Australia
In the seventeenth century, the Dutch were the first Europeans to reach Australia and map it. A Brit named William Dampier landed here briefly in 1688 and again in 1699. Then along came Cook in 1770 and claimed a big chunk of the land for Britain. He was followed, in 1788, by Captain Arthur Phillip with the First Fleet and its contingent of convicts into Port Jackson to set up a settlement at Sydney Cove on 26 January. The colony of New South Wales was declared on 7 February. Another fleet of convicts arrived in 1790 and a third in 1791. By 1793, free, non-convict settlers were also arriving. Slowly we began to take control of the whole of Australia.
In 1803 a settlement was attempted on Tasmania, and in 1804 Hobart was founded.
The Swan River Colony, which was to become Western Australia, was declared in 1829. And in 1836 South Australia was declared. Victoria was established in 1851 and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory came into being in 1911.
There was some local resistance. For example, a man called Pemulwuy organised resistance to the settlers between about 1790 and 1802. In 1797 he led about 100 men against British troops at the Battle of Parramatta. He was killed in 1802. In 1824, with conflict breaking out between settlers who had crossed the Blue Mountains and the local Wiradjuri warriors, martial law was declared for a period of some months.
Between 1828 and 1830 there was resistance to the British on Tasmania.
In the 1830s, Yagan, a warrior of the Noongar people, was to engage in clashes with settlers in the area around Perth. After he was killed, his head was cut off and brought back to Britain. It was only returned to Australia in 1997.
Examples of resistance continued. The Kalkadoon people kept settlers out of Western Queensland for up to a decade until their defeat at Battle Mountain in 1884.
Australia became independent from Britain through a series of steps that gradually gave it more and more control over its affairs.
Austria
It’s strange isn’t it? Somehow, today we tend to think of Austria as almost not a military country, in the sense that we don’t now particularly associate it with fighting wars (though according to the Afghanistan ISAF website at the time of writing it has three troops in ISAF). A bit like Switzerland, perhaps it’s all those mountains and snow, and lederhosen (though, apparently, lederhosen aren’t a big Swiss tradition). But, of course, Austria has a huge military history, a fair bit of it involving us.
In many ways, Austria is one of those countries that some Brits might think we’ve invaded more than we actually have. After all, it’s a part of the world that was on the opposite side to us in both world wars. But in reality we also spent a lot of time fighting on the same side as the Austrians prior to the twentieth century. And it’s quite a long way away from both Britain and from the sea.
In the First World War, in a little-known part of our war, we had divisions fighting the Austro-Hungarian army, but almost all the fighting was done on Italian soil. By the armistice, which in this region was on 4 November 1918, not 11 November, our 48th South Midland Division had pushed to a position 8 miles north-west of a place then in Austria, called Löweneck. But when borders changed after the First World War, the area went to Italy and its name today is Levico.
In the Second World War, once again our troops were mainly approaching Austria from Italy (the main push into Austria from the west being conducted by US troops). This time we arrived in Austria just about the time the war ended. The big British push into Austria began on 8 May 1945 with 6th Armoured Division leading and Klagenfurt a major objective.
Having said that, after 8 May our troops moved in force into Austria. A lot of people have heard of our post-war presence in Germany, but our occupation of Austria isn’t so widely known. In July 1945, Austria was split into four zones, one each for us, the Americans, the French and the Soviets. We got Carinthia, East Tyrol and Styria. Vienna was similarly divided, plus the centre of the city was a separate zone under combined control. We had troops in Austria all the way through until 1955, enjoying the outstanding scenery. And perhaps, on occasion, the lederhosen.
Azerbaijan
Azerbaijan, found in the Caucasus with the Caspian Sea to the east, is one of those countries that is so far away from us, so far away from the open seas, and so far from what we tend to think of as our normal zones of influence that you may think we can’t possibly have invaded it. But if you think that, you’d be wrong.
