Before Tax Havens: How Islands Have Reinvented Themselves For Millenia | Jason Monaghan

SPEAKER_00 0:00 Many islands today are known for their booming financial sectors, for being low tax or tax havens. The Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Isle of Man. But throughout history, islands have been known for much more than finance. Finance is just the latest reinvention in a long line of reinventions, stretching back thousands of years. Hi Molly, welcome to What We Did Before, the podcast where we explore the history of everyday life. Now, throughout history, islands have been, well, have had to be, many different things. Right back through ancient history, many islands weren't simply isolated backwaters, they've been stepping stones, trading hubs, military outposts, and gateways between nations. To show you what I mean, I'm taking Guernsey as a case study, my island home, an island that has been home to humans since the Stone Age. And if you've never heard of it, Guernsey is a small island with a population of around 65,000 people and its own government. It's a gorgeous tourist destination nestled between England and France in the English Channel. Now, my guest today is Jason Monohan, an archaeologist who has studied Guernsey's history in great detail and written many books on the subject. And he takes us through the history of how Guernsey, like many islands, have had many different uses throughout time, including in the Stone Age.

SPEAKER_01 1:36 The sea, in a way, is a barrier, but it's also a highway. And there's something that people forget, in that certainly in the ancient world, it was very difficult to get more than a few miles from home. If you were, say, trading pottery, you could stick a few baskets on your donkey and you could walk them to the local town, and that's just about it. That's your distribution network. If you can take them to the port and put them on a ship, you can send them anywhere in Western Europe. And that's sort of what we see in Guernsey. I mean, in the during the Neolithic, we see trade between Guernsey, which would have been uh an island by then, and continental France. We get things like Sark axes turning up in France, and we get French Flint arrowheads turned up in Guernsey. So people are clearly crossing the water on on primitive boats. We get some very late Paleolithic stuff. People were just making it as far as the island as when the when the waters rose. This is sea level, sea level, sea level rise. And then we get some mythic material out on the west coast. But really, for what we're concerned, is the interesting bit really is when people start travelling by sea. We know that the islands have a strong Bronze Age component, in which case some of the dolmens of that age.

SPEAKER_00 2:57 Dolmens are these incredible Stone Age passage graves that you can still visit in Guernsey today. Let me know if you'd like to hear an episode on these ancient burial sites.

SPEAKER_01 3:07 And then we edge, as we edge into the Iron Age, there's clearly a lot of interplay between whoever's living in the Channel Islands and the adjacent Gallic coasts. Now we may be part of the same tribes, for example, as are living in Gaul or have close relations. But from about 120 BC, we start seeing Mediterranean wine amphora fragments turning up in archaeological sites, meaning there are ships coming up from the Mediterranean trading with northern Gaul and probably southern Britain, carrying wine chiefly, olive oil as well, and other luxuries from Mediterranean to sell to chieftains in Gaul and Britain. And we know from Julius Caesar's accounts that there was a return trade in slaves and hunting dogs and other produce from the from the provinces. So we're getting this contact in Guernsey because people probably weren't coming to Guernsey deliberately, but they were stopping off here. Because if you think of an ancient sailor, there's no compass, there's no real charts, you're sailing in sight of land. So you come up the French coast, you come around Brittany, you go along the north coast of Brittany, you don't have to go anywhere near move. So you keep a lookout for Guernsey, you head for Guernsey, you keep away from the West Coast. If the weather's a bit off, or you want some fresh water, you pull into St. Peterport, or whatever it was called then, because you've got a nice natural harbour between those arms of rocks that where the things are now. And your beach, have a race, have a rest, wait for the weather to clear, have some water, do a bit of trading with the natives, you know. Perhaps, you know, if you if you have food and fire and shelter, you swap a wine amphora or uh olive oil amphora, and that's how we start getting this exotic material into the islands. I once described it as a motorway service station on the Atlantic trade routes. And then we step into the late Iron Age. Guernsey has a warrior culture at that time. So senior men are buried with their swords in graves, and women are buried with their jewellery, and you generally can tell them apart. And then the Romans turn up. 56 BC, Julius Caesar and his legions conquer Gaul, and his generals clear the adjacent coasts. There's a big sea battle between Caesar's fleet and the Viniti, somewhere off the coast of Brittany. So 56 BC, the Romans turn up. We're starting to think that Guernsey was already in the Roman orbit by then, because we were receiving quite a lot of Roman material in the run-up. So it's possible there's been a bit of Roman soft power, we've been softened up. So it may not have been such an in as an invasion. It may have just been a case of a boat turns up on the beach and says, You're in the Empire now, guys. The general reaction to that across the Empire, the New De Conference provinces, was you'd either say yes, in which case you'd be given some sort of rank, and your son might be taken off to Rome and educated, you'd be given a villa and a bit of money, or they'd kill you and kill your family and put somebody else in charge. So it's possible that Guernsey just went, yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:22 You're in the empire. Things in Guernsey stayed fairly quiet under Roman rule. People happily went about their lives, and based on archaeological finds of old Roman pottery and glassware, they lived quite comfortably. That is until the third century.

