Across on the other side of the land, it was us against the Spanish, rather then the French. The Spanish had taken an early interest in Canada’s Pacific coast, but we soon started competing with them and we almost went to war with Spain over our respective interests in the area during the Nootka Crisis in the late eighteenth century. Eventually it was, yet again, us that became the dominant European power in the area.
The imposition of our control over the central parts of Canada did not come without local resistance, like the Red River Rebellion of 1869 and the North-West Rebellion of 1885.
Canada became independent from Britain through a series of steps that gradually gave it more and more control over its affairs.
Cape Verde
The Cape Verde Republic has ten islands nestling in the Atlantic, off the west coast of Africa. Not everybody in Britain knows where they are. Unfortunately for the locals, Francis Drake did, and he attacked the then capital of Cape Verde, Ribeira Grande (now Cidade Velha) in 1585. Drake’s men stayed in the town for a couple of weeks. Finally, one of his men was killed and he set light to the town as a reprisal. At least he spared the hospital. The fort in the town was built in 1590, no doubt because of Drake’s efforts.
In 1781, we fought a fairly inconclusive sea battle against the French in the roadstead of Porto Praya in the Cape Verde Islands.
Darwin was a rather more peaceful British visitor in 1832.
Central African Republic
The Central African Republic is, not surprisingly, pretty centrally placed in Africa. As such, it somewhat fulfils the role that Mongolia plays in Asia, that Bolivia plays in South America, and Hungary in Europe, in terms of our armed globe-trotting. It’s just too far away from the sea to have received our attention.
Nevertheless, we have operated on its borders, for example in the Bahr el Ghazal region of South Sudan to its east, which we controlled for a long time, so in the fluid state of affairs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century it’s certainly possible our troops crossed the present border at some stage. There is some evidence that in the early twentieth century, British troops were asked to assist the French against local rebels that were active in what is now the Central African Republic.
Chad
A lot of Brits would probably struggle to say exactly where Chad is, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it’s one of those countries we haven’t had a lot to do with on the invading front. Having said that, Chad does play an interesting and, at one point, vital role in British military history.
In the 1820s, a small British expedition reached Lake Chad, the first Europeans to reach it, and elements of the expedition seem to have ventured into what is now Chad.
In the nineteenth-century imperial carve-up of Africa, however, Chad went to France. The border was undefined for a while, so again it’s possible British troops may have been on the other side of it at some stage. You will probably have heard of Darfur, now sandwiched between Chad to the west and the rest of Sudan to the east (South Sudan), well it was Britain that first brought that troubled region to the notice of the Western world. Up until the First World War, the region had been mainly independent, but by 1916, as we fought the Turks, we were afraid that the ruler of Darfur might side with the Ottomans, who were looking for Muslim allies, against us. Consequently, we started by arming Arab tribes, who promptly used their weapons to advance across Darfur and fight tribes inside Chad. We then sent a British and Egyptian invasion force into Darfur to occupy the region.
In the Second World War, Chad from the start sided with the Free French against Vichy in our conflict with Vichy, so we didn’t get an opportunity to invade it then. Instead, it was to become a vital part of our war against the Axis powers in North Africa.
For instance, early in the war the Long Range Desert Group used Chad as a base to launch attacks, with the Free French, against Italian garrisons across the border in southern Libya. On one occasion they attacked the Italian garrison at Murzuq and destroyed the airfield there, before heading for Zouar in French-controlled Chad.
Of rather more overall strategic importance, though, was something called the Takoradi Route, or more officially, the West African Reinforcement Route, because of which Chad became vital to British airpower in North Africa and the Middle East, and was consequently vital to victory both in the area and in the Second World War itself. It’s one of the Second World War’s great but little-known stories.
