Beyond the Map

Unruly Enclaves, Ghostly Places, Emerging Lands and Our Search for New Utopias

The University of Chicago Press

Contents

Unruly Islands

Here are six of the world's most surprising islands and six surprising stories. Each island (or group of islands) unsettles the complacency of the mainland; not least what could be considered Britain's farthest southern shore, the islands of Les Minquiers off Jersey, and the US's uncertain, fabulously remote and disparate archipelago, the Minor Outlying Islands. The line between fact and fiction can be very thin in small islands; nowhere more so than in the ones that are being rebuilt. The South China Sea's Spratly Islands have been transmuted over recent years from a scatter of pristine reefs into weaponised and squared-off fortresses. Human hubris is often writ large on the most fragile islands, which is why it is worth being reminded that the most fundamental planetary forces are entirely beyond our control. The post-glacial 'bounceback' of land seen across the high north, such as Bothnia's rising islands, is sprouting umpteen new shores from the sea, whether we like it or not. It is not clear that we can even count them all. The problem of counting islands is one I turn to in the company of 534 'new islands' recently discovered hiding off the coast of the Philippines. Islands turn out to be more elusive, cartographically speaking, than one might suppose; none more so than the ones cradled in the indifferent arms of grinding roads, such as the traffic island I visit at the end of this part of the book, taking with me some wild strawberry plants.

Les Minquiers

I'm waiting on a gently bobbing pontoon with a gaggle of other brightly life-jacketed holidaymakers for a motor boat to take us to the most southerly part of the British Isles, a place whose sovereignty was only finally secured in 2004. It's a cloudless day in early April, and soon we're gripping on tight as the inflatable roars us far from any shore, skipping across the bright water about 14 miles south of Jersey's capital, Saint Helier. After twenty-five minutes, a galaxy of sharp crags pierces the horizon. Les Minquiers, which people on Jersey call 'the Minkies', stretch across an area considerably larger than Jersey itself, and at low tide expose 77 square miles of sand and rock (Jersey is 46 square miles).

It's the uncertain scale of Les Minquiers that intrigues me. A couple of times a day this is a vast place, but at high tide only nine islets are visible, and only one of these is of any size at all; called La Maîtresse Île, at its smallest it is a mere 328 feet long and 164 feet wide. The tidal range in this part of the English Channel is huge, up to 40 feet. The Minkies appear and disappear before your eyes, something pulled from nothing; a magic archipelago.

The suntanned and affable skipper pulls down on the throttle and a watery silence engulfs us. We've swerved round before La Maîtresse Île. A row of small one-storey stone houses is crammed along its single ridge, jostling together to keep their toes out of the waves. Edging carefully along the slippery, seaweed-strewn pier, my first port of call is the island's outside toilet. It stands boldly out on its own, and is the most southerly building in Britain, a plaque on its flapping door proudly proclaiming this unique distinction. To make use of the loo requires hauling up a bucket of seawater to sluice the pan and, in any case, I don't have time to tarry; the tide is turning, and soon the boat won't be able to make it to the pier.

The empty stone huts are drizzled with white bird poo. There are twelve of them, ten of which are owned by Jersey families and occasionally used for weekend lets; the other two are owned by the States of Jersey. One of these is the customs house, marked by an incongruously grand carved stone bearing the three lions of Jersey and the words 'Étates de Jersey' and 'Empôts'. Over at the far side of the island, there's a weathered helipad. But my eyes keep getting drawn down to the ground. The rocks and ground-hugging, large-leaved scrub are covered in black and red firebugs. They scuttle about frantically, as if searching for something lost.

Once back in the boat, our skipper tells us that this is 'the largest unmapped area in the Western world'; its great tidal variation meaning that only local knowledge can find a way through the islets beyond La Maîtresse Île, a zone called the Wilderness. I'm feeling lucky; the weather here can be foul, but right now the sea is full of colours: translucent azure and soft greens, graceful shades that shoal around the islets and white sandbanks. On a warm, sunny morning it's a tempting place, and I can understand why Jersey people will motor or even paddle out to their own favourite spots, where they can have an island all to themselves.

The landscape is draining so quickly that what looked, at first glance, to be a scene of isolated rocks poking from the sea is transforming into a place of lagoons and little rocky hills connected by sweeping dunes. The bottom of our inflatable softly nudges its way onto a sandbar and we hop out, squelching into the virgin sand. Narrowing my eyes against the sun's glare on this glittering and ephemeral island, it seems odd to think that somewhere so lost could have such a long and contested history.

In 1792, the reef began to be quarried for granite, which was ferried back to Saint Helier. The main island's stone huts date from this period. Jersey fishermen, who prized the area's rich catch and used the island as a base, apparently brought the quarrying to a stop by throwing the workmen's tools into the water. However, it is the fact that Les Minquiers exist on an uncertain boundary between France and Britain that has been the most persistent source of conflict. Being almost as near to France as they are to Jersey, which is itself far closer to France than to England, it is not surprising that the French have long argued that this reef is theirs. In April 1938, the French prime minister Édouard Daladier thought the issueso important that he landed on La Maîtresse Île to assert the French claim.

