Reading 'The Narrow Sea'

I knew this, but reading Peter Unwin’s “The Narrow Sea: Barrier, Bridge, and Gateway to the World. The History of the English Channel” reinforces it: England has a lot of history.

Blinding flash of the obvious, yes. But as I read Unwin’s book on the history of the English Channel, I kept getting lost in the history. There is a lot of it. Fortunately, I was familiar with some of it, notably the World War I and II years. But still. Lots of places and names to sort through. Thank heaven for Google Earth.

Unwin does a good job going to original sources, and a lot of obscure little sources as well, for his history. It’s when he delves into the One Man’s (or Woman’s) View that this book shines. The high as the clouds overview is kind of dull.

And dull might be a little harsh, because there were many fascinating little bits of history in this book that I wish I’d known when I was younger and studying my own country’s history.

For example, American history books make a big wash of “taxation without representation” in one of the reasons for the Revolutionary War. And yes, taxes did go up. But the books I read never really explained why, leaving the assumption that it was just greed as a motivator.

However, “at home” in England, they were fighting mightily to protect English industry from cheaper imports from the continent, notably France, so tariffs and such were incredibly high on a lot of goods. That, of course, led to smuggling, and this:

By the 1780s smugglers were estimated to be bringing in 5 million pounds of contraband a year, against legal imports worth only four times as much. The ‘Gentlemen’ organised themselves on a military scale, with a thousand men to protect some landings from the attention of the Revenue men, and 700 to escort the goods inland. “Will Washington take America,” asked a member of the House of Lords in the course of the American Revolution, “or the smugglers England first?”

So some of that history gets filled in my head via Disney:



So I’ll keep the book – as I do all my books – and maybe it’ll come in handy in the future when I need to fill my brain with other little bits of information. I’m glad I read it, and I’m glad I’m done with it. It was on the top of the “to-read” pile when the pandemic hit, and I thought, “Wow, I’ll get through a lot of these.” Got through just one so far. . .