Both sides in the campaign on the European referendum have made big claims about Britain’s future if we vote for Brexit. However, the lesson from history is clear: what happens in Europe affects us.

Over the centuries we have occasionally tried leaving them to it, in the hope that Europe will then leave us alone.

It never has. Our fates are entwined. Our language, religion and system of politics were all introduced here by Europeans, while our DNA comes from waves of northern European migrants.

Nearly every English and British monarch had a European spouse.

Warning: Dan Snow argues that events in Europe will always affect us

Queen Victoria’s immediate family spoke German between themselves. Protestantism, plague, printing and physics all arrived from Europe, while London was founded by the Romans, Cardiff by the Normans, and Edinburgh by English settlers of German descent.

This is why British strategists throughout history have tried to boost our influence in Europe in order to shape what happens – or deal with the fallout.

The greatest misconception is that the Channel is a moat. It is not; the sea around us has been a highway.

It has enabled countless invasions of the British Isles from the continent, with at least five incursions in the hundred years following 1066. And, thanks to our long shoreline, the only certain way to defend Britain from aggressors has been to stop the invasions happening in the first place.

The best way to defend our islands has been to confront the threat beyond them. The place to defeat an enemy was on his turf, not ours.

The British have been repeatedly drawn into continental matters, because the Channel has provided no protection from their consequences.

James I, his son and grandsons, attempted to gain influence through diplomacy. Charles II and James II wanted close relations with powerful France to counter the Dutch threat to England and chip away at Spain’s sprawling empire.

TV Historian Dan Snow says he doesn't think Elizabeth, Wellington, Palmerston, Churchill, Attlee and Thatcher would have opted for naive, optimistic isolation

Both bound themselves in treaties with the French king. So sacrificing a degree of sovereignty in an attempt to secure influence beyond the kingdom is really nothing new.

Britain built the largest empire in the history of the world by fighting all-comers between 1689 and 1815.

We fought the French mostly, as part of unwieldy and expensive coalitions representing a large surrender of sovereignty. But the campaigns were largely victorious.

Only once in this mighty struggle for global supremacy was Britain catastrophically defeated – when we fought alone in the War of American Independence.

The greatest battles in our history – Malplaquet, Waterloo, Ypres, the Somme, Arnhem, the Rhine and the Ruhr – were all fought as part of large transnational coalitions, designed to exert an influence over the course of European affairs.

Victory at Waterloo in 1815 brought an end to 25 years of almost continual warfare, and a new approach was taken to maintaining the peace.

Many in Britain were sick of Europe and keen to retreat into isolationism. But two towering statesmen, Wellington and Castlereagh, forced Britain to engage in a post-war settlement that would endure for decades.

The Congress of Vienna naturally represented a limit on the sovereignty of the states of Europe.

They couldn’t just unilaterally invade or partition a neighbour, but the effect of this pooling of sovereignty was that Europe managed to avoid all-out war.

Britain found itself on the losing side of many of the diplomatic twists but, in return, achieved a durable peace.

There have been many bouts of isolationism by British Governments, periods when Britain refused to get involved.

This aloofness simply meant that Britain was forced to live with a new reality over which it had exerted no influence.

In the 1860s, Prussia rampaged through central Europe and emerged as the German Empire. This ‘Second Reich’ was a vast European superpower and its economy soon overtook that of Britain. We had stayed out of it, but now had to live with the consequences.

You can distance yourself from events, but that is no guarantee that they, in turn, will keep their distance from you.

In the 20th Century, Britain could not avoid the consequences of the First or Second World Wars, and the least-worst option was to try to shape the horrendous conflicts.

As the EU’s strongest military power, it needs us working alongside them if we are going to have any hope of tackling the biggest humanitarian crisis on our continent since the Second World War, argues Dan Snow

In contrast, Ireland, having left the UK, watched the course of the conflict entirely helplessly as its future was hammered out by others – a spectator as fascism and democracy fought for the future.

What happens in Europe affects Britain. For centuries British strategists have understood this and attempted to influence what happens in Europe. If we leave the EU, we will lose influence without gaining real independence.

Take the refugees in the Aegean. There is a terrible war in Syria and its impact will be felt in Britain in as yet uncertain ways.

As Europe's strongest military power, they need us to help solve the migrant crisis

Should we be part of the infuriating and inefficient discussions to find a solution or stand aside, hope for the best outcome and assume that the Channel will cushion us from the fallout? I suspect Britain leaving the EU could make the situation worse.

As the EU’s strongest military power, they need us working alongside them if we are going to have any hope of tackling the biggest humanitarian crisis on our continent since the Second World War.

I love history, not because I’m obsessed with the distant past but because I’m thinking about the future. History is where the present and future come from. It is the only guide we have when we try to guess what is going to happen. The past has convinced me that Britain does not flourish when it deliberately avoids the continent. Like it or not, our fate is linked to that of our neighbours.

The EU is far from perfect but it is the best way we have of ensuring our interests are defended in Europe and our voice is heard loud and clear. If we leave we will become passive observers, victims of the decisions made in our absence.