SPEAKER_01 6:38 Then the third century is a lot of ruckus going on in the Roman Empire, particularly in France. There are rebellions. There's a thing called the Gallic Empire that breaks away from Rome for a decade.

SPEAKER_00 6:49 At this time, one of Guernsey's most famous shipwrecks, the Asterix, catches fire and sinks in the harbour. This is an incredibly well-preserved Roman trading vessel which is still on display in the island now. Throughout the third century, Christianity starts to become widespread throughout the Roman Empire, and by the fourth century, Guernsey and its smaller sister island, Alderney, are still part of the Empire. But there's trouble ahead.

SPEAKER_01 7:15 There are Saxon pirates, Frankish pirates raiding the Channel. Gaul is fortifying its towns at that point, and a chain of fortifications is built on both sides of the Channel, one of which is in Alderney, uh, at the Nunnery in around three hundred and fifty. Probably cooperated with the navy or whatever's left of the navy at that time. We don't know whether Guernsey had one, a fort. I've a funny feeling it might have, but the evidence is only sort of speculative at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 7:44 Guernsey's World War II occupation history is a very well known part of the island's history, when German forces invaded the island and built fortifications all around its coastline, a strategic tactic known as Hitler's Island Madness. So it's interesting to see that there are actually multiple instances of fortifications being built in the islands, showing it has always been viewed as strategically and militarily important.

SPEAKER_01 8:11 Yes, because remember, these are stepping stones on that trade route. The last thing you want is a group of pirates taking over Alderney. So you want to put a base there to stop anybody else using it. And also if you've got a system of taxation or something like that, again you want to you want to keep your keep your hands on it. If we were 50 miles further out in the channel, if we were the Scillies, for example, they wouldn't really care that we're right on that trade route. And the same situation prevailed right through into the Middle Ages, where the English kings were very keen on looking after Guernsey.

SPEAKER_00 8:54 Now, we actually don't know much about what happened in Guernsey during the next 500 years, during the early Middle Ages. It kind of goes dark. Archaeologists simply haven't found enough evidence to tell this story in detail. But one thing is clear, the islands never stopped being useful. And before long, a new group of sailors arrived in the Channel.

SPEAKER_01 9:16 Well, we know the Vikings found the islands, the Norsemen, because they began raiding Normandy, and it was possible they were used the islands to raid Normandy. And it's interesting that the the modern names of the Channel Islands are largely Viking. And it has been suggested these are things that you can see from the sea, you know. So the Vikings are coming up and they're naming things that they can see from the sea to help their navigation. 933, the islands are given along with chunks of uh what is now Normandy by the Frankish king to the Norman leader Rollo. Basically, the Normans, the Vikings are settling, they're mixing with the French and becoming what we call the Normans. So Normandy is established, and we are now Normans. And that's where the Norman language starts creeping in, becomes ultimately Guernsey French. Now 1066, Duke Liam invades England, becomes the King of England, and Duke of Normandy. That's when we become we keep this strange relationship with England ever since, in that we were never part of England. Guernsey was never part of England, but it was part of the Duchy of Normandy. But it was the property of the Crown of England. And uh there was a lot of a lot of to and throw really between the the Norman brothers, uh between uh the sons of William fell out famously. One became Duke of Normandy, one became King of England, and then Robert gets killed and England and Normandy gets united again. But Guernsey becomes effectively a possession of the English crown. Even when King John loses the rest of Normandy to France in 1204. Guernsey and the Channel Islands remain in English control. It's almost an afterthought of the peace treaty. I always think, oh, oh, what about the Channel Islands? Oops, did we forget the Channel Islands? So and at that point they start being fortified. So Castle Corner is built around that sort of starts being built around that sort of time to fortify these English possessions against France.

