rendering it progressively out of the reach of young locals, who may therefore
be obliged to resettle elsewhere, even if they did not have to because of other reasons? (Clark et al., 2007).
    On small islands, the consequences of the sequence of simple but hard decisions about leaving can be profound
and enduring. Decay begins with an islander that sells their property to a “non-belonger” who in this way takes the first
step of a long journey towards belonging. If the island is attractive for taking up residence given a mild climate, a clean
environment, and safe everyday life, buyers may form a long queue. Soon enough, a considerable portion of real estate
will be in the hands of part-time islanders who will use their second homes for vacation and/or renting to tourists and,
recently, as a place to live and work. We are thus witnessing another volte face here. After centuries of taking care of
scarce island resources and honing the skills of sustainable island living, a handful of remaining and admirably stub-

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born islanders that refused to sell now rent spare rooms to tourists and serve the new part-time islanders as janitors
and guardians in the winter period.
    It should be noted that well-connected small islands with a decent energy and water supply are those that have
mainly witnessed an inflow of new islanders. Basic transport infrastructure attracts new islanders; while indigenous
islanders see it as an escape route. Fixed links are built and maintained by means of public investments that are wished
for on islands, but decided about on mainlands. The incorporation of small islands into wider infrastructure grids and
traffic networks, and/or installation of small scale self-sustained technologies, appear to be a basic precondition for
the modern use of the small island space. It also suggests that, inevitably, the islands' dependence on mainland-made
development policy decisions grows.

6 | CONCLUSION: A VIRTUOUS ISOLATION IN A CONNECTED WORLD?

In recent decades, small-scale infrastructure and communication technologies have advanced and reached islands,
opening the door for a somewhat controversial happenstance. Island populations long in decline have been offered
a life-line; they are being replenished by new islanders attracted to modern standards of island habitability. This has
not cleared away the island condition, and this may indeed have contributed to their more recent attractiveness. Small
islands and their small crews have remained relatively socially isolated and attractive for holidays, frequent occasional
stays and less frequent permanent residences. A closer look reveals that part-time islanders and digital nomads live
up to their name by leaving the island after a while, making room for other nomads. Despite these changes and all the
increase in traffic, islands continue to appeal and are represented as just as peaceful, bucolic and laced with utopia as
before.
    Small islands have remained products of a “complex interplay of physical and metaphorical meanings” (Dodds &
Royle, 2003, p. 487). Part material, part fictional, these meanings can change dramatically over time. Indeed, they have
transitioned away from the essentially negative and dystopic: today, they constitute powerful signals that can reso-
nate with notions of ‘home’, community, attachment to land, the safety of gated communities and even an ethno-na-
tionalist identity. Nowadays, the ‘bad folk’ live on the mainland, and the island with its distinct and dramatic geography
is there to afford security from these, even battening down the hatches to avoid the worst – such as during the current
pandemic – if necessary. Living in a small world that is so obviously girded by the aquatic medium conveys this “island
lure” that sustains communal living, promotes tourism, and appeals to those searching for a more authentic societal
experience in the modern era (Péron, 2004). Covid-19 may have amplified this view that islands are safe and relatively
attractive places to live.
    Islands have become popular hotspots because people are aware of where and how islands are inter-connected,
with complex chains of goods and capital, circular migration, the internet, infrastructures and tourist flows. They at-
tract powerful continental imaginaries of (and desires for) ‘escape’ (but not too much); the lure of ‘going native’ (but
not too much); the appeal of ‘isolation’ (but still usefully and productively connected, rather than up a mountain or in
a dessert which may be too isolated), and so on. All these comings together make islands – and the powerful island
imaginary of what could be called ‘relational isolation’ – attractive. If the correct inter-connections do not exist to and
for an island, then the island in question becomes less appealing. Islands – perhaps more than any other geographical
form – amplify or exemplify how the particular distinctiveness of place, culture, separation and isolation, is a product
of complex material, social and psychological inter-relations.
    Of course, all generalisations need to be treated with caution. Differences can be expected between different
islands even within the same country, impacted inter alia by: their size and resident population; diversification of the
local economy; and the frequency, choice and cost of connectivity (typically, ferry services) to the ‘mainland’: which, by
the way, could be another island.
    However, we suggest that islands can generate just about the right amount and sense of isolation and separate-
ness, when and if the right relations, connections, psychologies and imaginaries, are in place.

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ACKNOWLE DG E ME NTS
Earlier drafts of this paper were presented at the WIRE XI (virtual) conference, held at the University of Split, Cro-
atia, in November 2020; and at the (also virtual) 18th ‘Islands of the World’ Conference at Memorial University of
Newfoundland, St John's, Canada, June 2021, organised in association with the International Small Islands Studies
Association. We also thank two anonymous reviewers and Dr. Vanessa Burholt for their expert thoughts and views on
the subject. The usual disclaimers apply.

