Small Island Developing States

“ The plan is to remove to an island in the Pacific Ocean, where there are but few native inhabitants, which does not belong to any civilized power, on which are no colonies or constituted government, and which abounds in valuable natural productions, has a rich soil, and is large enough for an extensive community. This island has been sufficiently explored, and some of its harbors surveyed for the express purpose of treating with the Mormons and with the United States Government on the subject. ”

“ The prevailing small area of such thalassic islands, moreover, involves a population so small that it is highly susceptible to the effects of intercrossing. Too restricted to absorb the constant influx of foreign elements, the inhabitants tend to become a highly mixed, polyglot breed. This they continue to be by the constant addition of foreign strains, so long as the islands remain foci of trade or strategic points for the control of the marine highways. Diomede Island in Bering Strait is the great market place of the polar tribes. ”

“ As a result of the reciprocity treaty of 1875, those islands, on the highway of Oriental and Australasian traffic, are virtually an outpost of American commerce and a stepping-stone to the growing trade of the Pacific. The Polynesian Island groups have been so absorbed by other and more powerful governments that the Hawaiian Islands are left almost alone in the enjoyment of their autonomy, which it is important for us should be preserved. ”

“ Leaving out Borneo and the Philippines, one may start at the New Guinea end and mention first the Aru Islands, which lie south of it, and between Dutch New Guinea and Australia. They are Papuan isles. There is one large island and several small isles round it. They lie 150 miles from the New Guinea coast, and probably once formed part of it, as the seas between are shallow. On one of them, the small island of Wamma, is situated Dobbo, a famous native trading station, on a spit of sand just wide enough for some rows of houses, which are large thatched sheds. ”

“ When we recollect how many bare and rocky islands are inhabited and cultivated between the 17th and 26th degrees of latitude in the archipelago of the Lesser Antilles and Bahama islands, we are surprised to find those islands desert which are near to the coast of Cumana, Barcelona and Caracas. They would long have ceased to be so had they been under the dominion of any other government than that to which they belong. Nothing can engage men to circumscribe their industry within the narrow limits of a small island when a neighbouring continent offers them greater advantages. ”

“ With an area not greater than that of the Isle of Wight, and a population of about sixty thousand whites and rather more than a hundred thousand negroes, the value of the exports and imports surpasses a million sterling under each head; and, besides this, it is the centre of a considerable transit trade with the other islands. Under local representative institutions, which have subsisted since the island was first occupied by the English early in the seventeenth century, the finances are flourishing, and the colonial government is free from debt. ”

“ Neither was there any encouragement to make a short cut to the innumerable islands of the Pacific. The whole of Polynesia lay outside of the pale of civilization. In Tahiti, the Sandwich group, and the northern peninsula of New Zealand, missionaries had barely sowed the first seeds of morals and enlightenment. The limited commerce of China and the Eastern Archipelago was engrossed by Europe, and took the route of the Cape of Good Hope, with the exception of a few annual vessels that traded from the sea-board states of the North American Union to Valparaiso and Canton. ”

“ I favor this policy because I want my country to become a power in the Pacific. All my life I have wanted this country to own the West Indies, the Bermudas, the Bahamas and Barbadoes. They are our islands. They belong to this continent, and for any other nation to take them or claim them was, and is, a piece of impertinence and impudence.
So I would like to see the Sandwich Islands annexed to the United States. They are a good way from San Francisco and our Western shore, but they are nearer to us than they are to any other nation. ”

“ The group lies between the south end of New Ireland and the north end of the great Bougainville Island in the Solomon Archipelago, and consists of six low, well-wooded and fertile islands, enclosed within a barrier reef, forming a noble atoll, almost circular in shape. All the islands are thickly populated at the present day by natives, who are peaceable enough, and engage in bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fishing. ”

“ As I have been informed, there is but little instruction in the said islands, and much difficulty in providing it, which is greatly increased by the natural conditions of the country, since it all consists of islands. Most of them, too, are so small that they do not have a population of more than three to five hundred Indians, and some even of less than one or two hundred. It is also prevented by the long and dangerous navigation, the heat, the rains, and the poor roads of the country. ”

“ In the beginning of the controversy there were many who believed that the Philippine Islands would become a source of profit to the United States. It was confidently predicted that a multitude of Americans would flock to the islands and find rich reward in the development of their resources. ”

“ Fully forty years ago the southern, and larger, of the islands was nearly all purchased from the comparatively small native population by the government, and in that island a very large proportion of the land has always been let on lease for grazing. In the northern island nearly one-half of the land even now belongs to the original native owners, and much of this area is leased from them by Europeans for farming or grazing purposes. ”

“ And again, in 1907, he said:
“The policy looks to the improvement of the people, both industrially and in self-governing capacity. As the policy of extending control continues, it must logically reduce and finally end the sovereignty of the United States in the Islands, unless it shall deem wise to the American and Filipino peoples, on account of mutually beneficial trade relations and possible advantages to the Islands in their foreign relations, that the bond shall not be completely severed.” ”

“ The Spratly Islands consist of more than 100 small islands or reefs. They are surrounded by rich fishing grounds and potentially by gas and oil deposits. They are claimed in their entirety by China, Taiwan, and Vietnam, while portions are claimed by Malaysia and the Philippines. About 45 islands are occupied by relatively small numbers of military forces from China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. ”

“ This South Pacific island economy is based primarily on small-scale agriculture, which provides a living for 65% of the population. Fishing, offshore financial services, and tourism, with about 50,000 visitors in 1997, are other mainstays of the economy. ”

