The turn of the nineteenth century was a crucial period for globalization, with this process taking shape through the proliferation of imperial holdings interconnected in the expanding networks of trade and communication. Oceania witnessed an explosion of activity on a global scale during this period as multiple empires clashed with islander communities as the imperial powers grappled to claim both the land and waters of this space. This imperial activity included an uneven and often shifting process of global ordering, and, Gavin contends, islandness and spatiality proved both conceptional challenges and opportunities for experimentation and innovation. Gavin looks, specifically, at the French annexation of the Marquesas in the context of the abortive attempt to colonize Akaroa, located at the South Island of New Zealand, to interrogate how ideas and practices of sovereignty were re-imagined and contested in new ways. In examining the early nineteenth century, prior to French designs on New Caledonia as a penal colony, Gavin questions how the size and spatiality of islands motivated new constructions of imperial sovereignty, particularly in instances where islands’ isolation and distance were not utilized in service of criminal containment. Gavin's research asks how the variety of informal individual actors and actions taking place in the early nineteenth century Pacific shaped new constructions of sovereignty in relation to islandness that would then be deployed in the service of empire throughout the mid to late nineteenth century.