Dictionary of countries, territorys and islands - notes history of name changes, and alternative names. Bibliography.

Provides a background in Pacific geography, culture, and history, plus an overview of the different Pacific island groups.

First Published in 2004. Islands have always fascinated people. They often seem remote and mysterious, set between the continents on which most people live. Indeed, many people choose islands for their perfect holiday idyll. In practice, however, the everyday social and economic reality is often very different. A Geography of Islands firstly examines the differing ways islands are formed. Despite the uniqueness of such islands in terms of shape, size, flora and fauna, and also their economic and developmental profiles, they all share certain characteristics and constraints imposed by their insularity. These present islands everywhere with a range of common problems. A Geography of Islands considers how their small scale, isolation, peripherality and often a lack of resources, has affected islands, in the present day and their past. It considers and discusses population issues, communications and services, island politics and new ways of making a living, especially tourism, found within contemporary island geography. A Geography of Islands gives a comprehensive survey of ‘islandness’ and its defining features. Stephen A. Royle has visited and studied 320 islands in 50 countries in all the world’s oceans. It is full of up-to-date global case studies, from Okinawa to Inishbofin, and Hawaii to Crete. In the final chapter, all the themes are brought together in a case study of the Atlantic island of St Helena. It is well illustrated with the author’s own photographs and maps. This book will appeal to those studying islands as well as those with an interest in the topic, particularly those engaged in dealing with small island economies.

Now in a thoroughly updated edition, Resistant Islands offers the first comprehensive overview of Okinawan history from earliest times to the present, focusing especially on the recent period of colonization by Japan, its disastrous fate during World War II, and its current status as a glorified US military base. The base is a hot-button issue in Japan and has become more widely known in the wake of Japan’s 2011 natural disasters and the US military role in emergency relief. Okinawa rejects the base-dominated role allocated it by the US and Japanese governments under which priority attaches to its military functions, as a kind of stationary aircraft carrier. The result has been to throw US-Japan relations into crisis, bringing down one prime minister who tried to stop construction of yet another base on the island and threatening the incumbent if he is unable to deliver Okinawan approval of the new base. Okinawa thus has become a template for reassessing the troubled US-Japan relationship—indeed, the geopolitics of the US empire of bases in the Pacific.

"An account of Louise Erdrich's trip through the lakes and islands of southern Ontario with her 18-month old baby and the baby's father, an Ojibwe spiritual leader and guide"--

Explores the culturally complex and cosmopolitan histories and of islands off the African coast