The rise of the United Provinces (Netherlands) as a significant regional power had a major impact on the power politics of the area and in the late sixteenth century Brits were back. English troops repulsed the Duke of Parma’s forces in fighting near Aarschot in what is now Belgium. And in 1580 English soldiers sacked Mechelen in what became known as the ‘English Fury’. In fact, as it turned out, assorted armed Brits were to spend quite a lot of time wandering around what is now Belgium in the late sixteenth century and early seventeenth century. Horace Vere, for instance, could be found, along with Scottish and English troops, on the victorious side at the Battle of Nieuwpoort in 1600 and then in 1601 he was defending Ostende. Well, we’ve always loved the Channel ports.
By the middle of the seventeenth century we were back invading what is now Belgium yet again. This time English forces, for a change, were allied with the French and fighting the Spanish. But, not everything had changed. After victory at the Battle of the Dunes in 1658, they still ended up besieging Ypres.
Then at the end of the seventeenth century we were back roaming around what is now Belgium in the Nine Years War. This time we were fighting the French and allied with the Dutch. Despite our troops fighting bravely in the victory at the Battle of Walcourt in 1689, it wasn’t an entirely successful venture, including defeat at the Battle of Leuze in 1691.
With a new century came a new war, the War of the Spanish Succession 1701–14, and this time we had a really thorough go at invading what is now Belgium. This is Marlborough’s war. Early on he captured Liège. In 1706 he beat the French decisively at the Battle of Ramillies in Belgium and after that took Antwerp. On 11 July 1708, he crushed another French army, this time at the Battle of Oudenarde, again in Belgium. Ramillies and Oudenarde are two of those names that I remember clearly from school history, but I have to admit that until writing this book I didn’t really have any concept of where they actually were. Oudenarde at least sounds Belgian or Dutch, but the name Ramillies doesn’t particularly. The way it was pronounced at school sounded more like Rameses than anything, which didn’t help in giving a sense of where it actually was. In case you’re interested, Ramillies is near Namur and Oudenarde is sort of south of Ghent and west of Brussels.
With the War of the Austrian Succession we once again had troops fighting in Belgium. This time, sadly from our point of view, it wasn’t such a string of victories. In fact, in 1745 the Duke of Cumberland suffered a serious defeat by the French at the Battle of Fontenoy in Belgium. Oh and they had already taken Ypres before that. And things didn’t get much better as the war ground towards an unsuccessful end. British forces were on the losing side at the Battle of Rocoux near Liège in 1746 and again at the Battle of Lauffeld in 1747.
With the arrival of the French Revolutionary Wars and the Napoleonic Wars, we had troops on the ground here yet again. Against the French, obviously. In the 1790s, for instance, British troops were involved in heavy fighting in the Flanders region as part of an allied force trying to push into France. After early successes, things went into reverse and we found ourselves back fighting on Belgian soil. There were still some successes like the Battle of Willems in 1794, but Austrian support for the alliance wavered and the British and allied front in Flanders collapsed, with our troops retreating through the Netherlands, all the way back to be eventually evacuated from Bremen. That’s a long retreat. In 1809 the Walcheren Expedition failed to take Antwerp. But who could forget the final, decisive victory at Waterloo in 1815? This, of course, was won not far from Brussels and, famously, the Duchess of Richmond’s ball. This was held in Brussels on 15 June and was attended by numerous officers from our army, before being interrupted by news of the approach of Napoleon’s army.
In 1830, after a revolt aimed at separation from the Netherlands, the sovereign state of Belgium was formed and we sort of gave it a king. We came up with Leopold of Saxe Coburg Gotha, uncle of Queen Victoria and widower of Princess Charlotte of Wales, only legitimate child of the Prince Regent, as a candidate for the throne. And he got the job.
