On 24 December, Churchill flew in to try to sort out a ceasefire, and in January and February of 1945, a ceasefire and political deal were eventually agreed. Sadly, ahead lay the bitterly fought Greek Civil War.
Grenada
We took an early but not hugely successful interest in the island. Then the French had a go in 1649, and after a while got pretty much the same reception from the locals. But the French seem to have been better prepared for such eventualities and after five years the fighting settled down.
By 1762, the Seven Years War was on (not, if you think about it, the most imaginative name for a sort of world war that did indeed last about seven years – it’s like calling the Second World War the Six Years War) and we were ready to have another go at Grenada. It wasn’t the most dramatic of invasions. Commodore Swanton arrived off the island with some ships and shortly afterwards was joined by more ships and some troops. The governor had already politely refused an invitation from Swanton to surrender, and on 4 March he now did the same to an invitation from Lieutenant Colonel Scott. Some of the population had other ideas and promptly surrendered, leaving the governor to shut himself up in the fort with his garrison. On 5 March, Brigadier General Walsh landed with grenadiers’ (grenadiers on Grenada) light infantry and the 27th Regiment. Walsh was just getting ready to assault the fort when the governor decided he had had enough as well and surrendered.
The French struck back in 1779 with a far more violent and noisy invasion of their own. The island surrendered and we had another bit of a disaster at the Battle of Grenada when a British fleet trying for an immediate recapture of the island got mauled by the French fleet because our admiral hadn’t really grasped how many French ships there were. Rather a problem that. Anyway, we got the island back under the Treaty of Versailles in 1783.
In 1795, Julien Fedon, inspired by the French Revolution’s abolition of slavery, led a rebellion against British rule and thousands of the island’s slaves freed themselves and joined him. The rebellion was crushed by the end of 1796.
Grenada became independent in 1974.
Guatemala
Guatemala has Mexico to its west and north, El Salvador to its south-east and Belize to its east.
English privateers like Drake and Cavendish prowled the Pacific coast of Guatemala in the late sixteenth century. Both Drake and Cavendish, for instance, passed through here and attacked Huatulco, across the border in Mexico.
The attractive Castillo de San Felipe was built in 1652 by the Spanish to protect Lake Izabal from the attentions of pirates, many of whom happened to be English. And the Guatemalan town of El Estor allegedly gets its name from English pirates sailing up the Rio Dulce to get stores.
In more recent times, the border between Guatemala and British Honduras, now Belize, has at times been a tense one due to Guatemalan claims to the territory, and British troops have regularly had to respond to crises in the area. 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. In 1975 the Guatemalans moved troops to the border and we responded again.
Guinea
Guinea is a big country with a long stretch of west Africa coastline. In the north of the country, there is a little bit of Guinea-Bissau on the coast, then inland the Guinea border meets up with Senegal. On the coast to the south of Guinea is Sierra Leone.
Guinea became a French colony in the nineteenth century, but as you would expect with a country in this part of the world with a long coastline, Brits have had a go at exerting their control.
Between 1750 and 1790, our main area of activity in the region was on the Îles de Los. And Conakry, the capital of Guinea itself, was started on one of the Îles de Los, Tombo Island, which we handed over to the French in 1887.
In 1885 we turned down the chance to have power over a big chunk of Guinea when we rejected an offer from Samori Toure to take his lands under our protection.
Guinea-Bissau
Guinea-Bissau is on the west coast of Africa with Senegal to the north. The Portuguese were the colonising force on the mainland, but we did have a go at setting ourselves up on the island of Bolama in May 1792. Things didn’t exactly start well. Two ships brought 275 colonists, including fifty-seven women and sixty-five children, to Bolama. But an attack by locals scared off most of the would-be colonists leaving fifty-two men, thirteen women and twenty-six children to press on. For a while. By late 1793, only a tiny number of colonists remained and finally in November the last of them packed up and left. In 1814 we gave it another go, but that didn’t work either.