SPEAKER_00 11:25 Castle Corner is a very famous historical castle that has guarded the island for 800 years and can still be explored by visitors today.

SPEAKER_01 11:33 Because England still has possessions down in sort of Aquitaine, uh the Bordeaux region, and uh the English kings get very precious about the wine trade. So through the early Middle Ages, through the let's call the high Middle Ages now, you've got wine trade coming up from Bordeaux, past the Channel Islands, to England, numerous wars between England and France around the time, particularly the Hundred Years' War in the 14th, 15th century, which was actually a sequence of conflicts rather than one continuous one, and it lasted more than a hundred years as well. And each side got the upper hand, you know. At first it was England, then it was France, then it was England again, and the French finally won in a vertical commas, and England lost all its possessions in northern France, other than um Calais, lost Normandy again. And uh the Channel Islands were invaded, Castle Cornet was seized by the French briefly before they were expelled, um, Aldery was briefly occupied, Jersey was briefly occupied, and then finally we had the papal bull and the Pope made the Channel Islands neutral in wars between France and England, and this was a godsend. Because even if England and France were fighting each other, those Bordeaux merchants could still send their wine to Guernsey and they could send it on to England. And the English lords got their wine and they were happy.

SPEAKER_00 13:00 So in many ways, Guernsey actually profited from England's rivalry with France, and that brings us round to our main point about the history of islands and why many have been so important despite their small size.

SPEAKER_01 13:13 There were two kinds of islands. There were islands which are just you know out of the way, desolate places that nobody cares about, and there were islands that are right in the right spot, and sometimes to their disadvantage, like say Malta, perfect position, constantly attacked by everybody who was passing. So, late Middle Ages, England, France at war, or England supporting French rebels, for example, happened in the Elizabethan period. And Elizabeth actually, Queen Elizabeth actually wrote to the Channel Ireland, to Governor Channel Ireland saying, hang on, we're at war with France, and yet you're still trading with France. And there was a sort of shrug of the shoulders at this point, because by that time English wool was being exported to France, and actually it was coming through Guernsey, and Guernsey developed a knitting industry in the Middle Ages. So your farmers would be knitting, their wives would be knitting, they'd be farming, their wives would be knitting, and they were exporting socks and woolens to France using English wool and bringing the wine and brandy back to England. And so it was very popular, and this just carried on through the various English and French wars. It was known as free trade. Uh the British English called it smuggling, but it was called free trade, and of course, privateering went on the back of that, because when there was a war between England and France, particularly in the sort of 18th century, the local ship owners kit out their boat, give it a couple of guns, and they'd get a letter and mark from the king, and off they would go and they would pillage some French ships. Now it was not wasn't always one way, there was French corsairs coming the other way, taking Guernsey ships, and quite a few um locals ended up in French prisons from being captured. So the privateering was a lucrative sideline, the free trade was a sideline, and this carried on all the way through the uh eighteenth century, and it was only really stopped in the early 19th century when the English said, look, this is going to stop now. And that's when the picket house was put in St. Peterport. We have customs now, proper, proper discipline, because what was happening is that ships would be coming up on Bordeaux, they'd be transshipping their cargoes into Guernsey, big barrels, the barrels would be broken down into smaller barrels in places like the Bonded store, and then the smaller barrels would be put onto smaller ships and smuggled into England. So there was a nice trade in barrel making at one point as well. Those little industries setting up on the back of what's happening.