The twentieth century saw many, many Brits fighting to help the people of Belgium. In 1914 we went to war to protect Belgium when Germany violated its neutrality and for four long, bitter years, British troops bravely fought on Belgian soil. The Belgian city of Ypres, with the Menin Gate commemorating men whose bodies were never identified, and the Belgian village of Passchendaele, have become synonymous with that struggle. The course of the First World War also saw courageous ventures into occupied Belgium, such as the raid on Zeebrugge on 23 April 1918, when the Royal Navy attempted to hinder German ships and submarines using the port by sinking old British ships in appropriate places. Our last soldier of the war to die was George Edwin Ellison from Leeds, serving in the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, who was killed about an hour-and-a-half before the armistice came into effect. He had fought near Mons in Belgium in 1914 and died near Mons in Belgium in 1918.
In 1940, during the Second World War, British forces fought in Belgium before being forced to withdraw by the German advance. In 1944, less then three months after D-Day, they were back. On 3 September we liberated Brussels, and on 4 September Antwerp.
Belize
I’ve long sort of vaguely wondered where the name Belize comes from. One explanation, which is so jolly that it ought to be true even if it’s not, is that it derives from the Spanish pronunciation of the name of Peter Wallace, a Scottish buccaneer who, so the traditional story goes, used to operate in these parts.
Anyway, whatever the origin of the name it does seem to have been British buccaneers who were the first Brits to arrive in what is now Belize. They came in the early seventeenth century, looking for a base to carry on their buccaneering operations against Spanish shipping, but eventually found by the late seventeenth century that they could make a better and more secure living chopping down trees than chopping up sailors. They were called Baymen (seems reasonable since they were living on a bay).
The Spanish, viewing this area as very much their patch, were less than keen on the British log-choppers and there was plenty of tension and conflict, as well as some log chopping. Somehow the Baymen seemed to hang on in there or come back after the Spanish had withdrawn. By the 1763 Treaty of Paris, the Brits got the right to cut logwood even though the Spanish still had the right to sovereignty.
But the Spanish still didn’t love the Baymen. In 1779, the Spanish captured St George’s Caye and we didn’t get back into the area until after the 1783 Treaty of Paris (another Treaty of Paris). Things came to a head again in 1798, when the Spanish invaded from Mexico.
A naval confrontation was to ensue and it’s worth listing the names of our key ships: Merlin and Mermaid, Towser and Tickler, Swinger and Teazer. I particularly like the trio, Tickler, Teazer and Swinger. It sounds like some Georgian sex party.
The Spanish were approaching with significant forces and the Baymen decided to arm slaves to help fight the attackers. On 10 September the two forces clashed in the Battle of St George’s Caye. It went on for two hours, and by the end of it the Spanish had had enough and retreated. The victory is still celebrated in Belize as an annual holiday. This was the final Spanish attempt to take control of the area.
In 1862 we formally declared it a Crown colony called British Honduras.
Relations with the neighbours haven’t always been too friendly. In February 1948, there were fears of a Guatemalan invasion and a company from the Gloucestershire Regiment was rushed to the border. In 1958, the Hampshires intercepted a group from the Belize Liberation Army that had crossed the border. While in 1975 the Guatemalans moved troops to the border and we, of course, responded again.
Belize gained full independence in 1981.
Benin
Somewhat confusingly, the modern country of Benin has no connection to the impressive Benin bronzes that we seized from the Kingdom of Benin (located in present-day Nigeria), which we captured in 1897.
Modern-day Benin used to be known as Dahomey after the Kin
gdom of Dahomey. An interesting kingdom, it gained a reputation among European explorers as a kind of African Sparta, with a society that was in many ways geared to war. Boys were, for instance, often trained by older soldiers from a young age to be warriors, and there was also an elite female military unit.
Benin has only a comparatively short coastline, on which stands Ouidah, which was for a long time a major port for the slave trade. In the seventeenth century the English Fort William was built and there was a British presence in the fort up until 1812, which came under occasional attack from local forces.
Then when Britain had switched from being a slaving country to an anti-slaving country, the Royal Navy started running patrols off Ouidah trying to stop slaving vessels operating.
