(Rule Britannia - James Thomson, 1740)

Are people who live on islands different in some significant way from those who inhabit the 'mainland'? Does the fact of being surrounded by sea have an effect on the character or the culture of peoples? Winston Churchill's notion of the British as an 'Island race' suggests an affirmative answer. The quality of the British that Churchill admired (equally, the quality in Churchill that his people admired) is a particular steadfastness in the face of adversity and a willingness to go to any length to defend the island they called home. But it is also the capacity to leave home, to set out across the sea, and do great deeds the world over. Similar sentiments can be found in the anthemic Rule Britannia - that combination of being unflinching in one's allegiance to native soil, yet at the same time being ready and willing to take to the sea, to master and command the world's oceans.

This idea of linking security at home and mastery of the sea seems to make a lot of sense, especially if your land is an island with a long history of raiding or invasion from the sea. But on second thoughts, there are actually two rather different things going on here, and they don't necessarily rest easily together. On the one hand, there is the sense of being settled, of belonging. It's not just about staying put, but about feeling oneself or one's nation to be deeply rooted in the land, as if you had literally grown from the soil. On the other hand, the idea of commanding the sea evokes a sense of mobility, a desire to move freely across the surface of the earth: the very opposite, in other words, to being anchored in place. It's the difference, as British cultural studies scholar Stuart Hall has put it, of having 'roots' or valuing 'routes'.

Now it may seem obvious that the land is the place for sitting tight, for settling in, for being 'grounded', while just as obviously the sea is the site of movement, of 'going with the flow'. This way of thinking about the ocean is enshrined in the notion of 'the freedom of the sea' - which suggests that there should be free and unimpeded access to the high seas. As the 18^th century English jurist, Sir William Blackstone put it, 'water is a moveable, wandering thing, and must of necessity continue common by the law of nature'.

This contrast between land and sea, it's worth noting, has historically drawn its strength not only from a sense of the land being stable, immutable and the realm to which people belong - but also being that which belongs to people. The sea appears free, open, and unbounded, in other words, because it is assumed that the land is restricted, enclosed and bounded. And this was indeed the experience at the time when Blackstone was expounding the freedom of the sea. In England, Scotland and Ireland, the 18^th century saw the conversion of vast areas of land that were once held in common into private property, which served to restrict use and access to a powerful minority of landholders.

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