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The concept behind the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI; formerly 'One Belt, One Road') began to take shape in 2013. Since then, this Chinese-led project has become a major plank in China's foreign relations. The BRI has grown from its basis as a vision of interregional connectivity into a truly global system, encompassing places--including many island states, territories, and cities--from the South Pacific to the Arctic, from East Africa to the Caribbean, from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Islands and archipelagos are particularly prominent in the BRI's constituent 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) and Polar Silk Road or Ice Silk Road projects, but little scholarly attention has been paid to how the BRI relates to islands per se. This special section of Island Studies Journal includes nine papers on islands and the BRI, concerning such diverse topics as geopolitics, international law and territorial disputes, sustainability and climate change adaptation, international relations of autonomous island territories, development of outer island communities, tourism and trade, and relational understandings of archipelagic networks. Taken together, these papers present both opportunities and risks, challenges and ways forward for the BRI and how this project may impact both China and island and archipelago states and territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Islands and archipelagos are exceptionally dependent on the nature of their transport infrastructure, with cross-sea transport links being of fundamental importance for mobility. Traditionally, the island geography research literature has engaged in a binary and oppositional understanding of the relationship between fixed links such as bridges and tunnels on the one hand and waterborne transport such as ferries on the other. The present paper uses the case of Zhoushan Archipelago (Zhejiang Province, China) to challenge this perception of fixed links and waterborne transport as inherently conflictual by showing how these distinct modes of cross-sea transport have complemented one another and fundamentally altered archipelagic mobilities. We show that even transformative transport infrastructures do not necessarily simply replace existing infrastructures but may instead add to the complexity of the local transport network. In Zhoushan Archipelago, a vast network of new and future inter-island and island-mainland road and rail bridges and tunnels are altering local industry and society as well as the relationship between the archipelago and the mainland, yet ferries remain important for transport between islands and between certain islands and the mainland. We argue that it is fruitful to consider the potential complementarity of different kinds of cross-sea transport links. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite considerable research within the field of island studies, no consensus has yet been reached as to what it is that makes islands special. Around the world, islands and archipelagos are shaped by diverse spatialities and relationalities that make it difficult to identify clear general characteristics of islandness. This paper argues that one such 'active ingredient' of islandness, which is present across many forms of island spatiality, is the idea that islands are 'legible geographies': spaces of heightened conceptualisability, spaces that are exceptionally easy to imagine as places. The paper uses the case of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) to show how island geographical legibility has influenced a territory's cultural and political development over time, even though Kalaallit Nunaat is such a large island that it can never be experienced as an island but can only be perceived as an island from a satellite or cartographic perspective. I ultimately argue that islandness can have significant effects on a place's development but that it can be difficult to isolate these effects from other factors that may themselves have been influenced by islandness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: There has been increasing awareness that communities based on islands are subject to particular island-related factors (the so-called ‘island effect’). This paper sheds empirical light on how the island effect differs in different kinds of island communities, specifically solitary islands on the one hand and archipelagos on the other. It does so by comparing two subnational island jurisdictions (SNIJs) in England: the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight. By analysing census statistics, we show how the spatial distribution in the Isles of Scilly (an archipelago) and the Isle of Wight (a solitary island) is interrelated with patterns of population and employment. Although the Isles of Scilly and the Isle of Wight are both tourism economies, the data indicates that, in social and economic terms, the Isles of Scilly benefits while the Isle of Wight suffers as a result of their different patterns of spatial distribution. We conclude that an island community’s spatial distribution has a significant influence on its societal development and that the island effect differs among islands with different patterns of spatial distribution. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper analyses the ancient Maritime Silk Road through a relational island studies approach. Island ports and island cities represented key sites of water-facilitated transport and exchange in the ancient Indian Ocean and South China Sea. Building our analysis upon a historical overview of the ancient Maritime Silk Road from the perspective of China's Guangdong Province and the city of Guangzhou, we envision a millennia-long 'Silk Road Archipelago' encompassing island cities and island territories stretching across East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, and East Africa. Bearing in mind the complex movements of peoples, places, and processes involved, we conceptualise the ancient Maritime Silk Road as an uncentred network of archipelagic relation. This conceptualisation of the ancient Maritime Silk Road as a vast archipelago can have relevance for our understanding of China's present-day promotion of a 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road as part of the Belt and Road Initiative. We ultimately argue against forcing the Maritime Silk Road concept within a binary perspective of essentialised East-West conflict or hierarchical relations and instead argue for the value of a nuanced understanding of relationality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]