In the east, Benin borders on Nigeria. In the late nineteenth century, as the European powers carved up Africa, it took some time to work out which bits of the area the French would take control of, and which Britain would take. At one point, in 1894, one Frederick Lugard signed a treaty with the King of Nikki which theoretically gave us control over the foreign affairs of his kingdom. However, by the Anglo-French Convention of 1898, the town of Nikki fell under French control and today is part of Benin.
So armed Brits have operated on its soil and in its waters.
Bhutan
Bhutan isn’t a country we hear much about in Britain, and some Brits might be tempted to think it’s a kingdom of legend. But, in fact, it’s perfectly real, lying up in the Himalayas sandwiched between India and China. Its capital is Thimpu.
Really, it’s to our shame if we don’t know much about it, because Brits were getting involved with Bhutan very early on. And in this context that ‘involved’ included ‘invaded’. In fact, we first invaded Bhutan in the eighteenth century. Bhutan had been doing a bit of empire-building itself. Nothing on our scale clearly, but it had effectively taken control of Cooch Behar. However, in a battle for control of the Cooch Behar throne, the rival to the Bhutanese nominee decided his best bet was to apply for the support of an even bigger power than the Bhutanese – Britain. So in 1772 Captain Jones arrived in Cooch Behar, expelled the Bhutanese and pursued them into their own territory. Eventually a peace treaty was signed between Bhutan and the East India Company in 1774.
But the peace between us and Bhutan was not always a calm and easy one and in the middle of the nineteenth century we ended up invading Bhutan again. There was a border dispute over control of the Bengal Duars, so not unreasonably the war is sometimes known as the Duar War, or, if you like, the Bhutanese War. The issue was complicated by an internal conflict in Bhutan, which is worth mentioning here for the cast of characters. The secular head of Bhutan was called the Druk Desi. And in this conflict the Dzongpon of Punakha had established his own Druk Desi as rival to the established Druk Desi who was hoping for support from the Penlop of Paro. Don’t worry, I expect a lot of British names sound exotic to the Bhutanese, but these Bhutanese names are impressive.
Most Brits have never ever heard of the war, and it wasn’t exactly our finest hour. We were up against forces that consisted of assorted people carrying a variety of weapons from matchlocks to bows and arrows, and some of them wearing helmets and chain mail. They still managed to surprise us at Dewangiri (now known as Deothang) in Bhutan. But inevitably we won in the end and destroyed the fort at Dewangiri.
Finally, in 1910, we signed the Treaty of Punakha with the Bhutanese, which gave us control of Bhutan’s foreign affairs. And that situation continued until we left India in 1947.
Bolivia
As far as I know, we’ve never invaded Bolivia, but according to one story, we came perilously close to it. I haven’t been able to find the source of this story and it may just be one of those jolly fictions that crop up occasionally and are accepted as fact by some people. But if it isn’t actually true, then it’s such a fun story that it really should be.
According to the tale, in 1868 Bolivia’s then president, General Mariano Melgarejo, invited a British diplomat to a reception honouring his new mistress. The diplomat, viewing such an event as unfitting to one of his status refused the invitation, only to find himself being tied facing backwards on top of a donkey and carried three times round La Paz’s central square. Queen Victoria was, as one might expect, ‘not amused’. In fact, she was so not amused that it had to be pointed out to her that sadly Bolivia was too far from the sea for British gunboats to be sent.
As with many other South American countries, volunteers from the British Isles did genuinely play a fascinating and little-known role in the liberation of Bolivia at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Irishman O’Connor, for instance, was a lieutenant in the Albion Regiment of British and Irish volunteers, and after years of fighting ended up as Minister of War in Bolivia. Colonel Sir Belford Hinton Wilson, who after some years at Sandhurst had joined Bolivar’s forces in 1822, was even given the task of delivering Bolivia’s new constitution, as penned by Bolivar, to the new country.
Bosnia and Herzegovina
This area during the Second World War saw some of the fiercest fighting between German forces, and their local allies and Yugoslav resistance forces. And Brits were part of it. Most famously, Fitzroy Maclean led a British liaison mission to Tito and spent time with him at assorted locations in Bosnia, including Drvar and Jajce. Maclean helped to establish and run the RAF’s Balkan Air Force, which provided significant assistance to the partisans.
