Kuwait
As with other Gulf States, we started off by signing a maritime treaty with Kuwait. In 1841, they agreed not to attack local sheikhs at sea and to allow us to sort out disputes. Then we got into a battle for influence in the area with the Ottomans and, in this case, the Germans.
Kuwait had been pencilled in as the terminus of the proposed Berlin–Baghdad railway. We decided we would rather not have a direct line from Berlin to the Gulf, so in 1899 we entered into a treaty with Kuwait whereby we took control of Kuwait’s foreign policy and in return we protected Kuwait and gave it an annual subsidy.
In 1913 we were even given a monopoly on oil exploration and exploitation. We, however, missed out here in a fairly large way, since commercial exploitation of Kuwaiti oil didn’t really start until towards the end of our time in the country.
On 20 June 1961, Kuwait became fully independent. Not wasting much time, on 25 June 1961, the then president of Iraq, President Qasim, declared that Kuwait was part of Iraq and he was going to annexe it. Amid fears that the Iraqis might send an armoured brigade into Kuwait, we went straight back. We rushed in troops, with forward units advancing to the strategically vital Mutla Ridge, only 5 miles from the Iraqi border. Eventually, the immediate crisis passed and as Arab League forces moved in to protect Kuwait, British forces pulled out, with the withdrawal complete by 19 October.
Then in the 1990s we were back when another Iraqi leader went a lot further down the path than Qasim. This time, on 2 August 1990, the Iraqi army did invade Kuwait. A coalition was formed to expel the Iraqis, with Britain playing a major part. We sent loads of armoured vehicles and about 43,000 ground forces personnel. We sent frigates and destroyers to the Gulf and we sent RAF squadrons. And we sent the SAS.
The air bombardment campaign started on 17 January 1991, and the ground assault began on 23 February. Coalition forces advanced rapidly to liberate Kuwait and 100 hours after the start of the ground campaign, a ceasefire was declared.
Kyrgyzstan
We’ve never really invaded Kyrgyzstan, though we have had the chance to get involved here.
A territory called the Khanate of Khokand, which incorporated parts of what is now Kyrgyzstan, lay sandwiched between expanding spheres of Russian and British influence during the so-called Great Game of the nineteenth century.
In 1864, the Russians made their first move on the region, seizing a bit of the Khan’s northern territories. The Khan begged us for military assistance, but we decided we weren’t interested at that stage. By 1876, even if we had been interested, it was too late. The Khanate of Khokand had been abolished and the area absorbed into the Russian Empire.
Laos
And the capital of Laos is? Vientiane. It’s one of those questions you might get asked in a quiz. The fact is that Laos, of the three states that used to make up French Indo-China, is the one which Brits, as a whole, are probably least aware of. We’ve all heard of Vietnam and Cambodia and the wars there, but far fewer know much about Laos and its similar history of post-colonial conflict. Most people can name the Viet Cong and the Khmer Rouge, but what about the Pathet Lao?
Like Vietnam and Cambodia, Laos saw its own British invasion long before the Americans were in any way involved.
For most of the Second World War, Vichy French authorities ran Laos, with Japanese forces free to move in and around the area. In March 1945, with the war in Europe almost finished, the Japanese took full control of the country and encouraged the people of Laos to regard themselves as independent from the French. When it was Japan’s turn to surrender, it was our turn to occupy a big chunk of Laos. In September 1945, with Laos north of the 16th parallel under Chinese control, the area south of the 16th parallel came under the control of British and Indian troops.
We stayed here until 1946, helping, among other things, the French to regain power, using British planes to fly French troops into southern Laos. Having said that, it wasn’t long until French control of Laos would end forever.
Latvia
Latvia is the middle one of the Baltic trio, sandwiched between Lithuania and Estonia. Obviously, with L and T playing a big part in the names Lithuania and Latvia, there could be some confusion over cars that you may see. For clarification, LT is Lithuania, LV is Latvia. I’ve no idea why it’s that way round. It just is.
