Introduction

Summary

GUERNSEY is the westernmost and second largest of the Channel Islands. It is situated on the outer edge of the Gulf of St Malo. The closest French landfall is the Cap de Flamanville, some twenty-seven miles away, and the closest English landfall is Start Point (near Salcombe), about seventy-eight miles distant.

Guernsey measures little more than twenty-four square miles in area, but, along with its sister Channel Isles, its exceptionally high population density sets it apart from other islands in European inshore waters. Guernsey’s ability to support a relatively large population has partly been due to natural endowments in the form of soil fertility, temperate climate and plentiful fish stocks. However, from at least Roman times, the Island has also derived trading benefits from its position on the sea route between Britain and continental western Europe, and from its possession of a safe anchorage and good natural harbour at St Peter Port.

During the last millennium, Guernsey (and its sister Isles) have reaped considerable advantage from their role as strategic British outposts off a frequently hostile continent. Favourable treatment from the metropolis in return for continued loyalty has enabled the Islands to retain their own separate identity and polity through eight hundred years of allegiance to the English Crown. Substantial political and fiscal autonomy have also enabled Guernsey and Jersey to maximise their trading advantages by preventing the diversion of financial returns and facilitating local economic consolidation. Over the last three centuries, this has led to a level of economic development far in excess of that of other European islands of comparable size.

By 1814, a considerable level of development had already been achieved. Commercial activity was, however, concentrated in the Island’s only town, St Peter Port, which had reached its zenith as an entrepôt in the western Atlantic economy some time around 1800. At the end of the Napoleonic Wars, St Peter Port, whose commercial sector had strong links to England, accommodated over half of Guernsey’s population. Some of its inhabitants were English immigrants whose presence had already initiated a process of anglicisation in the town. The rural hinterland, characterised by a traditional agrarian regime closer to pre-industrial France, was, by contrast, more thinly peopled and ethnically homogeneous.