By mid-1918, after the Russian Revolution, the Caucasus was a surprisingly confusing place. We tend to think of control of oilfields as a modern strategic goal, but already by that time, control of Azerbaijan’s oilfields was vitally important. A surprising number of players were competing for control of the oil, and for control of the Caucasus more widely. Obviously there were the locals and the Russians, but there was also, with the Ottoman Empire still in the First World War at this stage, the Ottoman Third Army trying to push up from the south. There was (bizarrely since you wouldn’t expect Germans here, but then, to be fair, I suppose, equally you wouldn’t expect Brits either) a German Expeditionary Force, independent of the Ottoman forces, that had come across the Black Sea from the Crimea, heading for the region after Georgia signed the Treaty of Poti with Germany. And there was us, with the imaginatively named Dunsterforce, commanded by one General Dunsterville (Dunsterforce does sound a little more crisp and dynamic than Dunstervilleforce, and imagine being an army clerk having to write Dunstervilleforce all the time). This included British and other Empire troops and some armoured cars, which had arrived in the area from Hamadan in what is now Iran.
Their original goal to counter German influence in the region turned into a mission to seize and defend the oilfields around Baku. After a few problems with Bolshevik troops, they made it across the Caspian to Baku, but their problems had only just started. Once in Baku, they were caught up in defending the city against an attacking army of Ottomans (and their allies in the Caucasus). In the ferocious Battle of Baku, lasting from August into September, Dunsterforce was eventually forced to withdraw from Baku in a dramatic night-time evacuation under fire. Probably spectacular to watch, but not much fun to be part of.
But we weren’t gone for long. Elsewhere, the war was going very badly for the Ottomans, and by late 1918, with the Ottoman Empire defeated, it was the turn of Ottoman troops to pull out of Baku and for us to return. British troops under General Thomson arrived in the capital of Azerbaijan on 17 November 1918 and imposed martial law. Gradually we handed over control to an Azerbaijani government, and by August 1919 we were leaving Baku again.
Bahamas
Columbus was probably the first European to hit the Bahamas. From our point of view, things sort of started in 1629 when Charles I granted the islands to Robert Heath, Attorney-General of England at the time. It was a bit of a cheap grant in many ways, since Charles didn’t actually control them and the man who was awarded the grant doesn’t seem to have done anything with them either. So, not much of an invasion at that point.
Finally, in 1648, William Sayle seems to have turned up from Bermuda with some English Puritans to found a settlement called Eleuthera, Greek for ‘free’. A settlement on New Providence followed and in 1670 Charles II granted the islands to the Duke of Albemarle and five others.
But it all became a bit of a mess with pirates and privateers running rampant and foreign powers joining in the chaos. In 1702–03, Nassau was briefly occupied by the French and Spanish.
The British crown took over control of the islands in 1717 and stamped out piracy, but our grip was still pretty tenuous at times. Well, in fact, more than tenuous, because we lost the islands occasionally and had to get them back. The Spanish attacked in 1720; in 1776 US marines occupied Nassau briefly; and in 1782 the Spanish turned up again and took control. At least this provided us with one really good story about invading the Bahamas.
The main character in the story is one Andrew Deveaux, who had an extraordinary career. He had been born in Beaufort, South Carolina. Wh
en the American Revolution came, he had originally joined the American rebels, but then had reverted to the loyalist side. He’d been given the rank of colonel by the British and raised a force of irregulars to fight for them. The traditional account is that when the Bahamas fell to the Spanish in 1783, he set off from St Augustine, Florida, with only seventy men to recapture the islands. He recruited another 170 men to his cause in the Bahamas themselves, and so with only 240 men, and even fewer guns, he faced a much larger Spanish occupation force, yet managed to persuade the Spanish commander Don Antonio Claraco Sauz to surrender.
The Bahamas became independent in 1971.
Bahrain
We have, of course, long had contact with the Gulf States, among them Bahrain.