As with Estonia, a lot of our history of military involvement with Latvia is tied up with Russia. In the Napoleonic Wars we spent some time fighting Russia, but by the summer of 1812 we were fighting France alongside the Russians as Napoleon’s armies marched through Russia. Riga, the capital of Latvia (and then under Russian control), was being besieged by the French. The suburbs were burnt, but the arrival of English and Russian gunboats saved the city itself and lifted the siege.
With the Crimean War we returned, but this time not to save Riga. Instead we bombarded it and generally roamed Latvian waters irritating the Russians. For instance, on 30 July 1855, HMS Archer and HMS Conflict attacked the town of Windau, now Ventspils, in Latvia, scattering troops and destroying public buildings.
With the Russian Revolution we returned to Latvian waters. In December 1918, with Red Russian forces only 25 miles away and advancing, Royal Navy shore patrols landed in Riga and marched through town to arrange the evacuation of Allied citizens and the Latvian government itself. HMS Ceres ended up firing on the barracks of a Latvian regiment that had mutinied. And we were in Riga again the following year, this time to help save it from the Germans and the Russians. In the autumn of 1919, HMS Dragon, a light cruiser, was part of a British and French fleet dispatched to Riga to aid Latvian troops in a counter-attack. During the action, Dragon was hit by fire from the shore and nine crew members were killed and four wounded.
Ultimately, we played a small but significant role in helping Latvia gain independence.
Lebanon
Lebanon’s a country that has seen more than a bit of conflict and, as you would expect, bearing in mind all the other places we’ve invaded, we’ve made our own major contribution to it.
In 1839–40 we fought the confusingly named Syrian War there (also known, to add to the confusion, as the Second Syrian War, or Egyptian-Ottoman War, or Second Egyptian-Ottoman War). Egypt and Turkey were competing for control of the region and the area of present-day Lebanon which, unfortunately for it, was stuck in the middle. Not for the first time, mind you. Egypt, for example, used to fight over this area with assorted powers from Asia, like the Hittites, and Babylonians long ago.
This time, Mehmet Ali, the Pasha of Egypt, had destroyed a Turkish army in Syria at the Battle of Nezib. Shortly after, at a most inconvenient time and in a most inconsiderate manner, the Turkish Sultan Mahmud II died, leaving a 16-year-old to run the Ottoman Empire.
Fearing chaos in the Middle East, as we often do, we sent Commodore Charles Napier and a small naval squadron into action. In August, he promptly arrived off Beirut and demanded that Mehmet Ali’s troops withdraw. They promptly ignored him since Napier only had a small force. But when reinforcements arrived for Napier in September, the situation changed dramatically. We bombarded Beirut and put ashore a landing force at Jounieh to the north.
Napier then set off for Sidon, bombarded it and landed to take the city itself. Meanwhile, to the north, the Egyptians abandoned Beirut. The focus then moved to Egypt, where Napier arrived with his ships and negotiated a peace treaty with Mehmet Ali.
By the early twentieth century, Egypt was firmly within our sphere of influence, while to the north and east the Ottoman Empire tottered on. In the First World War, we were on the other side from the Turks, and by autumn 1918 General Allenby’s army was pushing the Turks back through the same territory we had helped them regain in the Syrian War, as the 3rd Indian Division advanced towards Beirut.
Under the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the French rapidly took over Lebanon from us. And so it was that after Hitler invaded France, Lebanon came under the influence of the Vichy government, which in turn meant that we had to invade
Lebanon yet again.
There were fears that Germany could use Lebanon and Syria as a base to destabilise Iraq, so in 1941 Operation Exporter was launched. What it was exporting was a large Commonwealth force under the command of two British generals, General Henry Maitland Wilson in the Mandate of Palestine and Lieutenant General Sir Edward Quinan in Iraq. The campaign was launched on 8 June 1941 and involved some surprisingly (considering that not many Brits today know much about it) heavy fighting, both in the air and on the ground, including in the advance to Beirut the Battle of the Litani (involving Australian forces and 11 Commando), the Battle of Jezzine and the Battle of Damour. Eventually, the Vichy position became untenable and with the Australian 21st Brigade about to enter Beirut, General Henri Dentz, the Vichy commander, sought an armistice.
