Island Insularities

Abstract

This first chapter frames this study historiographically and theoretically by reference to scholarship on the British Atlantic archipelago, problems of overlapping and conflicting jurisdictions within early modern England, and the processes and personnel of state formation. Informed by interdisciplinary ‘island studies’, it considers island writing and the distinctiveness of offshore communities, including difficulties of access owing to maritime conditions. Such features as separateness, remoteness, and more than material insularity were exacerbated in jurisdictions surrounded by water. Relations between England’s central government and its offshore periphery entailed qualities of reciprocity and negotiation that were not always forthcoming. The centralizing state made increased demands on the islands, but islanders often responded with recalcitrance and obstruction. Marooned by circumstances as stranded travellers, garrison officers, political prisoners, or refugees from conflict, island writers have reflected on problems of insularity, distance, estrangement, and connection that are recurrent themes in this book.