Islands: ecologically unequal exchange and landesque capital

Our purpose in this chapter is to give a brief perspective on islands in global historical-political ecology, focusing on ecologically unequal exchange and the formation of landesque capital. We emphasize how these processes are intertwined and recursively connected in broader contexts of uneven development. Empirical examples draw on our research into the historical-political ecology of islands and archipelagos which have since 1949 been geopolitically part of Taiwan, the Republic of China: Kinmen (Quemoy) Island in the Fukien Province of China, the Penghu Archipelago (Pescadores) in the Taiwan Strait, and Pongso no Tau (Lanyu, Orchid Island), a northern outlier of the Batanes Islands, southeast of Taiwan. The aim is not so much to draw comparisons between these cases as to draw connections, both between the processes of ecologically unequal exchange and formation of landesque capital, and between the peripheral islands and the global political economy/ecology of which they are part.