Despite heavy rain sweeping across Sydney yesterday evening, a determined audience gathered at Campion College for the annual History Week Lecture, hosted as part of the History Council of NSW’s statewide program.

This year’s theme, Water Stories, proved an apt backdrop for Dr Jeremy Bell’s address, The English Channel and British Political Culture. Early in his lecture, Dr Bell remarked: “Geography might not be the determining factor in world politics, but it is certainly the most overlooked.” This observation set the stage for his exploration of how waterways and coastlines have profoundly shaped Britain’s history and political traditions.

Dr Bell drew listeners into vivid episodes where water altered the course of history. The short stretch of sea between Dover and Calais, he noted, was both a blessing and a curse: “The relatively short distance between England and the continent is in one obvious respect, a geostrategic disadvantage. However, it is also a commercial and cultural advantage.” He showed how the Channel left England vulnerable to Viking raids and the Norman Conquest, yet later shielded it from Napoleon and Hitler’s ambitions.

He also pointed to the drama of the Spanish Armada in 1588, when England’s survival owed as much to stormy seas as to its ill-prepared defences. “In the event,” Dr Bell explained, “only six of the 129 Spanish ships were destroyed as a direct result of naval engagement… at least 50 and possibly as many as 64 were lost by accident or as a result of bad weather.” Here, as he observed with irony, geography and nature compensated for England’s lack of readiness.

From these examples, Dr Bell wove a larger story of how Britain’s insularity shaped its institutions and political freedoms. “Britain’s island situation meant that she had no need – or less need – for strong men or dictators,” he reflected. “The so-called Glorious Revolution of 1688 is often regarded as the birth of Britain’s constitutional monarchy and therewith of modern Britain’s much envied regime of ordered liberty.”

The lecture offered a sweeping and insightful journey across centuries of history, showing how bodies of water have left an indelible mark on the British legacy of liberty.

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