Early in the war, with most of Europe and North Africa in German, Italian or Vichy French hands, there was no safe way to get planes to our forces in the Middle East and North Africa, except by hugely lengthy sea voyages. So, planes were shipped from Britain in kit form and reassembled at Takoradi in Ghana. They were then flown via a series of landing strips across Africa to Khartoum. And one of the stops on the way was at Fort Lamy (now N’Djamena, the capital) in, you guessed it, Chad.
Chile
Chile is an enormously long, thin country. It has a coastline that stretches all the way from the bottom of South America, where it can be very chilly indeed, and north to Peru
With such a long coastline and with Chile long a part of the Spanish Empire, it was hardly likely to escape attacks by us, and it didn’t.
Pretty much as soon as we made it round Cape Horn, we had our eyes set on the Chilean coast and not in a friendly way.
Francis Drake dropped in to sack Valparaiso on 5 December 1578 and capture a ship laden with gold and wine, which must have been handy. Perhaps even handier, he also got hold of the ship’s pilot who happened to have a map of the coast. Then, in the 1590s, Richard Hawkins popped in for a spot of looting and plundering. And George Anson, on his amazing round-the-world mission (see Peru), was to cruise along the Chilean coast in the eighteenth century.
In 1814, we fought the Battle of Valparaiso, but not, interestingly, against the Spanish or Chileans. No, instead it was against the Americans. With the War of 1812 still blazing (since confusingly it wasn’t just a War of 1812, but also a War of 1813, 1814 and 1815) on land far to the north, the frigate USS Essex had headed south to raid British whaling fleets. The frigate HMS Phoebe and the sloop HMS Cherub were dispatched to find the Americans and finally cornered them in Valparaiso. Eventually, the USS Essex and the sloop USS Essex Junior were brought to battle and the US ships were captured.
In 1810, a national junta had proclaimed Chile an independent state within the Spanish monarchy. By 1818, it was proclaimed an independent republic and by December of that year, a British veteran of the Napeolonic wars, Thomas Cochrane, was in command of the newly created Chilean navy and hiring large numbers of British sailors and organising it along British lines. He led this navy in the dramatic capture of the powerfully fortified Chilean city of Valdivia (from the Spanish) in 1820.
Soon after Chilean independence, instead of invading Valparaiso, we took to having a base here. It’s a fascinating but comparatively little-known fact about the Royal Navy that from about 1826 to 1837 its South America Station, and from 1837 to 1865 its Pacific Station, had their headquarters at Valparaiso, the place Drake had raided all those years before. HMS Beagle dropped in here in 1834 on its second voyage. In 1854, a number of ships, including HMS President, HMS Amphitrite, HMS Pique, HMS Trincomalee (now located at Hartlepool) and HMS Virago set sail from here to attack Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka during the Crimean War (see Russia).
Today, a large and impressive arch, the Arco Británico, in Valparaiso, commemorates people like Cochrane who fought on behalf of Chile.
China
People who grew up during the Cold War, when the threat of nuclear war seemed so very real, might be tempted to think that we have never invaded China, simply because during the Cold War such an act would have been basically asking to be nuked. But, of course, we have invaded China on a number of occasions, as many Chinese are very well aware.
Already by 1637 we were invading China. In that year, four heavily armed ships sent by Sir William Courteen turned up in Macao and proceed
ed to capture one of the Bogue forts, annoying quite a few people before departing again.
It wasn’t the best of starts to our relations with China, but there was worse, much worse, to come.
By 1711, British merchants were being given permission to enter Guangzhou to buy tea. Nothing wrong with that, except that eventually we started dealing in much less pleasant commodities, in particular opium. We began to send large quantities of opium to China from India. The Chinese government tried to put a stop to this with assorted measures. However, some local British authorities saw these measures as an unacceptable infringement on the rights of British merchants and the First Opium War broke out. British and Chinese warships clashed and in 1840 an expeditionary force landed in China. We fought the Battle of Amoy, took the Bogue forts at the mouth of the Pearl River, occupied Shanghai and in the last big battle of the war took what is now Zhenjiang in July 1842. This was not our finest hour, but it’s worth pointing out that, even at the time, some Brits knew that. Gladstone, for instance, loudly denounced the war and the trade it was protecting.
