2 By tradition this region is called the border in England and the borders in Scotland.

3 Here is another application for the Palmer-Godechot thesis, about the relative permeability of land and sea in the eighteenth century. Maritime communications had much improved since the middle ages, but travel over land was not much better than in the world of the Romans. The argument of Palmer and Godechot about the borders of the “Atlantic world” also applies to the edges of the Irish Sea. See Jacques Godechot and R. R. Palmer, “Le problème de l’Atlantique du XVIIIe au XXe siècle,” Relazioni del X Congresso Internazionale di Scienze Storiche (Roma 4-11 Settembre 1955) (Florence, 1955), V, 175-239.