Bigger geopolitical issues soon pushed the mastery of the Minkies down the agenda. During the Second World War the Germans had an observation post on La Maîtresse Île. Being stationed out here must have felt like leaving the planet. The few German soldiers marooned on this windswept spot ended up being forgotten and bypassed by the war. In The End of the War, Europe: April 15–May 23, 1945, historian Charles Whiting reports that on 23 May 1945, over two weeks after the war in Europe had ended, Lucian Marie, captain of the fishing boat Les Trois Frères 'on watch on the bridge, suddenly became aware that the island – a collection of low reefs – was inhabited'. An armed German soldier emerged. 'Listen, Frenchman,' the German said, 'we've been forgotten by the British. Perhaps no one in Jersey told them we were here. So, now we've had enough. We are running out of food and water. You must help us.' 'How?' asked Lucian Marie. 'Simple, I want you to take us over to England,' came the reply. 'We want to surrender.'

The war was finally over for these forgotten soldiers, and they no doubt fondly hoped never to see the Minkies again. However, the French claim on this lonely archipelago was soon to bob up again. In 1953 the case of both Les Minquiers, and a similar range of islets off the north coast of Jersey called Les Écréhous, was sent to the newly established International Court of Justice for arbitration. France's case rested on its proximity and its tradition of fishing both areas. Britain's claim focused on its building and occupation of the stone huts. The latter viewpoint swayed the judges, and it was announced that the sovereignty of both reefs 'belongs to the United Kingdom'.

Since one of the first things that any visitor to Jersey learns is that the island is not in the UK, and the International Court of Justice did not determine the boundaries of the outlying reefs, the 1953 judgement did not settle the dispute. Certainly it didn't convince some critics in France. These included the novelist Jean Raspail, an eccentric but determined nationalist whose best-known work is The Camp of the Saints, a novel that predicts an invasion of migrants from 'the South' engulfing and destroying Western civilisation. In 1984 Raspail sailed to Les Minquiers and hoisted a Patagonian flag, an ironic gesture against Britain's ongoing attempt to recapture the Falkland Islands from Argentina. Twelve years later Raspail returned to La Maîtresse Île and took down the British flag, which he then presented to the British ambassador in Paris. To the north, the Les Minquiers' sister islands were seeing similar acts of symbolic appropriation. In 1993 and 1994, Norman flags were raised on Les Écréhous by French 'invaders'.

It was eventually decided that the 1953 International Court of Justice decision needed to be revisited, not because of all the flag-waving, but because these reefs' queasy topography, with its huge daily variation between land above and below the water, meant that a far more detailed delimitation was needed. It took thirteen years of talks between France and Britain to arrive at an agreement. One Jersey politician involved in the negotiations described it as literally counting the Minquiers and Écréhous 'rock by rock'. By 2000 new political maps could be issued showing what it was now hoped was the definitive maritime boundary line between Britain and France. This agreement, along with another document detailing fishing grounds, came into force on 1 January 2004. Soon after, buoys were deployed to physically mark out the various lines in the water that, finally, separated Britain from France.

All of these geopolitical manoeuvrings seem a million miles away from the still and silent sandbar that I find myself on. With every passing minute it grows a new shoreline. The silky wet sand is rivuleted with braided streams that tumble out from the island's humped golden spine. I'm lulled; lying down now; feeling sleepy in the hot sun. All the world's water is washing down a plughole and soon it will all be gone. But that fantasy provokes its alarming opposite; for the tide will soon turn, and I must wake up and sail away to somewhere safe, somewhere certain. I crane my neck for reassurance: there at the end of this unnamed, unnameable island is the boat to take me home. I know already that I'll carry the memory of Les Minquiers as something between a dream and a feeling of foreboding.

The United States Minor Outlying Islands and the United Micronations Multi-Oceanic Archipelago

This story starts in obscure places and ends up in an outlandish one. The United States Minor Outlying Islands are the least-known bits of the US. In total these tiny and utterly remote islands cover just 13 square miles. There are nine of them, eight in the Pacific (Baker Island, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Atoll, Palmyra Atoll and Wake Island) and one in the Caribbean Sea (Navassa Island). They are a collection of oddments. Their collective title 'United States Minor Outlying Islands' is a label of convenience, since the islands have no government. They are administered as National Wildlife Refuges by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, except for Wake Island, which is run by the US Air Force.

All but Wake Island were claimed under the Guano Islands Act of 1856. This high-handed piece of American legislation proclaims that

Whenever any citizen of the United States discovers a deposit of guano on any island, rock, or key, not within the lawful jurisdiction of any other Government, and not occupied by the citizens of any other Government, and takes peaceable possession thereof, and occupies the same, such island, rock, or key may, at the discretion of the President, be considered as appertaining to the United States.