Moshe Dayan, later Chief of Staff of the Israeli Defence Forces and known for the black eye patch he wore, lost his eye in this campaign while working with an Australian unit. And the writer Roald Dahl, then a fighter pilot, flew in the campaign here.
In February 1983, we returned to Lebanon with BRITFORLEB, the British force in Lebanon, to assist with multinational efforts to deal with the then crisis here and to evacuate civilians.
Lesotho
Basutoland is one of those names that you might remember if you ever collected stamps. It’s also the name by which Lesotho used to be known.
People think of Lesotho as a small country, but there are over 2 million people living here and it has had plenty of interesting history, including being invaded by us.
King Moshoeshoe I came to power in the 1830s. For a considerable time he repulsed both overly keen Brits and overly keen Boers. But by 1868 Moshoeshoe was feeling the pressure from the Boers and eventually agreed to Basutoland becoming a British protectorate. Moshoeshoe died in 1870 and in 1871 we moved in and annexed the country to Cape Colony. In the early years, this meant little change in Basutoland, but by the late 1870s the situation was getting a lot more tense. Governor Henry Bartle Frere wanted to reserve some of the territory for settlement. He also wanted the locals’ guns under the 1879 Peace Protection Act. The result was the Basutoland Gun War. Obviously all modern wars have guns in them, but this was about guns as well, so that’s why it got the name. It would get a bit boring and hugely confusing naming every war that just involved guns, the Gun War.
It didn’t go very well for us. When Basotho chiefs started a rebellion, we sent in a force from Cape Colony to crush it. Which didn’t happen. Instead our troops found themselves in some difficulties, with, for instance, an ambush of a mounted column at Qalabani in October 1880 inflicting heavy casualties. Eventually we decided it was time to talk and in 1881 a peace treaty was signed giving the Basotho much of what they had wanted, including the right to keep their guns. In 1884, Basutoland was made a Crown colony and given more self-government.
Lesotho became independent in 1966.
Liberia
Not an area of huge British activity. We seem to have built trading posts in the territory in 1663, but the Dutch objected and rapidly destroyed them.
Unsurprisingly, though, armed British ships have spent some time in action in Liberian waters. For example, in 1721 the Welsh (or British) pirate Bartholomew Roberts captured the frigate Onslow at Cestos Point, on the River Cess in Liberia. And in the nineteenth century, British anti-slaving patrols operated in the waters of present-day Liberia.
In the 1820s, the American Colonization Society began sending to the area freed slaves from America, a move that created the foundations of the state of Liberia. Shortly after that the new Liberian government tried to impose duties on goods imported into its territory. We didn’t like this too much so we seized the revenue schooner John Seyes at Edina, in Liberia, and confiscated it.
Libya
Well, with the memory of our recent air campaign fresh in everybody’s mind, it will certainly come as no surprise to anybody that we have been inside Libya’s airspace. But our involvement with Libya goes back a long way before that.
Tripoli was one of the North African bases of what we then called the Barbary Corsairs, so that being the case, armed Brits have visited it on a number of occasions over the centuries.
Admiral Robert Blake, with an English fleet, dropped in on Tripoli in 1655 and helped arrange the release of some English prisoners.
Later in the seventeenth century, with a treaty under threat, English ships blockaded Tripoli. Then on 14 January 1676, in a daring raid, Lieutenant Cloudesley Shovell led a boat attack into Tripoli harbour and burned four ships here, with no English losses recorded. This was followed up by Sir John Narborough destroying four more of the Dey of Tripoli’s ships in the open sea, and eventually the Dey got the message and signed a peace treaty in March 1676.
In 1816, Lord Exmouth turned up with a British fleet to emphasise that we would not tolerate attacks on our ships.