In 1860, we decided again we had been a bit premature and declared the island annexed to Sierra Leone, which we controlled. Unfortunately for British hopes, a commission under Ulysses S. Grant (yes, him) decided that the Portuguese should have it, not us, and that was pretty much the end, from our point of view, of trying to grab parts of what is now Guinea-Bissau.
Guyana
Guyana is situated in north-eastern South America, with Suriname to the east, Venezuela to the west and Brazil to the south.
The Dutch used to control Suriname before we took over, and they were in what is now Guyana before we were as well.
They set up two colonies, one known as Essquibo and one known as Berbice. And they brought in slaves to work on the plantations. Then in the mid-eighteenth century they decided to allow Brits to settle in the Demerara (as in the sugar) River area and plenty of Brits accordingly arrived there. From the point of view of the Dutch retaining control of it, this might not have been the most logical move, since the Demerara colony was to act as something of a bridgehead for expanding British interest in and involvement with the area prior to our eventual takeover there.
But it wasn’t just Brits and Dutch involved in the area. In 1763 the Berbice Slave Uprising erupted, led by a slave named Cuffy. Eventually, with British and French help, the uprising was crushed.
As with a lot of other Dutch colonies around the world, we saw our chance in this region when Revolutionary France took over in the Netherlands at the end of the eighteenth century. We took control in this area in 1796, and though we briefly gave it back to the Dutch under the Treaty of Amiens, we soon had it back again and kept it at the end of the Napeoleonic Wars.
In the nineteenth century, a massive border dispute developed with Venezuela as we expanded control westwards. But after international arbitration this was largely settled in our favour.
Guyana became independent in 1966.
Haiti
Haiti is a country with a lot of history that deserves to be better known in Britain, and a small percentage of that includes armed Brits roaming the place.
The early years of our involvement with Haiti were mainly to do with English pirates, and one name in particular stands out here – Tortuga.
It’s one of those names you may well have heard of, without knowing exactly where it is. It’s a Haitian island lying off the north coast and it’s big in the history of British pirates. And French pirates. And a few Dutch and other ones. Lots and lots of pirates, in fact. In the early seventeenth century there was a sort of ongoing tug of war here between the Spanish on one side and French and English pirates on the other. The Spanish would intermittently attempt to force the pirates out and the French and English would either resist and/or wait until the Spanish had gone away before returning. In 1654 the Spanish recaptured the island for the fourth and last time, but in 1655 the English and French were back and Colonel William Brayne, acting as military governor on Jamaica, appointed Elias Watts ‘governor’ of Tortuga. After that, the French took over, although that wasn’t the end of English pirates on Tortuga.
Soon, though, it wasn’t just pirates heading to Haiti from Britain. As the eighteenth century wore on, we had a number of cracks at what had by now become the French-controlled territory of Saint Domingue. Sir Charles Knowles didn’t always hav
e the most successful time at sea (see Cuba), but on 8 March 1784 he attacked the French-held Fort Saint Louis de Sud in Saint Domingue. His squadron bombarded the fort heavily and eventually the garrison was forced to surrender.
In the late eighteenth century, with the French Revolution taking place in France and with France struggling to hold in check rebellion in Haiti, we saw an opportunity. War broke out between Britain and France in 1793 and we installed a naval blockade against the French forces on the island. On 19 September 1793, British forces landed at Jeremie in Haiti. Many of the local white property owners supported their arrival, thinking Britain would restore their position, and by June 1794 British forces held the capital, Port au Prince, and most of the port towns. But British success was not to last. Rebels and the revolutionary French did a deal that would give citizenship to all people on the island of any ethnic background, and the efforts of the French and the rebels, combined with the damage done to British forces and their morale, gradually wore our troops down. The black Haitian leader Toussaint L’Ouverture proved particularly successful in fighting our troops. On 31 August, British General Thomas Maitland signed a deal with him and finally, in October 1798, we withdrew entirely from the country.