In the early days, one of our main priorities was combating sea raiders in the area. So in 1820 the East India Company got the sheikhs of Bahrain to sign an anti-piracy treaty.
By 1861, we had also prevailed on Bahrain to sign a treaty which gave us control over its foreign affairs in return for protection.
But still we weren’t always entirely happy with the way everything was going here, and in 1868, after a conflict between Bahrain and Qatar, the gunboats Clyde and Huge Rose of Her Majesty’s Indian Navy destroyed the fort at al-Muharraq in Bahrain. In 1869, British gunboats were sailing into Bahrain to change rulers and put 21-year-old Sheikh Isa into power.
There were further treaties in the late nineteenth century between Britain and Bahrain. Bahrain became fully independent in 1971.
Bangladesh
Bangladesh consists of the eastern part of what used to be undivided Bengal. The western part is now in India and some of the key events in the history of Britain taking control of the territory that is today Bangladesh took place in modern day India.
As early as the late seventeenth century we were trying to take control in Bengal. But failing.
In 1620, the East India Company had a presence in Bengal, and in 1666 it set up a base in Dhaka. In 1682, William Hedges from the East India Company arrived in Bengal to talk to the Mughal governor there. Hedges was looking for trading privileges, but negotiations got a bit difficult and an English fleet arrived under Admiral Nicholson. What followed is sometimes called Child’s War (not much to do with kids, more to do with Sir Josiah Child, head of the East India Company) or the Anglo-Mughal war. But Child’s War wasn’t child’s play (see what I’ve done there?). It lasted from 1686 to 1690, during which we seized ships and bombarded towns. In the end, though, we lost and had to make concessions to the Mughal emperor, and pay compensation before we could re-establish commercial operations.
By the middle of the eighteenth century we were ready to have another go. In 1756 the new, young nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud Daulah, decided to exert control over the British base in Calcutta (Kolkata) in what is now West Bengal in India. With overwhelming forces he quickly captured it. In response, Colonel Clive and Admiral Watson were sent with the aim of re-establishing the British presence and getting reparation for its losses. After fighting outside Calcutta in January 1757, a peace deal was signed, and we turned our attention to the French, and not in a friendly way, attacking the town of Chandannagar, north of Calcutta. Chandannagar fell, but now Siraj ud Daulah started negotiations with the French, while we started secret negotiations with one Mir Jafar with the aim of replacing Siraj ud Daulah. Then Clive set off with a force to confront Siraj ud Daulah. The two armies met at the Battle of Plassey, or Palashi, in June 1757. Siraj ud Daulah had French help, but he lost. Clive then made Mir Jafar nawab, and when he got too close to the Dutch for our liking, we made Mir Qasim nawab instead.
Victory over Mir Qasim’s army and other allied forces at the Battle of Buxar in 1765 gave the East India Company control over Bengal in many ways. In 1793 the company took control of judicial administration in the territory as well.
William Heath had attempted to take control of Chittagong for the East India Company as early as 1688. In 1766 the company finally took control of the city. We were also given control of areas around Chittagong in the east of what is now Bangladesh, and a period of prolonged fighting followed against the region’s Chakma kings. The Chittagong Hill Tracts became an area where British control faced assorted challenges and was not always solid.
We left Bengal in 1947, when part of it became East Pakistan. The country became independent as Bangladesh in 1971.
Barbados
Barbados means ‘the bearded ones’, though nobody seems to know quite which bearded ones are being referred to, whether it was bearded locals, or the bearded fig tree that grows on the island, or something else. Bearded something anyway.
Our history of invading Barbados isn’t a hugely complex and dramatic one. The first English ship arrived here in 1625 under one John Powell and about two years later his younger brother turned up and started a settlement. And from then on it was basically under English and then British control until independence in 1966.