SPEAKER_00 16:40 During the American War of Independence and the Napoleonic Wars, Guernsey came under renewed threat from France. New fortifications appeared across the island, including loophole towers, martello towers, and an expanded military presence at Castle Cornet.

SPEAKER_01 16:57 And that garrison rather changed the nature of the island, it changed the language. That's we get a lot of Guernsey pronunciation start coming from the English mispronouncing things. Like Castle Cornet. You know, some people say, oh, it's Chateau Cornet. No, it's not, it's Castle Cornet, because that's the way the English pronounced it. And then the Guernsey militia becomes a big thing. Obviously, the militia are raised to defend the island that were never used. Whereas in Jersey, for example, the militia actually fought off a French invasion. In Guernsey, it was a big social thing. The lower classes formed the infantry and they were quite pleased with the little bonus they got for joining the militia. And the upper classes became the officers, which gave them fancy uniforms, they looked very dashing at the dancers, and it was a big part of the social scene in the 19th century. When the when the wars ended, because the end of the pro-link wars was a bit of a disaster because obviously the garrison was scaled down, there was no more privateering, no more free trading, and so Guernsey moved into shipbuilding at that point. And that that prospered wonderfully until people invented steam and steel ships. What do we do now? Quarries. Got the quarrying, we've got loads of granite, so we'll do that. And then horticulture, because Guernsey's not really big enough for big farms. So everyone's growing these little farms and suddenly realise, hang on, we can grow vines, we can grow grapes in Guernsey. Big so glass houses spring up to grow grapes, and there's a lot of space in there to put tomatoes under the grapes as an undercrop. And then they found they were making far more money from the tomatoes and the grapes, so they became just selling tomatoes. And that's why they're known as vineries, because they had vines in originally.

SPEAKER_00 18:37 So you can see now that an island like Guernsey spends much of its time reinventing itself, finding a new reason to stay relevant in the world, because its role can so easily shift depending on what's happening outside of its shores.

SPEAKER_01 18:52 Guernsey's population reinvents itself about every couple of generations. You know, we've gone from the from the wool, from the from the knitting to the smuggling to the privateering to the shipbuilding. It just keeps finding new new ways of making its living. And so we have the quarrying and the tomato growing. And often the same people who are doing the same thing, you know, because the quarries were busier at certain times than others. The tomatoes need picking at a particular time. So quite a lot of uh men and quite a lot of the certainly the unmarried women would be occupied in in one or other of the processions, sometimes both. And of course, you've got the continual, you've got the craftsmen, you've got the stonemasons, and I've had I wrote a novel about this, which is quite fun. Uh the way that you know people would just drift from job to job, whatever suited them. And that sort of island life would have carried on into the early 20th century. But the island would have looked very industrial. We think of Guernsey to be this green and pretty place, but you think of how many quarries there were at one point. There was something like I don't I'm guessing now, there's something like fifty quarries. It was certainly in the north of the island, it would have looked like a Swiss cheese, with all these open quarries and all the cranes and industrial landscapes, and then the space in between, the glass houses. So you'd have had big holes in the ground, heaps of spoil, glass houses. You'd have had the the crushers, uh, you'd have the glass house chimneys for the for the heating. Certainly sort of the north, anywhere sort of sort of north and east of St. Peterport would have looked very, very industrial. The south would have been a bit more rustic, a bit more like what we think of of Guernsey being like, but it would have been you'd have travelled back there and you'd go, gosh, this is this is a different sort of place. And that carried right through to the Great War, really.

SPEAKER_00 20:37 Yeah, and so what changes about the islands first with the Great War and and then with what World War II, obviously, we see a lot of deportations and evacuations as well then. So I mean a lot of the English influence that we see today it comes about as a result of um of those wars. But yeah, what how do we see things dramatically change at that at that time in in the 1900s?