Recently, the Royal Navy returned to Haiti in Operation Panlake, with the Royal Fleet Auxiliary supply ship Largs Bay, at the request of the UN, helping to move supplies after an earthquake.
Honduras
Honduras is the bit on the Central American isthmus where it makes a sharp 90-degree angle on the Caribbean side, just above Nicaragua.
If you’re reading this alphabetically, you’ll have already come across the name Honduras, because Belize used to be called British Honduras. This region used to be called Spanish Honduras, but not unreasonably the Spanish bit was dropped after the locals got rid of Spanish control.
Spanish-controlled for a bit and handy for the Caribbean, plus a long coastline: with that combination you would expect pirates from Britain to be active here, and indeed they were. They attacked the port of Trujillo on a number of occasions.
Over the decades we began to become involved on a more serious, official basis in the territory of present-day Honduras. As we’ll explore in more detail in the Nicaragua section, we formed an alliance with the Miskito kingdom, which stretched along the coast of Nicaragua and a bit of Honduras. And we also had settlements there. We took an interest in the Honduras Bay Islands, particularly Roatán, and in the 1730s the Black River settlement started.
Relations between us and the Spanish colonial authorities in the area were, inevitably bearing in mind the number of wars we fought with the Spanish, often tense, and when the Spanish joined the American side during the American War of Independence we mounted an invasion of their territory in Honduras.
In October 1779, with twelve ships and 1,200 men, we attacked the fortifications at San Fernando de Omoa. Eventually, some of our men climbed into the fort and opened a gate, and the Spanish subsequently were forced to surrender. Rather fortunately for us, in the harbour there were two Spanish ships holding more than 3 million Spanish dollars of silver. Handy.
Less fortunate for us was that the Spanish counter-attacked, a lot of our men fell ill and by the end of November we withdrew.
Also less fortunate for us was that during the war the Black River settlement was overrun by the Spanish, and though we got it back for a time, we handed it over to them permanently in 1787.
We hung on for longer in Roatán and even declared the Honduras Bay Islands a colony in the 1850s. However, within a decade Britain was handing them over to Honduras, something in itself which led to one last attempt to invade Honduras, with Britons this time involved on both sides.
William Walker is one of those figures from history that when you read about him, you wonder why you have never heard of him before. He is more a part of American and Central American history than British history, so I won’t go into big detail here except to say that from 1853 he roamed the region on filibustering or freebooting missions, basically moving into areas with a bunch of like-minded freebooters, including the English adventurer Charles Frederick Henningsen, and taking over. At one stage he even set himself up as President of Nicaragua.
Finally, in 1860, British colonists in Roatán decided that they didn’t want to become Honduran and prompted Walker to head for Honduras. But Walker was in big trouble this time. He landed at Trujillo, only to fall into the hands of Captain Nowell Salmon of the British Navy. Salmon then handed him over to the local authorities, who shot him. End of invasion.
Hungary
Hungary is just a bit too far from the sea to have received very much attention from us. Nevertheless, armed Brits have conducted operations there.
For instance, in the late seventeenth century, assorted volunteers from Britain, including the son of Prince Rupert, fought in the army of Prince Eugene of Savoy as it pushed the Ottomans back through Hungary. Buda was stormed in 1686 and in 1687 the prince won a battle at Mohacs, scene of the decisive Ottoman victory in 1526.
The RAF operated over Hungary in the Second World War. SOE also operated in Hungary, though not extensively. SOE had difficulty establishing a presence in the country, with a couple of failed missions. When Basil Davidson was working as liaison with the Yugoslav partisans, SOE sent him into Hungary to try to organise a rebel movement there, but he realised that it wasn’t going to work and eventually crossed back into the Fruska Gora area.
5
ICELAND TO JORDAN
Iceland
Older readers will probably remember the so-called Cod Wars with Iceland in the 1970s, but what many won’t be aware of is that some decades before that we actually invaded Iceland.