After the war ended, our winnings from the Chinese included a lot of money, Hong Kong Island and the opening up of assorted trade ports, such as Shanghai.
The peace wasn’t to last. By 1856 we were attacking China again. This was the Second Opium War, also known as the Arrow War, because of a dispute over a ship called the Arrow. Soon the French joined in on our side, and the Americans and Russians, keen to get involved in China too, gave us support. In June 1859 the Treaties of Tientsin gave the four powers pretty much what they wanted. However, in the wake of this treaty, the Chinese emperor decided to take a tougher line and when, in June 1859, a British military expedition tried to escort British and French envoys to Beijing, fighting broke out again. The result was that in 1860 a large British and French force headed for Beijing. The Chinese defenders were decisively defeated at the Battle of Palikao in September, and in October we entered Beijing and burned the Summer Palace. From the negotiations that ended the war we got even more from the Chinese, including Kowloon.
Relations continued to be tense. For instance, in 1868 the Yangzhou riot prompted the British consul in Shanghai to sail up the Yangtze to Nanjing with Royal Marines in a show of force.
In 1898 we considerably expanded the territory we controlled in China. We leased the New Territories around Hong Kong for ninety-nine years, and we also picked up another bit of territory that few people are aware of today, Weihai, which was far up the Chinese coast towards the Korean Peninsula. We held that until 1930.
In 1899, things once again started getting very tense. This was the Boxer Uprising, and by the summer of 1900 a bunch of foreigners, including diplomats, civilians and soldiers, were under siege in the Legation Quarter in Beijing. The siege lasted fifty-five days. An international relief force under our Vice Admiral Edward Seymour was stopped and surrounded. But a second international force under our Lieutenant-General Alfred Gaselee finally made it through, defeated the Chinese forces opposing them and captured Beijing. The peace treaty imposed heavy penalties on the Chinese.
In 1904, fearful of spreading Russian influence, we invaded Tibet. We had many more lethal weapons than the Tibetans, and we killed a large number of them.
In the years between the First and Second World Wars, British forces were involved in yet another series of incidents in China. For example, in 1926 there was the Battle of Wanhsien involving HMS Cockchafer and HMS Widgeon, and in 1927 we sent significant troops to Shanghai to protect the international settlement there.
With the arrival of the Second World War, we found ourselves fighting on the same side as the Chinese. After that, there were to be yet more difficulties in the relationship, but our days of invading China were finally over.
Colombia
Colombia has a lengthy coastline, is handy for the Caribbean, and has been controlled for quite long periods by Spain, so, as you would expect, it has received quite a few unfriendly visits from us.
As often in this part of the world, privateers, pirates and raiders led the way. In 1568 Sir John Hawkins allegedly had a cunning idea to take Cartagena, a port built by the Spanish on the Colombian coast, by persuading the governor to open up a foreign fair in the city, with Hawkins then planning to sack the city afterwards. The plan failed, and so did Hawkins’ subsequent attack on the town.
In 1586 the English returned. This time it was Sir Francis Drake leading the attack, and this time Cartagena wasn’t so lucky. The attack caused considerable damage and the Spanish had to pay Drake an enormous ransom to get their town back.
Then in the early seventeenth century we even had our own colony on what is now Colombian territory. From 1631 to 1641, the Providence Island Company ran a settlement on, you guessed it, Providence Island, now called Providencia or Old Providence. John Pym, later to find fame in the English Civil War, was its treasurer and, in fact, the company was to help bring together a number of people who would be leading figures on the Parliamentary side in the conflict of the 1640s. Things went downhill for the Providence Island Company in 1641, though, when a Spanish fleet overran it. And by that stage, people in England were slightly distracted by other issues, such as looming civil war and slaughter.
