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The geopolitics of the offshore islands from Rome to the Normans

As the Roman writer Tacitus said, “There is no place on earth where the sea has a
greater dominion.” And it was the sea that brought these successive waves of
geopolitical power and influence from various parts of Europe. They swept over the
offshore islands at different times and in different ways, shaping the pattern of its
early history and of its later development. The last, decisive one came in 1066: the
Norman Conquest. The Normans were of viking descent, French-speaking, and made
England part of their new Anglo-Norman state. This marked the beginning of a new

phase in the history and geopolitics of the offshore islanders.

Sea-ways and geopolitics
Peter Unwin has written a sort of biography of the English Channel, The Narrow Sea
(2003). It is subtitled “Barrier, Bridge and Gateway to the World”, which neatly
summarises his theme: how the significance of the English Channel in our history
kept changing (history deciding what geography means). When later Roman Britain

came under attack from barbarians, the Counts of the Saxon Shore were created, a
Roman military command involving a series of defended ports along the south-east
coast from Norfolk to Hampshire (Richborough, Reculver, Dover, Pevensey, Lympne,
Portchester). A fleet (“Classis Britanniae”) was based at Dover. The Roman “Count of
the Saxon Shore” was based in Boulogne. In similar vein, in medieval times, when the