At the time of the German invasion of Denmark on 9 April 1940, the Danish king was also King of Iceland. In response to the German occupation of Denmark, Britain offered to help Iceland defend itself and encouraged it to join the war alongside Britain. The offer was rejected.
As the Germans advanced through Norway, we began to think how useful bases in Iceland would be and how dangerous it would be if the Germans took over Iceland. Consequently, we decided to prevent any possibility of that by going there ourselves. Thus began Operation Fork. Not our smoothest operation, in the sense that it was thrown together pretty hastily at four days’ notice and relied on newly recruited and not yet fully-trained Royal Marines, with a shortage of weapons and very few heavy weapons. Having said that, it worked.
On 8 May 1940, the force departed from the harbour in Greenock on board the cruisers HMS Berwick and HMS Glasgow, with two destroyers HMS Fearless and Fortune as escort. Very early on the morning of 10 May, a reconnaissance plane from HMS Berwick flew over Reykjavik, waking a number of the inhabitants. Shortly afterwards an Icelandic policeman saw the fleet arriving and raised the alarm, and pretty soon after that about 400 marines from Berwick, having transferred to Fearless for the landing, arrived in the harbour, where they were met by the British consul and some rather upset locals.
However, there was no resistance and our troops immediately took control of the radio and post office. The Icelandic government issued a strong protest about the occupation, but was eventually persuaded to cooperate. The Germans considered mounting an invasion of Iceland in response to the British invasion, and prepared a plan for Operation Ikarus, but it never happened.
Finally, in July 1941, the US took over responsibility for Iceland from us, with the consent of the Icelandic government.
India
The story of our involvement with this impressive country is a long and fascinating one, but unfortunately we’ve only got time in this book for a brief version, particularly since our close involvement with India is something almost all Brits are at least aware of and this book is supposed to be exploring the sort of history Brits are less aware of.
The East India Company was chartered in 1600. Somewhat confusingly for modern Britons, this wasn’t just interested in India (and not just in the east of India either) sin
ce it was also targeting trade in areas further east. By 1613 it had established a trading base at Surat in India; by 1639 it was founding Fort St George at Madras (Chennai); and in 1668 it established a trading post at Bombay (Mumbai). Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the East India Company ran into big trouble with the Mughal authorities. It lost Child’s War of 1686–90 after a Mughal fleet attacked the English base in Bombay and forced it to surrender. Then in 1695 an English pirate attacked and seized Mughal ships leading to fury against the East India Company.
Nevertheless, the East India Company began slowly to eclipse other European rivals. The Portuguese and Dutch eventually dropped out of the race to be the major European power operating in India, which left the French to deal with. In the eighteenth century, this rivalry produced a series of bitter wars between Brits and local allies on one side against the French and their local allies on the other side. The First Carnatic War ran fom 1746 to 1748 and saw the French attack and capture Madras, even taking Robert Clive prisoner. Almost before the First Carnatic War had ended, we were into the second one. In this one, from 1749 to 1754, we and the French were heavily involved with local politics. The two European powers backed rival claimants to the throne of Hyderabad and rival claimants to be Nawab of Arcot. In 1751, Clive took Arcot and Muhammad Ali Khan Walajah was recognised as Nawab. Peace came with the Treaty of Pondicherry in 1754. But again it wasn’t to last for long. By 1757, the Third Carnatic War had broken out. In Bengal, Clive won a hugely significant victory over the French-backed Nawab of Bengal, Siraj ud Daulah. In 1760, Sir Eyre Coote won an important victory over the French at the Battle of Wandiwash and in 1761 we took the major French base at Pondicherry. They got it back, by the Treaty of Paris in 1763, but they also agreed to stay out of involvement in local politics and not build more fortifications. The French finally ceased to be a threat to us in India during the Napoleonic Wars.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 12