O RC ID
Godfrey Baldacchino         https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7994-1767

EN D NOTE
1
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AUT HOR BI OGRAPHI E S

  Godfrey Baldacchino has been described as having “…done more work than any other scholar to establish and
  promote “island studies” as a legitimate field of academic teaching and research”– Lisa Fletcher (2011, p. 17).1 He
  has served as Pro-Rector for International Development and Quality Assurance at the University of Malta (2016–
  2021) where he is full Professor of Sociology since 2011. He has also served as a Canada Research Chair (2003–
  13) and a UNESCO co-Chair (2016–2020) in Island Studies at the University of Prince Edward Island, Canada. In
  2021, he was appointed Ambassador-at-large for the Republic of Malta for Islands and Small States. He has (co-)
  authored and (co-)edited some 60 books or monographs, including the Routledge international handbook of island
  studies (2019). He has also written over 160 book chapters and journal articles, apart from various book blurbs/
  endorsements, newspaper articles, guest editorials, op-eds and book reviews published in academic journals. He
  has peer reviewed manuscripts submitted to 40 different scholarly journals (including Annals of Tourism Research,
  Environment and Planning D, Geoforum, Political Geography and World Development). According to a 2020 study of
  publications and citations by Harvard University, he is in the ‘top 2%’ of academics in the world working within
  the broad field of ‘geography’. According to Google Scholar, he has over 6,400 citations, an i-index of 118 and an
  h-index of 41: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=60M5_GMAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao. He is a member of the
  International Advisory Board for The Round Table: Commonwealth Journal of International Affairs; Member of the
  International Advisory Board for Asia Pacific Viewpoint; President of the International Small Islands Studies Asso-
  ciation (ISISA) since 2014. He set up Island Studies Journal in 2006; and has been its editor emeritus since January
  2017. He is the founding editor of Small States & Territories since 2018. He has (co-)organized various international
  workshops and conferences on themes relating to island studies, including: Independence Movements from Sub-
  national Island Jurisdictions (University of Edinburgh, Scotland, 2011, with Eve Hepburn); the 2nd International
  Conference of the Islands Commission of the International Geographical Union (Ven, Sweden, 2010, with Eric
  Clark); the 3rd Small Island Cultures Research Initiative Conference; (Charlottetown, Canada, 2007, with Lau-
  rie Brinklow); and Heritage Management in Densely Populated Islands (Charlottetown, Canada, 2008); He has
  served as visiting professor to tertiary education institutions in Australia, Barbados, Fiji, Iceland, Japan, Mauritius,
  Seychelles, and Sweden. He has been invited to deliver papers, guest lectures and/or keynotes in Åland, Bahamas,
  Bermuda, Canada, China, Cyprus, Denmark, Japan, Finland, New Zealand, Philippines, South Korea, St Lucia, Trin-
  idad & Tobago, the UK and USA. His hosts have included the Overseas Countries and Territories Association of the
  European Union; Commonwealth/World Bank Joint Task Force on Small States; Government of the Faroe Islands;
  History Department at Rutgers University, NJ, USA; Jeju National University Korea; Taiwan Science Council; In-
  ternational University of Kagoshima, Japan; Centre for Regional and Tourism Research, Bornholm, Denmark; Uni-
  versities of Gotland and Lund, Sweden; Universities of Derby, Kent and Sheffield, UK; Shetland College, Scotland;
  Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand; Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK; and Memorial
  University of Newfoundland, Laurentian, York and Wilfrid Laurier University, all in Canada. He has generated over
  €1 million/US$1 million in research funding throughout his career.

  Nenad Starc is a researcher and consultant in the field of regional economics specialising in island development,
  spatial planning and local development programming. He holds a MA degree from the University of California
  Berkeley and a doctoral degree in economics from the University of Zagreb. He was a senior research fellow (now

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 emeritus) at the Institute of Economics Zagreb and Head of the Department of Regional Economics. His activities
 span from scientific research, mentoring, preparation and evaluation of local and regional development strategies
 and programmes, advising ministries and government agencies to teaching on a number of postgraduate studies
 at universities of Zagreb, Rijeka and Split in Croatia. He is one of the founders of the International Scientific Coun-
 cil for Island Development INSULA, a non-government organization for the promotion of small island research
 and development founded in 1989 (headquarters at the UNESCO in Paris). He is the member of the International
 Small Island Studies Association (ISISA). In the 1990s he advised the Croatian Ministry of Development and Re-
 construction and coordinated the preparation of the National Island Development Programme (1997) and the
 Island Act (1999, 2018). In the period 2013-2015, he worked on projects on ICZM commissioned by the Regional
 Center for the UNEP Priority Action Plans in the Mediterranean. He is active with some Croatian NGO’s dealing
 with island development.

   How to cite this article: Baldacchino, G., & Starc, N. (2021). The virtues of insularity: Pondering a new
   chapter in the historical geography of islands. Geography Compass, e12596. https://doi.org/10.1111/
   gec3.12596