San Diego Sarah on 16 Oct 2024  •  Link

On 12 July 1660, [MONTAGU] was created Baron Montagu of St. Neots, Viscount Hinchingbrooke, and Earl of Sandwich.
Charles II also made him a Knight of the Garter and appointed him Master of the Great Wardrobe, Admiral of the narrow seas (the English Channel and southern North Sea), and Lieutenant Admiral to The Duke of York, Lord High Admiral of England.
https://www.pepysdiary.com/encycl…
[So Sandwich was responsible for protecting southern and eastern England, or was being the Admiral of the Narrow Seas just a title?]

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"During the 17th and 18th centuries, debates about the origins of the people of the British Isles became increasingly conflicted. Commentators wrestled with Biblical teachings about creation and the growing evidence for what later become known as evolutionary theory.
"As early as 1677 Matthew Hale wrote: “We have reason to believe that we of this island [Britain] are not aborigines, but came hither by migrations, colonies, or plantations from other parts of the world.”
"Earlier still, Andre Du Chesne (1584-1640) doubted “that in the first age of the world men were drawn out of the earth, like pumpkins or mushrooms that are born of moisture in woods and forests”.

"Maps are attempts to define the outlines of land and sea – and identify who owns what. Names, especially the naming of geographical features at points where national borders meet, are loaded with meaning and fraught with potential conflict.
"In the 1607 edition of William Camden’s 'Britannia', a section was devoted to the ‘British Ocean’: “This sea which is generally called MARE BRITANNICUM, and OCEANUS CALEDONIUS, … hath sundry and distinct names. Eastward… they call it the German sea. But Southward where it inter-floweth France & Britain, it is properly called the BRITISH sea, & by the common mariners, The Chanel: by the English sailers, THE SLEEVE, and in the same sense, Le Manche in French, because it grow narrow in maner of a sleeve.”

"In the 18th century, new names emerged for the Channel. The French monarchy aligned France’s territorial boundaries with the French shore – hence ‘La Manche’ in French, a neutral place-name – while the British viewed the Channel as an integral part of their territory. Seen from its northern shores, the Channel was ‘English’ or ‘British’.

"Sharing the rich resources of the sea, and regulating fishing and other harvests, remained a matter of constant debate. Where did one state’s territorial waters begin and end? Was it possible to own parts of the sea and its wealth, or was the sea a common resource, belonging to all? Fisherman did not have the same relationship to, and imagination of, the coast as a cartographer, whose own conceptions differed from those of the customs officer."

San Diego Sarah on 16 Oct 2024  •  Link

PART 2

"In The Channel, Morieux paints a portrait of a sea alive with activity and peopled by communities who were intimately connected as ‘transnationals’ benefitting from networks that operated regardless of national boundaries. For the Minet family, who as Huguenots (Protestants) were forbidden to practise their religion in Roman Catholic France, this narrow stretch of water offered an escape route.
"Isaac Minet, who was born in Calais in September 1660 and died in Dover in April 1745, recorded personal and family details in his accounts book. His recollections included the family’s undercover crossing from France to the safety of Protestant England, a trip that meant evading a posse of French customs’ officials.

"Isaac Minet had well-established contacts in Dover, and within a single generation he and his family became integrated into civic society. He was naturalised English in 1705 and was elected ‘jurrat’ of the town corporation in 1731. Isaac’s grandson Hugues became mayor of the city in 1765. ...

'The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century' by Renaud Morieux, published by Cambridge University Press. 2016
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/fe…

"The first book to look at the history of the narrow seas which connect Britain and the Continent, 'The Channel' examines the enduring symbolism, and permeability, of one of the world’s most iconic borders. Morieux was born and raised in France and now teaches British history at Cambridge. He is ideally qualified to explore the narratives of the stretch of water that separates and joins Britain and France.

"The Channel, a strait only 21 miles at its narrowest, has for centuries been perceived as a divider – a body of water that gives Britain its unique, and much trumpeted, identity as an island. ... “Nature has placed England and France in a geographical location which must necessarily set up an eternal rivalry between them.”

"Morieux’s thesis is that the narrow Channel joined as well as divided – and acts as a zone for contact as well as conflict. As a body of water, it creates opportunities for trade and transport, informal and cultural exchanges.
"Britain and France were famously at war for much of the ‘long’ 18th century, between the Nine Years’ War of 1689-1697, which set William III’s England and his European allies against Louis XIV’s France and the wars of the French Revolution, which ended with Waterloo in 1815.

"But even in times of war, for the maritime and coastal communities of Britain and France, business continued much as usual. Fishermen harvested the ocean’s resources, sold their wares in ‘enemy’ ports and even joined forces to lobby national governments. Postal services were maintained as a result of ‘postal truces’ which safeguarded the passage of packet boats.

San Diego Sarah on 16 Oct 2024  •  Link

CONCLUSION:

"Smugglers flourished with the complicit support both from undercover agents and corrupt officials. In 1774 the number of smugglers (a term that became smogleur in French) operating out of the French port of Dunkirk was estimated at between 1,000 and 1,500. The goods that flowed illicitly from France to Britain, avoiding import duties, included Dutch gin, French tea from China and India, coffee from Saint-Domingue and textiles from Rouen and Lyon. These items arrived at the innumerable small coves and inlets of Kent and Sussex. The pickings were rich and the networks that made them possible were truly transnational.

"Britain’s jagged shape and the existence of its surrounding seas are the result of massive geological and climatic changes over vast spans of time. That this island was, until 9,000 years ago, connected to mainland Europe by a chalk bridge represented a profound challenge to the notion of divine and impregnable isolation.

"In a chapter titled ‘The impossibility of an island’, a pun on Michel Houellebecq’s 2005 novel 'The Possibility of an Island', Morieux traces successive shifts in public discourse, both sides of the Channel, about the formation of Britain as a physical entity encircled by protecting water – “this scepter'd isle” and “precious stone set in the silver sea” immortalised by Shakespeare in Richard II.

HIGHLIGHTS FROM A BOOK REVIEW:
'The Channel: England, France and the Construction of a Maritime Border in the Eighteenth Century' by Renaud Morieux, published by Cambridge University Press in 2016.
https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/fe…