“ Of all the foreign ships which reach there five sixths are of our country. Such are the ties of beneficence and of commerce by which we are bound to these islands. No other nation there has an interest comparable in character or amount to ours. Meanwhile the native population is constantly decaying, so that I presume now it is not more than fifty thousand.
This brief review furnishes a glimpse of our interest in these islands. They are the wards of the United States. We cannot turn away from them. The Government must add its contribution also. ”

“ Where the isolation of the island is more pronounced, owing either to a broader and more dangerous channel, as in the case of Madagascar and Formosa, or to the nautical incapacity of the neighboring coast peoples, as in the case of Tasmania and the Canary Islands, the ethnic influence of the mainland is weak, and the ethnic divergence of the insular population therefore more marked, even to the point of total difference in race. ”

“ This island was formerly much frequented by India ships of many nations, but especially English, who have of late forsaken it, on account, it is said, of the badness of its water, and stop either at North Island, a small island on the Sumatra coast outside the east entrance of the straits, or at New Bay, a few leagues only from Prince's Island, at neither of which places, however, can any quantity of refreshments be procured. ”

“ The south-east trade blows almost ceaselessly for ten months of the year. Terrific storms sometimes break over the island; and it has been more than once visited by earthquakes. A profitable trade is done in coco-nuts, but there are few other exports. The imports are almost entirely foodstuffs and other necessaries for the inhabitants, who form a patriarchal colony under a private proprietor.
The islands were discovered in 1609 by Captain William Keeling on his voyage from Batavia to the Cape. ”

“ I quote myself, from an article in the Pacific Island Monthly:—“The problem of depopulation of natives in the Pacific need no longer exist. The formula for turning declining into increasing populations has been devised and put into operation by British Administrations in Central Polynesia, in Polynesian New Zealand, in British Micronesia (the Gilberts) , and in Melanesian Fiji. American Samoans are increasing under the operation of the same general formula.” ”

“ As soon as the taboo is off, canoes go in great numbers. The appearance of three ships at any one time also breaks the taboo.
The natives here also live in a state of great subjection. The principal authority is vested in a king; the chiefs rank next, each chief having authority over a particular tribe, who are held more as slaves than as free men. The climate is warm, and of an even temperature, the island being forty-eight miles south of the equator. They enjoy alternately the sea-breeze and land-breeze, the thermometer ranging from seventy-five to eighty degrees. ”

“ The islands appeared quite charming, being agreeably diversified with beautiful hills and intermediate vallies. Each family or tribe appeared to have its separate district, and to compose a separate government or community, all the land being regularly laid out into regular and fair plantations, as had formerly been observed at Pasch, or Easter island. In all respects, the natives were the most civilized and best disposed people they had seen in the South Seas. ”

“ It has a religious object, and is controlled by a religious influence. The funds have every practicable guard from perversion. The permanent necessity for such an institution is apparent in the certainty of a permanent, rising, influential community on those admirably situated Islands. The independence of the Hawaiian Nation,—which, under present circumstances, is most favorable to its development,—is guaranteed by the United States, Great Britain and France ”

“ Islanders are always coast dwellers with a limited hinterland. Hence their stock may be differentiated from the mainland race in part for the same reason that all coastal folk in regions of maritime development are differentiated from the people of the back country, namely, because contact with the sea allows an intermittent influx of various foreign strains, which are gradually assimilated. This occasional ethnic intercrossing can be proved in greater or less degree of all island people. Here is accessibility operating against the underlying isolation of an island habitat. ”

“ Like many other South Pacific island nations, the Cook Islands' economic development is hindered by the isolation of the country from foreign markets, the limited size of domestic markets, lack of natural resources, periodic devastation from natural disasters, and inadequate infrastructure. Agriculture provides the economic base with major exports made up of copra and citrus fruit. Manufacturing activities are limited to fruit processing, clothing, and handicrafts. Trade deficits are offset by remittances from emigrants and by foreign aid, overwhelmingly from New Zealand. ”

“ Such talk girdles the colonial world as completely as the telegraph, which has revolutionized European business here as elsewhere.
The island is far less interesting than the city. Its dense, dark jungle is broken up mainly by pepper and gambier plantations, the latter specially in new clearings. The laborers on these are Chinese, and so are the wood-cutters and sawyers, who frequent the round-topped wooded undulations. The climate is hotter and damper, to one's sensations at least, than the hottest and dampest of the tropical houses at Kew, and heat-loving insects riot. ”

“ It has a fertile soil, which may be said of the whole circumjacent region—of almost every island in the tropical archipelagos; but it must depend principally on imported labour, costly and capricious in its supply, and which must be directed by European machinery, still more costly and uncertain, for the climate is, and will long continue, unfriendly to the health of European settlers. The native population is too barbarous to labour ”

“ Projects ad infinitum might be suggested for the development of trade and traffic—for instance, a ship-canal connecting the Laguna de Bay with the Pacific Ocean; another from Laguimanoc to Atimonan (Tayabas) ; an artificial entry-port in Negros Island, connected by railway with two-thirds of the coast, etc.
Up to the present the bulk of the export and import trade is handled by Europeans, who, together with native capitalists, own the most considerable commercial and industrial productive “going concerns” in the Islands. ”

“ In addition to those great island dominions in the Pacific, Great Britain possesses the Fiji Islands, the northern part of Borneo, and a large section of the extensive island of Papua or New Guinea, the remainder of which is held by Holland and Germany. In addition there are various coaling stations on the islands and coast of Asia. In the Mediterranean its possessions are Gibraltar, Malta, and Cyprus, and in America the great colony of Canada, a considerable number of the islands of the West Indies, and the districts of British Honduras and British Guiana. ”