Recently we were back in Bosnia and Herzegovina, trying both to alleviate the suffering caused by the war there during the 1990s and, ultimately, to help bring it to an end.
British units played a major role in the initial UN operation in Bosnia. Much of their work included escorting aid and maintaining supply routes, but there were also occasions when the British units deployed open fire in pursuit of their mission. British soldiers died and British soldiers killed during the UN mission in Bosnia.
British units also formed part of the NATO forces in their operations during the Bosnian War. For instance, on 16 April 1994, a British Sea Harrier was shot down by Bosnian Serb forces over Gorazde while targeting a Bosnian Serb tank, and on 22 September 1994, two British Jaguar aircraft destroyed a Bosnian Serb tank in the Sarajevo area.
In 1995 both the RAF and British artillery on the ground in Bosnia assisted with Operation Deliberate Force against Bosnian Serb targets.
By the way, Herzegovina is the southern bit of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Botswana
Not one of our more spectacular invasions.
In 1884, we were afraid that the Germans might expand their influence into Bechuanaland and link up with the Boers who were opposed to us. Consequently, we sent the Warren Expedition north to assert British control. Major General Charles Warren (later to head the London Metropolitan Police and be criticised for its failure to catch Jack the Ripper) marched north from Cape Town with a force of 4,000 British and local troops, plus the very first three observation balloons that the British Army had ever used in the field.
The Warren Expedition turned up and achieved its objective without firing a shot, though presumably not without sending up a balloon.
Botswana became independent on 30 September 1966.
Brazil
Since Brazil was a Portuguese colony and Portugal our long-time ally, we have tended to steer clear of invading it too much. At least we’ve invaded it less than many other places.
Some British expeditions did make it to Brazil in the early period. An expedition under William and Richard Hawkins, for example, explored the Brazilian coast in the 1580s.
In the early nineteenth century, the Royal Navy headed for Brazilian waters, but on this occasion on the rather friendlier mission of escorting the Portuguese royal family here, after they escaped from Napoleon’s forces in Portugal itself.
However, things did become a little more tense at one point after Brazil became independent from Portugal. By this stage, despite Britain’s earlier major involvement with it, we had
abolished slavery and were taking some measures to see that it was abolished elsewhere. In 1826, we pressured Brazil into agreeing to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade. Instead, the trade increased. In 1845, we passed the Aberdeen Act, which allowed the Royal Navy to chase suspected slaving vessels right into Brazilian ports. This they did on a number of occasions until finally, in 1850, Brazil outlawed the importation of slaves into Brazil.
Our efforts were rather less successful the next time we clashed with Brazil. In 1862, when a bunch of British sailors were arrested, British warships were ordered to blockade Rio de Janeiro for six days. Brazil stood firm, and when we refused to apologise and pay compensation, they decided to break off diplomatic links and we decided to become a lot more conciliatory.
Brunei
Our early involvement with Brunei and the surrounding territory is intimately linked with the extraordinary story of the White Rajahs of Sarawak, which is also mentioned in the Malaysia section. Briefly, a man named James Brooke, born to British parents in India, became governor and eventually rajah of the territory of Sarawak, due to help he offered the Sultan of Brunei. Sarawak is now part of Malaysia, bordering Brunei, but previously was controlled by Brunei. It’s a rather exotic story for someone with the not hugely exotic name of James Brooke, who is now buried in St Leonard’s Church in Sheepstor on Dartmoor, which, while very pretty and with some views, is not the most hugely exotic of locations either.
In the 1840s, Captain Keppel of the Royal Navy with HMS Dido and Brooke with his ship the Jolly Bachelor, which sounds more like a pub, were involved in fighting pirates in the region. Brooke and the Royal Navy also teamed up to intervene in Brunei’s internal politics in 1846. Two of Brooke’s allies in Brunei had ended up dead because the sultan was suspicious of their closeness to the British, and to Brooke, and Brooke was determined this should not go unpunished. Admiral Cochrane turned up and the steamer Phlegethon was sent upriver to attack the forts there.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 4