Beyond the Secret Garden: Island Kingdoms and Robinsonades

For the latest in our long-running Beyond the Secret Garden series, Darren Chetty and Karen Sands-O’Connor look at the influence of Daniel Defoe’s classic, Robinson Crusoe.

This summer saw the cinema release of Kensuke’s Kingdom, based on the book by Michael Morpurgo. The screenplay, written by Children’s Laureate Frank Cottrell-Boyce, dispensed with the book’s framing story, most of the sea-voyage and much of the dialogue between young Michael and Kensuke, the Japanese man he encounters on an island. Island stories have a long history in English writing and often include racially minoritised characters.

Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) was not written for children, but it quickly became a children’s favourite when reproduced in chapbook and abridged forms. Defoe’s original spends considerable time on Robinson’s day-to-day existence, describing activities such as raising goats and sewing the garments. While this earned Defoe’s book approbation from educationalists such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who recommended it as a must-read, alongside the Bible), it was the excitement of the shipwreck, the conquering of the island, and the encounter with indigenous people that appealed to children and the authors who wrote for them.

In Robinson Crusoe, Defoe offers in narrative form the same justification for England’s appropriation of American soil provided in philosopher John Locke’s Two Treatises of Government (published thirty years earlier). Crusoe builds two permanent homes on the island and instigates a system of agrarian farming, both Lockean justifications for claiming property rights. In Robinson Crusoe, the people encountered by the European protagonists are usually described in deficit terms; not white, not English-speaking, not Christian. Chapter 15 is entitled ‘Friday’s Education’, but it is in fact the narrator’s account of a series of conversations with the man he names ‘Friday’. ‘Friday’ for his part, is instructed to address Crusoe as ‘Master’. Crusoe frequently refers to his co-habitant as a ‘creature’ and a ‘savage’; the Europeans he encounters are referred to as ‘people’ or ‘souls’.

This depiction of a natural imperialist is a model for similar tales written for children, many of which alluded directly to Defoe’s novel, such as Johann Wyss’s The Swiss Family Robinson (1812).  There were so many Crusoe imitations that they became known as ‘Robinsonades’ (a term coined by the German author Johann Gottfried in 1731).

Many British Empire-era Robinsonades followed Defoe’s template closely.  Perhaps the most popular book-length example was R.M Ballantyne’s The Coral Island (1857); in it, three boys are shipwrecked in the South Pacific. Like Crusoe, they must survive; but once basic survival is attained, they proceed to (again, like Crusoe), map out ‘their’ island, convert indigenous people to Christianity, and battle ‘cannibals’. Of the island, one boy says ‘We’ll take possession in the name of the king; we’ll go and enter the service of its black inhabitants… we’ll rise, naturally, rally, to the top of affairs. White men always do in savage countries.’

Ballantyne’s book inspired others, including Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1882) and Barrie’s Peter Pan (1904).  Many such stories feature an almost exclusively male cast, but some Robinsonades featured girls.  Elizabeth Whittaker’s story “Robina Crusoe, and her Lonely Island Home” was serialized in the Girls’ Own Paper in 1882–3. Bessie Marchant’s Sylvia’s Secret (1924) is set in the contemporary Caribbean; it is Sylvia’s cultivation of the land that gives her ownership of the island when a modern-day pirate comes to steal the island’s treasure.

William Golding’s ironic homage to the Robinsonade, Lord of the Flies (1954) showed a darker side to British island colonisation. His protagonists explicitly mention The Coral Island, Treasure Island, and Swallows and Amazons, and are given the same names of the children in Ballantyne’s book. Golding suggests that the violence and savagery that Defoe and Ballantyne view as the preserve of non-Europeans is evident in the young boys, who are in the process of being educated in the ways of English upper-classes.

British publishing in the 1960s welcomed American versions of the Robinsonade, particularly the popular if controversial Island of the Blue Dolphins (1960) by Scott O’Dell, which depicts a young indigenous woman, Karana, stranded and having to fight off the same “warlike” tribes as are found in Robinson Crusoe.  At the time of its original publication, it was hailed as a feminist Robinsonade, and it was picked up in Britain by both Puffin (1966) and Heinemann New Windmills (1967; New Windmill was an imprint for the educational market).  More recently, critics like Debbie Reese have pointed out the repetition of imperial-era stereotypes, including the Noble Savage and the supposedly uncivilized nature of indigenous people (‘A Critical Look at O’Dell’s Island of the Blue Dolphins’), but the book remains in print and continues to be a popular choice in schools.  Like earlier Robinsonades, O’Dell’s book appears in multiple media forms, keeping the story (and the basic Robinsonade myth) alive even for those who haven’t read the book(s).

