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On Sunday morning, a communications cable between Sweden and Lithuania was damaged, almost certainly deliberately. Just hours later, the C-Lion cable, the only data link between Finland and central Europe, was severed by what authorities have diplomatically called an ‘external impact’. Most would call it sabotage. In a week where the Biden administration finally gave Kyiv authorisation to use longer-range missiles against targets in Russia, few should think it is a coincidence.
Sir Walter Raleigh said that ‘whoever commands the sea commands the trade’ and that ‘whoever commands the trade of the world commands the riches of the world – and consequently the world itself’. To understand how the English (and then the British) managed to build a global empire, these comments should be observed. Investment in shipbuilding, cannon-casting and map–making, coupled with experience at sea, enabled Britannia to rule the waves.
Raleigh’s rule still holds true today, 450 years later, as competition to control the seas intensifies once again.
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