And as so often where privateers, pirates and raiders first went, the British Navy followed. Not always terribly successfully, of course. For instance, we found ourselves fighting the French off Cartagena in the so-called Action of August 1702, which took place, you won’t be surprised to know, in August 1702. The British commander, Vice Admiral Benbow, was wounded and eventually died from his wounds, but not before he had ordered the court-martialing of some captains on a variety of charges, with two of them eventually being shot for cowardice.
And we didn’t have a lot more luck in 1741. Admiral Edward Vernon mounted a major invasion, attempting to take Cartagena. Vernon had 186 ships, and from Britain and America 23,600 men, 12,000 of them infantry. Somewhere in there was George Washington’s brother, Lawrence Washington. But after weeks of heavy fighting and losing men both to the defenders and disease, Vernon was forced to abandon the siege.
In the nineteenth century, we probably made our most significant military effort in Colombia. This, however, was unofficial or semi-official rather than official. With the battle under way to free South America from Spain, significant numbers of Britons went to the continent to fight in the liberation wars. Many of these were experienced veterans of the Napoleonic Wars and the British government gave tacit support to the effort. Eventually, most Brits fighting for Simon Bolivar against the Spanish were combined into a brigade called the British Legions. At the Battle of Boyaca in 1819, which led to the liberation of Colombia, they carried banners featuring the British flag, and Bolivar credited them with playing a significant role in the eventual victory in Colombia.
Comoros Islands
The Comoros are an archipelago lying between north-eastern Mozambique and north-western Madagascar. They have never been a British colony, but have had armed Brits set foot on them.
One of the more unusual British visitors was one William Kidd. Now you may know Kidd as a pirate, and indeed he was hanged as a pirate. In fact, the rope having broken the first time round, he was hanged twice as a pirate. Not something many people can, or indeed, would wish to claim.
However, when he landed on the Comoros in 1697, he was on a fairly official mission, ironically enough to capture pirates. With the backing of a number of powerful figures, including the First Lord of the Admiralty, Kidd had set off from London in 1696 in the appropriately named Adventure Galley. After assorted adventures, he ended up in New York to recruit more crew, and then returned across the Atlantic and rounded the Cape of Good Hope.
In early 1697 he had made it to Mohéli in the Comoros. Not the happiest of times for him or his crew, because fifty of his men got sick and died in just a week. And things didn’t get too much better for Kidd on the pirate-hunting front. Instead, he turned to apprehending non-pirate ships an
d eventually reached the gallows. Twice.
In the nineteenth century we posted a consul to Anjouan and the Royal Navy used coaling facilities at Pomony. It was, however, the French who became the dominant European power in the Comoros. This meant that when the islands sided with Vichy in the Second World War, we got a chance to officially invade them. In 1942 we sent troops to seize the Comoros, which they did successfully.
Congo, Democratic Republic of the
The area around the Congo River was strongly connected to slaving and, as elswhere after we had changed from a nation strongly connected with slaving to one opposing it, the anti-slaving patrols of our navy’s West Africa squadron carried out a number of operations in the vicinity of the Congo in the first half of the nineteenth century.
In 1875 we dispatched two Royal Navy expeditions aimed at tackling Congo pirates. And in December 1875, Commander Hewett and three gunboats made it 73 miles inland from the mouth of the Congo River as far as the port of Boma.
The same year we also came close to having a Congo empire of our own, but passed up the opportunity. A certain Lieutenant Cameron had been assiduously following in the footsteps of the explorer David Livingstone and in the process he had also been just as assiduously signing treaties along the way with assorted local chiefs, so much so that by 1875 he could proudly declare that the lands of the Congo Basin were now British. Much to Cameron’s chagrin, however, our government decided that they weren’t British, and that it wasn’t an area the government would be choosing to focus on. So the explorer Henry Morton Stanley, who had also failed to interest us in the area, helped the Belgians take it over instead.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 6