Published in 1999 and set in 1987, Michael Morpugo’s Kensuke’s Kingdom begins in Thatcher’s Britain. Michael’s father has been made redundant and the only money coming into the home is from Michael’s work at Mr Patel’s shop (we could read this as a sign of imperial decline). Out of work, Michael’s father suggests a trip around the world. He outlines their journey, naming ‘Africa. South America. Australia, The Pacific’, p10, in a way that strongly recalls the trajectory of colonial expansion. The trip inspires Michael’s interest in political history – St Helena evokes a fascination with Napolean – but this interest is noticeably partial. Considering South Africa, the focus is exclusively on the animals and ‘big red sun’; neither Michael, nor Morpurgo, have anything to say about the people living under Apartheid – colonial relations that strikingly echo Defoe’s rendering.

Some way through the story, Michael finds himself stranded on an island where he encounters Kensuke, a Japanese soldier who has been there since the Second World War. Kensuke provides shelter and food, in a way that Michael at first finds difficult.

‘He was looking after me, he was keeping me alive, but he was also keeping me prisoner’ p86 Michael’s words here could have been ‘Friday’s’ had Defoe ever given voice to the character. They could also be those of any child whose freedom is restricted by a parent or carer. The island remains Kensuke’s Kingdom not Michael’s. However, it is Michael who possess the language to narrate the tale.

Initially, Michael likens Kensuke to a madman, a child and an orangutan. Later, he comes to see him as a friend.  Some readers might detect elements of the ‘magical Asian’ trope in Kensuke’s characterisation; his heavily accented English, his inscrutability, the strictness bordering on rudeness, his expertise in health and affinity with nature. Others might argue the elements shift as Michael gets to know Kensuke as a person. In contrast to Defoe, Morpurgo appears to be more interested in identifying the possibility for human connection than in using individuals as proxies for whole populations.

Set in the present day, after a period of colonisation, Jenny Pearson’s Shipwrecked focusses on pupils at a private international school in Singapore. The narrator, Sebastian, is the son of a Royal Navy Admiral. His friend Lina Lim has a Singaporean father and, when the children find themselves stranded on ‘Sunrise’ island, she becomes the de facto leader.

As a Robinsonade, Shipwrecked is more self-reflexive than many. The children explicitly refer to Lord of the Flies. The group is not monoculturally white (although there aren’t obviously any people of African descent). Neverthless, some colonial attitudes persist; the children hold a fashion show dressed in their ‘jungle finery’ p250. To scare of “Pirates”, they smear mud on themselves, until they ‘look like savage beasts.’ (p292). Is the continued popularity of Robinsonades (which we also see in the publication of books by Olivia Levez and MA Bennett, both entitled The Island), tied to the colonial imaginary?

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Children’s versions of Defoe’s books continue to be popular too, although recent publications occasionally depart from the original. In the Ladybird read it yourself series, ‘Friday’ is depicted as having curly hair, as are the seven men with him. Robinson is referred to by his name, not ‘master’. ‘Friday’ is ‘a friend’ who ‘helped’ Robinson and who learns to speak English.

Usborne’s 2007 version clings to Defoe’s description of ‘Friday’, but again there is no mention of servitude. Friendship is foregrounded. There is no apparent power differential between them, and we don’t hear Crusoe addressed as ‘Master’. But it is a strange sort of friendship; Crusoe exhibits no interest in ‘Friday’s’ real name, first language or culture. We wonder how readers unfamiliar with the original will make sense of ‘Friday’s’ assimilation into Crusoe’s ways; are we to interpret it as a free choice made out of recognition of Crusoe’s superiority? Has removing some of the brutality and racist language rendered Defoe’s themes all the more difficult to interrogate?

The imperialist violence evident in the original text is less likely to be overtly expressed in contemporary books. Still, it would be a mistake for readers to ignore the connections – particularly as the writers sometimes make connections themselves, in this most intertextual of genres; Lord of the Flies references Coral Island, Swallows and Amazons, and Treasure Island. Shipwrecked references Lord of the Flies. The Master references The Tempest. And the back cover of Kensuke’s Kingdom includes a quote describing it as ‘a modern Robinson Crusoe’. When children’s writers draw on the features of the Robinsonade sub-genre, they almost inevitably find themselves in conversation with colonial fantasies.

Karen Sands-O’Connor is a Visiting Professor of Education at the University of Sheffield. Her book British Activist Authors Addressing Children of Colour (Bloomsbury 2022) won the 2024 Children’s Literature Association Honor Book Award.

Darren Chetty is a teacher, doctoral researcher and writer with research interests in education, philosophy, racism, children’s literature and hip-hop culture. He is a contributor to The Good Immigrant, edited by Nikesh Shukla, and the author, with Jeffrey Boakye, of What Is Masculinity? Why Does It Matter? And Other Big Questions. He tweets at @rapclassroom.

Books Mentioned

Robinson Crusoe Daniel Defoe (1719)

Robinson Crusoe: Read it Yourself. Adapted by Fran Hunia, illustrated by Robert Ayton Ladybird. (1978)

Robinson Crusoe retold by Angela Wilkes, adapted by Gill Harvey, illustrated by Peter Dennis. Usborne. (2017)

Sylvia’s Secret (1924) Bessie Marchant

Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell

Shipwrecked Jenny Pearson, Usborne (2024)