But once we start to recognise that mobility implies meeting, mingling and mixing, then questions are raised not only about the last few centuries when this mobility has been most visible, but about the whole span of the history of these islands. Clearly, the historical evidence suggests that there have been comings and going from the islands we have come to call 'Britain' for as long as we can track human occupancy here. Of course, it's fairly common knowledge that Angles, Jutes, Saxons, Norse, Celts, Phoenicians, Romans, Normans and many others all arrived from elsewhere, adding to the local 'mix'. But its perhaps harder to acknowledge that such inter-mixture goes 'all the way down' and in this way rather undermines the idea of a single 'race', rooted in the soil, just as it confounds the notion of common character or culture that follows on from this rootedness.

The island race, is, and always has been, many island races. Though 'race', in this sense, is not a very helpful word, and we might do better to think in terms of 'culture,' or 'ethnic groups.' But what of the shared experience of 'islandness' of all the peoples who have assembled themselves, mingled and made a home, here in the British Isles? Does this imply some sort of common character or culture, shaped by the experience of inhabiting an island? I don't want to go as far as to say that living on an island and being surrounded by sea makes no difference, but I think it is important to remember that there are many different ways that sea and land can be imagined, or experienced, or constructed. That's why I wanted to point out that what became the dominant British view - land as mostly 'enclosed' and privately owned coupled with sea as free and open - is only one possibility.

It's vital to keep in mind that there were other times in the history of these islands when such hard distinctions were not made, and people saw themselves as belonging to land and sea alike. And it's equally important to keep in mind that there are many island and coastal cultures around the world today who retain a strong sense of the sea as a place which can be a home, a place of belonging, and not simply a site of mobility and unlimited access. For instance, as the Pacific scholar Epeli Hau'ofa notes, the islanders of the Pacific have considered the open seas their home for many thousands of years.

It's probably best not to think of the British, then, as a single 'race', and there are different ways that people living on islands can think about the sea, different ways that they fit it into their lives and make something of it. With these points in mind, it's worth returning to the idea of 'freedom of the sea' coupled with a steadfast commitment to the 'soil', that has featured so prominently in the last few centuries of British history and culture. In many ways, this seemingly strange and paradoxical twinning of unimpeded mobility with being grounded in the soil, this tension between having 'routes' and 'roots', is not simply British. It is better viewed as part of modern life - one of (if not the) defining features of being modern. You don't have to live on an island to feel this tension. Rather, it seems to be a facet of life wherever there are ongoing opportunities to encounter other people and places, or wherever there is a general sense of being connected to a much wider world.

The British, then, may not form a single island race with one, unified culture or set of characteristics determined by their sea-encircled status. But it is probably fair to say, that there is a certain tension - the tension between the experience of inhabiting a 'home land' whilst also being exposed to the disturbing, exhilarating effects of an interconnected world - that the British have felt with particular acuteness over the last few centuries. This might be a definitively modern tension, but Britain's prominent role in turning the world's oceans into a single, traversable space seems to have given an added intensity to the anxious relation between routes and roots. Of course, there is much to celebrate in a maritime heritage that spans the globe. But beneath the triumphalism and bluster that has often accompanied the idea of 'ruling the waves', or being a proud 'island race', there are also difficult questions about identity, about who the people of these islands believe themselves to be.

Further Reading
Nonie Sharp, (2002) Saltwater People: The Waves of Memory, Allen and Unwin and University of Toronto Press

Brian Lavery (2005) The Island Nation: A History of Britain and the Sea, Chrysalis Books

Stuart Hall (1995) 'New Cultures for old', in Doreen Massey and Pat Jess (eds) A Place in the World?: Places, Cultures and Globalization, The Open University and Oxford University Press

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