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Rather than a natural frontier between natural enemies, this book approaches the English Channel as a shared space, which mediated the multiple relations between France and England in the long eighteenth century, in both a metaphorical and a material sense. Instead of arguing that Britain's insularity kept it spatially and intellectually segregated from the Continent, Renaud Morieux focuses on the Channel as a zone of contact. The 'narrow sea' was a shifting frontier between states and a space of exchange between populations. This richly textured history shows how the maritime border was imagined by cartographers and legal theorists, delimited by state administrators and transgressed by migrants. It approaches French and English fishermen, smugglers and merchants as transnational actors, whose everyday practices were entangled. The variation of scales of analysis enriches theoretical and empirical understandings of Anglo-French relations, and reassesses the question of Britain's deep historical connections with Europe.
Rather than a natural frontier between natural enemies, this book approaches the English Channel as a shared space, which mediated the multiple relations between France and England in the long eighteenth century, in both a metaphorical and a material sense. Instead of arguing that Britain's insularity kept it spatially and intellectually segregated from the Continent, Renaud Morieux focuses on the Channel as a zone of contact. The 'narrow sea' was a shifting frontier between states and a space of exchange between populations. This richly textured history shows how the maritime border was imagined by cartographers and legal theorists, delimited by state administrators and transgressed by migrants. It approaches French and English fishermen, smugglers and merchants as transnational actors, whose everyday practices were entangled. The variation of scales of analysis enriches theoretical and empirical understandings of Anglo-French relations, and reassesses the question of Britain's deep historical connections with Europe.
Introduction; Part I. The Border Invented: 1. The impossibility of an island: before the Channel was a sea; 2. When the sea had no name; Part II. The Border Imposed: 3. Defending the military frontier; 4. Who owns the Channel? The overlap of legal rights; 5. The fight for natural resources; Part III. Transgressing the Border: 6. The fisherman: 'friend of all nations'?; 7. The game of identities: fraud and smuggling; 8. Crossing the Channel; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.
This book approaches the English Channel as a border which connected, as much as it separated, France and England in the eighteenth century.
Renaud Morieux is a Lecturer in British History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Jesus College. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a member of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies and the Social History Society. Previously he was a Lecturer in Modern History for five years at the University of Lille, France and studied at the prestigious École Normale Supérieure. Renaud Morieux specialises in both French and British historiography and his experience of living in both countries has given him an original perspective on their intertwined histories. His research could be labelled as transnational history from below; it is an archive-based history, theoretically informed, which revises the clichés about the 'second hundred years war' which is supposed to have pitted France and Britain in the eighteenth century.
'Morieux offers a useful corrective to the new British history or
'archipelagic studies', whose challenge to Anglocentric history has
a tendency to overlook Europe. It's a cliché to say a book is
timely, but in the midst of another debate on borders this book
presents a bigger picture.' Willy Maley, Times Higher Education
'Morieux's work here indicates in exemplary fashion how much more
difficult to define was the political and juridical status of a
murky, evershifting, and often downright dangerous stretch of
water. Morieux repeatedly plays off the overlaps and tensions
between the economic and political realms, noting further in the
conclusion how merchants might balance natal allegiance with
naturalization elsewhere.' David Andress, The American Historical
Review
'A rich and rewarding text, based on extensive research on both
sides of la Manche, The Channel opens new perspectives on the sea
as a connection, and the fluidity of maritime space.' Andrew
Lambert, International Journal of Maritime History
'… a powerful antidote and alternative perspective to those who see
Anglo-French relations only through the prism of conflict. It is a
profoundly optimistic view and in that, as much as in the subject
it deals with, it is a timely and welcome intervention.' John
McAleer, The English Historical Review
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