Our main military incursions into Libya took place in the Second World War. By this stage Italy controlled Libya. On 10 June 1940, Italy declared war on us. The 11th Hussars were ordered into action and by 14 June British forces had invaded Libya and captured Fort Capuzzo. They also captured Generale di Corpo Lastrucci, who was the Italian tenth Army’s engineer-in-chief, plus his staff car, his staff officer, two lady friends and important maps.
In September 1940, with the Battle of Britain still raging and us fearing imminent invasion from the German armies gathered just across the Channel, Mussolini decided he would take advantage of the situation to invade Egypt. This proved to be a spectacular miscalculation, one of many in Benito’s life.
The Italian forces advanced from Libya into Egypt and stopped at Sidi Barrani to establish defensive positions as a base for a further advance. They made the mistake of arranging their positions at such long distances from each other that it was difficult for their fortified camps to give each other assistance.
In December, we hit back with Operation Compass, which was supposed to be a limited five-day attack against the Italian positions. However, unexpected success and the crumbling of the Italian defences meant that the limited attack became a full-scale counter-offensive.
By 15 December we were back inside Libya and Fort Capuzzo was once again in our hands. Tobruk fell on 22 January 1941. Meanwhile, in the south of Libya, the Long Range Desert Group operating with Free French Forces from Chad attacked the Italian garrison at Murzuq. On 9 February 1941, our forces, having overrun Cyrenaica, reached El Agheila and Churchill ordered the advance to be stopped so that troops could be sent to defend Greece. By this stage, the Italian Tenth Army had ceased to exist and about 130,000 prisoners of war had been taken.
This is where Rommel appears on the scene, having been sent with the Afrika Korps to bolster the Italians. In March he attacked at El Agheila and drove our forces back across the Egyptian border and by mid-April the front line was as far back as Sallum (though we still held Tobruk in Libya, now besieged). In June 1941 we struck back with Operation Battleaxe, but this turned into a costly failure, although we took Fort Capuzzo in Libya. Yet again. Before being forced to withdraw from it. Yet again.
After this, Wavell was replaced by Auchinleck as Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command and our forces were reorganised and given the famous name, the Eighth Army. In November 1941, we launched Operation Crusader. Despite successes for both sides, Rommel was forced to withdraw and in early December he ordered his troops back to the Gazala line, and eventually they withdrew as far as El Agheila again. Tobruk was relieved. Mightily relieved.
But it wasn’t to last. Rommel was resupplied and pushed the Allied forces back to Gazala. In the Battle of Gazala in May and June 1942, the Eighth Army was forced to withdraw and Tobruk fell. Rommel pursued them into Egypt, but his heavy losses of tanks at the Battle of Gazala meant he was unable to secure a decisive victory and his advance was stopped at the First Battle of El Alamein in July. This is the point at which Montgomery comes into the fighting.
In October 1942, Montgomery and the Eighth
Army went onto the offensive, and at the Second Battle of El Alamein at the end of October and beginning of November 1942, Rommel’s forces suffered a stunning defeat. Yet again they were forced back to El Agheila in Libya. But there was to be no recovery for them this time.
In December, Montgomery forced Rommel back from El Agheila. The Eighth Army reached Sirte, Gaddafi’s home town, on 25 December (he had been born there just a few months previously in June 1942). Eventually, Tripoli fell to the Eighth Army on 23 January. Shortly after that the front line moved out of Libya and into Tunisia.
From 1943 to 1951, we controlled Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, while the French were in control of Fezzan in the south. Then in 1951 Libya became independent under King Idris.
In 1969, Gaddafi staged a successful coup against King Idris. In 2011, British planes played a huge role in the events that led to the end of Gaddafi’s regime and his death.
Liechtenstein
Liechtenstein is a tiny principality sandwiched between Germany and Switzerland. A lot of Britons couldn’t easily find it on a map, so perhaps it’s not surprising that, as far as I know, we’ve never invaded it.
In the First Word War, because of Liechtenstein’s extremely close relationship with Austria, we weren’t quite sure what to do about it. So in the end we decided that while we weren’t actually at war with it, we were going to apply an economic embargo on it anyway.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 16