Lithuania
Lithuania is the southernmost of the Baltic trio, lying just to the south of Latvia. But unlike the situation with Latvia and Estonia, we had been in action in Lithuania long before our navy took to roaming the Baltic. Lithuania is also different from the other two countries in the sense that while its inland part has been controlled for lengthy periods by Russia, its coastal part has also seen controlled for significant amounts of time by Prussia and Germany.
Before King Henry IV was King Henry IV, he was just plain (well admittedly he was a major aristrocrat, but plain compared to a king) Henry Bolinbroke. However, broke was one thing he wasn’t. Because, at the end of the fourteenth century he was forking out thousands of pounds, when thousands of pounds wasn’t just a lot of money, but really a lot of money, to send himself and hundreds of knights on crusade in Lithuania. You didn’t get the sun, sea and sand of a journey to the Holy Land, but there was still plenty of kudos in it. Unfortunately, from Henry’s point of view there wasn’t much victory in it either. He spent 1390 with 300 English knights, plus all their hangers-on, assisting the Teutonic Knights in the siege of Vilnius. (The symbol of the Teutonic Knights was a black cross later adopted by Germany. Hence all the fiddly black crosses kids used to try to stick on German aircraft kits after they had hastily glued them together.) Then he was there again in 1392. But all this proved rather pointless. Vilnius didn’t fall and Henry went on pilgrimage to the Holy Land instead, where he apparently decided that one day he would lead a crusade to take Jerusalem. That didn’t happen either.
After that the English left the Lithuanians alone for a while. In fact, rather than invading the country we got quite fond of parts of it, particularly the port of Memel (in German), or Klaipéda (in Lithuanian). Instead of invading with navy ships, by the second half of the eighteenth century we were going to Memel to get wood to build those navy ships.
Like I said, the Lithuanian coast had closer links for a long time to Prussia than Russia, so it managed to escape our attentions during, for example, the Crimean War, but we did return after the First World War. In the turmoil that gripped the area, both Germany and Russia, and eventually Poland, competed for control of parts of Lithuania. Eventually, most of Lithuania gained independence, but the key port of Memel/ Klaipéda was still outside their control, with it and the area around it having been made a Mandate of the League of Nations after the First World War. Some of the Lithuanian population of the area rose in revolt, with assistance from Lithuanians in the independent part, demanding unification with Lithuania. So along with the French we sent in the navy. Not in a big way, exactly, but we sent them in anyway. On 17–18 January 1923 our cruiser HMS Caledon arrived in Memel together with two French torpedo boats. A French cruiser was also on the way. The French firmly demanded that things were put back the way they were. We were a little more reticent, or at least as reticent as you can be when sending in a cruiser. Eventually, a deal was done and everybody went home comparatively happy.
Luxembourg
Another small country that we haven’t really invaded very much.
As you can see from looking at the sections on Belgium, Germany and France, we have had lots of armies near to Luxembourg over the centuries, but I can’t find evidence of any that actually crossed the border. Though, of course, if you do know of any, please let me know.
Marlborough and his army were certainly very close at one point to occupying Trier, just across the border from Luxembourg, in present-day Germany. He then advanced southwards along the east bank of the Moselle River, with Luxembourg on the other bank, as far as Sierck.
But Brits have fought and died in Luxembourg, including Flight Lieutnenant D.A. Cameron, killed in action on 10 May 1940 near Diekirch and now buried there.
In September 1944, Luxembourg was liberated from German occupation by the Americans. But there was at least one officer in the British Army who played a hugely significant role in Luxembourg’s liberation. Jean, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg himself (Luxembourg’s a Grand Duchy, not a kingdom, so Grand Duke is as high as it gets here), volunteered for the Irish Guards in 1942. He participated in the battle to liberate Caen and the liberation of Brussels. He was here on 10 September 1944 for the liberation of Luxembourg, and after that he was part of the invasion of Germany.
7
MACEDONIA TO NORWAY
Macedonia, Former Yugoslav Republic of
In 1918, British and Greek forces were faced by the Bulgarians in bitter fighting at the Battle of Doiran, now on the Greek border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. This was one of the toughest battles fought by Britain in the First World War, yet today very few people have heard of it.
The Bulgarians were well dug in at Doiran and we had made several attempts in previous years to capture the defences here. In September 1918 we tried again. Both British and Greek units advanced with great bravery and some of the Bulgarian trenches were taken, but after bitter counter-attacks and heavy artillery and machine-gun fire, both British and Greek forces were pushed back. Combined British and Greek losses were over 7,000 men.
Fearful of being outflanked by Allied forces advancing on their flank, the Bulgarians were eventually forced to retreat and in the ensuing week we pursued them back to the Strumica Valley. By the time hostilities with Bulgaria ceased on 30 September, the 27th Division was in the region of Kosturino, Rabrovo and Cestovo.
In August 2001, British troops returned to Macedonia on a more peaceful mission, this time as part of a NATO team to help disarm Albanian rebels and calm a tense situation.
Madagascar
Madagascar is the fourth largest island in the world. Its capital is Antananarivo. And, yes, we’ve invaded it a bit.
A couple of early settlements in the seventeenth century did not do very well. British pirates had rather more success. Well-known Scottish pirate or privateer William Kidd (not to be confused with American frontier outlaw Billy the Kid) visited Madagascar, as did plenty of other pirates from Britain. In fact, with its strategic position on trade routes, Madagascar became such a good location for pirates to operate from that rumours even started of a pirate state here. And English piracy in the area even became a diplomatic problem. In 1695, Henry Avery, one of the English pirates who frequented Madagascar, seized a ship owned by the Emperor of India, the Great Mughal. The English East India Company was forced to escort Mughal shipping in order to get its trading privileges restored.