In fact, the only time we invaded it after 1625 was when we invaded it against ourselves, if you see what I mean. It sort of got sucked into the heavily armed disagreement, or civil war, that we had at home, starting in 1642. In the period after the execution of Charles I in 1649, bucking the trend in England, Royalists took over control of the government of Barbados, with the exception of the governor who stayed loyal to Parliament. So in 1651 the English Commonwealth sent an invasion force under Sir George Ayscue, and after a bit of fighting the Royalists surrendered. Invasion completed and succeeded.
Belarus
Big country, but unhelpfully for us, from the invading point of view, it doesn’t have a coastline and because of that, and assorted other quirks of history, we’ve not had that much to do with it militarily. If you know otherwise, let me know.
As far as I can work out, the closest we’ve got to invading Belarus is an assortment of English knights who led expeditions to fight alongside the Teutonic Knights in the fourteenth century. At the height of their power, the Teutonic Knights extended their control as far inland as Grodno in Belarus, so it’s possible some of our lot may have made it that far as well. Certainly some were active in besieging Vilnius (see Lithuania), which isn’t much more than 20 miles from the border with Belarus.
There were, however, in an interesting bit of history that deserves to be better known, a number of Scots playing a major role in Russian armies around the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth century. About fifteen generals of Scottish origin were working with the Russians in this period and, generally speaking, the Scots seem to have played a more significant role than any other nation in Russian forces at this time. Some of them operated in what is now Belarus. Marshal Baron George Ogilvie, for instance, commanded an army in the Grodno region in this period. Grodno seems to have been relatively popular with armies.
Belgium
Belgium has famously only existed as a country since the nineteenth century, and still sometimes doesn’t seem entirely sure where its future as a country lies. But there were armed Brits roaming on what is now its territory a lot earlier than that.
I think Belgium is a bit of a hidden gem. It’s a place a lot of Brits seem to know very little about today, and yet it’s just across the Channel and has some fabulous towns, cities, scenery, history and beer. Go see it. Our troops of the past certainly did, regularly. And while their visits did not always leave the towns, cities and scenery unscathed, they certainly contributed to the history and no doubt enjoyed the beer.
Often had rather friendly relations with the area, rather friendlier, for instance, than with their next-door neighbours in France.
So often, as with Portugal, we’ve been involved with the area, trying to help (at least some of) the locals rather than harm them. Not surprisingly, it’s been us and them against the French. For example, the English were already fighting alongside Flemish troops against the French at the Battle of Bouvines (just on the French side of today’s French/Belgian border) in 1214. Again in 1
297, Edward I led a brief and not hugely successful campaign in Flanders against the French.
When the Hundred Years War broke out, England was yet again trying to help the Flemish against the French, and in 1340 Edward III turned up with a fleet and anchored at Blankenberge (now in Belgium), while his wife Philippa (this is Philippa of Hainault and therefore, in modern terms, basically Belgian herself) was safe in Bruges. He then smashed the French fleet at the Battle of Sluys (fought just on the Dutch side of what is now the Belgian/Dutch border, but don’t worry we’ll get to battles on Belgian territory very shortly). Their son, John of Gaunt, was not called that because he had a particularly gaunt look, but because he was actually born in Ghent in what is now Belgium. John of Gaunt is John of Ghent.
Later in the fourteenth century we invaded the area, again supporting the Flemish against the French and this time adding a religious element, siding with Pope Urban VI in Rome against antipope Clement VII in Avignon. This is what has become known as Despenser’s Crusade. Sounds like something to do with pharmacists, but in fact it was in honour of Henry le Despenser, Bishop of Norwich, who was a major leading figure in the crusade. Actually, when we say ‘in honour of’, it’s more like ‘in dishonour of’ because it was all a bit of a disaster. Or quite a lot of a disaster. The force set off from Sandwich and landed at Calais. Then it headed up the coast, took Gravelines and set off to besiege Ypres, a town many Brits were to fight in more recently, albeit to defend it instead of attacking it as Despenser’s lot were. The siege was not a success and Despenser’s Crusade fell apart. When it was all over Despenser, was put on trial.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 3