14 An example is the changing role of communications in defining regional identities. In the early 17th century, water was a medium more permeable than land. Areas which are now held apart by the arms of the sea were joined together in close embrace. East Lincolnshire, East Anglia and East Kent, for example, were united by the North Sea. In the same way, English Cumbria, Scottish Galloway and the Irish provinces of Antrim and Down were all linked by the Irish Sea. In these terms, British regions in the 17th century were not the same as those we know today. The idea of “permeability” comes from R. R. Palmer and Jacques Godechot, “Le problème de l’Atlantique du XVIIe au XXe siècle,” Relazioni del X Congresso Internationale di Scienze Storiche (Rome, 1955), 5, 175-239; for a similar argument as regards the Irish Sea, see Innes Macleod, Discovering Galloway (Edinburgh, 1986), 5.

15 These maps appear below.