'Guano' is a Quechua word for agricultural dung. Seabird guano, which is what the island hunters unleashed by the Guano Islands Act were after, contains high levels of nitrogen, phosphate and potassium, and is the world's most prized natural fertiliser. The Act, which is still in force, led to claims on about one hundred islands dotted across the world. Most of these claims were not actively defended after the guano was dug out, and were either rescinded or became dormant. An example of a rescinded claim are the Swan Islands, a group of three islands off the east coast of Central America, which were ceded to Honduras in 1972. A case of a dormant claim is Ducie Island, which is in fact a group of uninhabited islets that cover 170 acres and lie 332 miles east of the Pitcairn Islands, the only remaining British Overseas Territory in the Pacific. Since 2010 Ducie has been formerly claimed by the British as part of the Pitcairn Islands.

France and the UK have collections of small, far-flung islands. But the United States Minor Outlying Islands is singular in its legal oddity. Christina Duffy Burnett, a professor of law at Columbia University, has long been intrigued by the indeterminate status of these scattered flecks of America. They are, she says, 'a weird sort of non-place, from a constitutional perspective'. In her opinion the 'islands "belong" to the US, but they aren't really a "part" of the United States', and so she asks, 'What law applies there? Not really so clear.'

It would be a mistake to imagine that because they are distant and tiny they are unimportant. Each of the islands allows the US to claim vast tracts of ocean as part of the 200-nautical-mile 'exclusive economic zone' that extends from any country's shore. Moreover, each island has its own story. Two of the names in the list of Minor Outlying Islands will leap out to students of twentieth-century military history: Johnston Atoll and Wake Island.

Wake Island is the only one of the group that has a resident population, comprising ninety-four US military personnel. A U-shaped coral atoll, the island was invaded by the Japanese on the same day that they attacked Pearl Harbor. Wake Island fell on 23 December 1941 after fierce battles that took nearly a thousand lives. Once back under US control, the island resumed its military function and is today used for missile tests and as a refuelling stop.

Johnston Atoll is made up of four flat, sandy islands, the largest being Johnston Island. Johnston Island has been artificially bulked out, growing from 46 to 596 acres, in part to accommodate a longer landing strip. Today it is a long, unnatural-looking rectangle. At its peak about a thousand personnel were stationed there. The atoll was used for nuclear weapons testing in 1962 and for rocket launches, and has a 25-acre landfill full of toxic material, including drums of Agent Orange from the Vietnam War. To add to the poisonous brew, in the 1990s the island hosted an incineration plant for chemical weapons, among them sarin nerve gas.

The last soldier left Johnston Atoll on 17 August 2001. Given that it is little more than a dumping ground for toxic waste it was a surprise that, in July 2006, Johnston Island was listed for sale by the US Government's General Services Administration (GSA) as a 'residence or vacation getaway' with potential usage for 'ecotourism'. Perhaps the GSA enjoys irony. The listing was later described as a 'teaser' being used to gauge commercial interest.

There is another and lesser-known story about these islands. The school records of Kamehameha Schools in Hawaii describe surprisingly dedicated attempts by its pupils to colonise Howland, Jarvis and Baker Islands. The colonisation process began in 1935, and the accounts have a fresh and optimistic flavour, with photos and local newspaper headlines about the smiling young adventurers. Sadly the adventure ended in tragedy. The December 1941 diary entry from the boys on Howland Island takes up the story.

Suddenly Joe Keliihananui looked up and saw 14 twin-engined bombers flying in high from the north west ...

From a height of about 10,000 ft. the bombers let us have it. They dropped about 20 bombs, then turned and came back over the islands, dropping some ten more. The explosions shook the ground under our feet and the smoke concealed almost everything from our view.

When the planes finally left, Mattson and I walked over to where Dick and Joe were lying. They had been badly hit. They were both hurt in the legs and one had a chest wound and a hole in his back. We were going to fix up a place to put them, but by the time we got something arranged, they were dead.

By 1 January 1942, nearly a month after the first attack, the boys 'were convinced that we were in the middle of this war's no man's land and that we would probably have to stay there for the duration'. Thankfully they were rescued by an American destroyer on 31 January.

The Guano Islands Act is a legal oddity that people stumble across and start fantasising about. There are plenty of online stories that run under headlines such as 'Thanks to a 19th century law, Americans can lay claim to any uninhabited island with bird shit on it'. They are invariably followed by chat forums in which an initial excited optimism is deflated, contributors concluding that there aren't any unnoticed, unclaimed and unoccupied islands out there waiting for new residents. I'm not so sure about that, but I'm just as interested in the question of why any one country's claims should be respected. The US's Guano Islands Act is not international law, and its legal status is questionable.