SPEAKER_01 21:02 Well it you start the English influx starts, uh well, it increases because English gentle people with pensions started to settle in Guernsey's retirement home, late Victorian into the 20th century, because it was a cheaper place to live than England. You can live in a nice place and it was cheaper. Hard to imagine these days, I know. And then Great War, obviously it's huge shock. A lot of the men joining the army or joining the Guernsey militia and then into the army, in the Navy, travelling worldwide. We lost about one in twenty Guernsey men were killed in the war. And of course, things like the quarries almost stopped during the war, and and a lot of the vinaries went to seed a bit. After the war, the quarries never really picked up again. They they they picked up but not at the same pace. Tomatas were back, but tourism started coming in. We started getting more tourism in the 30s. In fact, the airport is only just finished just in time for the Germans to arrive. So you're getting a very different, you know, Guernsey by that time is it's getting more like the Guernsey we recognize because a lot of the quarries are closed, filling in, filling up the water, and uh a lot more tourists around and it's being advertised in railway posters and things. Second World War, huge impact. And then really that was the the next step change because a lot of people were evacuated, far more people than is recognized, actually joined the forces, both men and women. Uh they'd marry, often they married, some of them didn't come back. Some of the children never came back, some of them would come back that were speaking English. Uh some of the deportees had married English people and brought them home. Big change. So post Second World War, the island was a mess, of course, after the Germans left, and Alderney was completely complete wasteland. And then we we get the Guernsey we know today springing out of that, the tomato industry picking up and then finally getting sort of killed off. By the EU and finance coming in to replace it, sort of. It's again we get that reinvention. You've got tourism and horticulture, big things in the late 40s, 50s, early 60s, and as the pressures start to grow, you then see finance coming in to fill that void. So you get this again, there's these waves of change in the islands. Some people sometimes say to me, Oh, why why is why's going to finance industry? And I say, What else do you want us to do? You've taken the tomato industry away. The quarries are finished, you know, we can't build ships anymore. We're not allowed to uh you know do piracy or smuggling anymore. So it's what it's what you do. And it's the difference between an island that succeeds and islands that islands that fail, really. And the same argument's been used for some of these Caribbean islands. You know, people say, oh you know, well, why's this island got offshore banks on it? I said, well, and the argument is, well, if it didn't, it would be a failed island. There'd be nothing else there on some of these Caribbean islands. That would be even nice enough for tourism, some of them.

SPEAKER_00 24:01 I love this picture that you paint of Guernsey as this place that reinvents itself. And as you say, that's that's needed for an island to survive, because I think it's really easy to think if you know, if you look back in the distant past that the islands were these sort of desolate places, no one would bother using them. You've painted a completely different picture, and actually one which shows that they were vibrant, reinventing themselves all the time, doing new things to stay alive. And I imagine, you know, beyond the finance industry as well, in Guernsey and other islands as well, there may be other things that we've no idea the uses that these islands could see in the distant future. But actually, reinvention is kind of part of the nature of living on an island.

SPEAKER_01 24:46 Yes, I mean the fact that they're small helps. The peculiar constitutional position helps, you know, not actually unsubject to the UK laws and regulations, not subject to EU laws and regulations, so able to weave a path in between. And it's a case of the island's government spotting the niche and defending it and not sliding the other way into oh, we're an island, we're pathetic, we can't do anything. And so Guernsey, in particular, has always said used its strengths. And when I was sort of in the museum and I was involved in tourism and marketing, I said, Market Guernsey, market Guernsey the brand, because it's it's a different place. It's got its own history, its own culture, its own people. You know, it's not the Isle of Wight, you know, it's not the Isle of Sheppey, you know, it's not Malta, it's got its own history, its own difference. And that's the thing to leverage, you know, the things that make you different, the things that you know reinforce strength. It's small, it's an island, it's a port, it's got sunny weather, it's got stable government. These are things which, you know, time and time again, we've seen it. You know, history just washes by, and then the island just ducks, keeps its head down and recovers.

SPEAKER_00 26:05 A massive thank you to Jason Monahan for joining me on the podcast. You've been listening to what we did before. I'm Molly. Please subscribe to the show, it helps us out massively, and I will see you next time.