Gradually, Madagscar became an area of rivalry between France and Britain. In 1811, for instance, we fought the Battle of Tamatave. The French fleet paused to capture the port of Tamatave on Madagacsar from the malaria-weakened British garrison here and then battle was joined. It was one of those sea battles where both sides occasionally found themselves sitting round not doing very much due to the fact that there wasn’t any wind to get them where they wanted to go. It turned into a messy engagement in which both sides suffered damage and, fortunately from our point of view, the French suffered rather more. The French ships fled and eventually we cornered the French ship Néréide at Tamatave and captured both it and the port. The ship was taken into British service, and imaginatively called HMS Madagascar.
Subsequently, we saw a chance of spreading British influence by working with a powerful ruler on the island, Radama I. Under the Anglo-Merina Treaty of Friendship of 1817 we agreed to train and support his army, and in the end he united two-thirds of the island under his rule. Radama’s successor was his wife Ranavalona I. She may have been his wife, but she didn’t agree with him on Britain at all. In fact, she ended the treaty of friendship with Britain and wasn’t too keen on some other Europeans either. She did, though, unite us and the French in wanting her gone. In 1845, British and French ships were in Tamatave again, this time attacking Ranavalona’s rule. HM frigate Conway and two French ships positioned themselves off Tamatave and demanded Ranavalona agree to stop some of the actions she was taking against European traders. A British and French landing party attac
ked the fort at Tamatave, but cooperation between the two parties wasn’t exactly perfect, with British and French wrestling over control of a captured banner. A fair bit of the town was destroyed, and eventually we and the French departed taking assorted property and ships with us.
Ranavalona died in 1861, and with us concentrating our attentions elsewhere, it was the French, rather than us, who took control of Madagascar. By 1942 we were seriously worried about that, because Madagascar was loyal to the Vichy French government and there were fears that the Japanese could be given naval bases on the island and threaten our operations throughout the Indian Ocean. So we decided it was time to invade Madagascar again in an epic operation, Ironclad, which is somehow unknown to most people today. It was to be our first amphibious assault since the disastrous Gallipoli operation, so we decided not to take too many chances and sent a major fleet, with the flag battleship Ramillies, the aircraft carriers Indomitable and Illustrious, the cruisers Devonshire and Hermione, plus eleven destroyers, six minesweepers, six corvettes and auxiliaries.
On 5 May 1942, our 29th Infantry Brigade and 5 Commando landed, with Royal Marines and two other brigades from the 5th Infantry Division. The landings were made near the port of Diego Suarez (now called Antsiranana) in northern Madagascar. Determined Vichy defenders held the invaders off until, in a dramatic, daring and extremely risky operation, the destroyer HMS Anthony managed to slip past the Vichy coastal artillery in the dark and land a Royal Marines force in the heart of the port itself. Luckily the plan worked and Diego Suarez surrendered on 7 May.
Then the Japanese got in on the act shortly after, in one of their most westerly operations, sending midget submarines into Diego Suarez harbour and seriously damaging Ramillies. Two of the Japanese midget submarine crew escaped onto the island and conducted a firefight with the Royal Marines, in which the Japanese were eventually killed.
In the following months British forces gradually pushed forward. We made another amphibious landing at Majunga on 10 September and finally, on 5 November, Annet (the Vichy French commander) surrendered.
We handed control of the island over to Free French forces in 1943.
Malawi
Malawi’s capital is Lilongwe. This fact is not only useful for pub quizzes, but it’s also a name that rolls off the tongue. Try it.
In 1859, David Livingstone turned up at Lake Malawi, which was then called Lake Nyasa. By 1888 the African Lakes Company had set itself up in the area. But it had competition. Big competition. The Portuguese aspired to link the territory they controlled on the east coast of Africa to the territory they controlled on the west coast and the area of present-day Malawi was in the middle of the projected Portuguese coast-to-coast zone of control.
Despite all this, and despite the Portuguese being our long-term friends, we decided we still really wanted the territory for ourselves. In 1889, Cecil Rhodes helped fund the local British consul in Mozambique, Harry Johnston, in a PR campaign to sign local chiefs up to treaties with Britain before the Portuguese could really get moving. The Anglo-Portuguese crisis of 1889–90 (yes, there was one) led to an ultimatum from us on 11 January 1890, and when the Portuguese eventually backed down, it led to the Treaty of London in August 1890 defining the borders of Angola and Mozambique. It didn’t make us at all popular with the Portuguese, but it did help us to secure the land we wanted.
Nyasaland (as Malawi was then known) was formally declared a British Protectorate in 1891.
In 1964 Nyasaland became independent and became Malawi.
Malaysia
It’s a part of the world we’ve long had an interest in.
Already by 1592 Sir James Lancaster was turning up on Penang with his ship the Edward Bonaventure for a few months of looting vessels.
In 1786 we established our first major presence here with the British East India Company leasing Penang from the Sultan of Kedah. On 11 August, Captain Francis Light raised the British flag and changed the name of the island (for a while at least) to Prince of Wales Island. Presumably the Prince of Wales was at least mildly chuffed. It’s always nice to have an island named after you. We liked it so much we decided to lease another chunk of land opposite Penang, which we grandly called Province Wellesley (not that Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington, a different Wellesley, Richard Wellesley, who was Governor of Madras and Governor-general of Bengal) and which is now Seberang Perai.
That was just the start of it. During the Napoleonic Wars we took over control of Malacca from the Dutch, so the French didn’t get their hands on it (though we gave it back to the Dutch in 1815 when the war was over) and we eventually swapped another bit of territory with the Dutch and took long-term control of it.
And so we went on through the nineteenth century adding little bits and pieces here and there (like an acquisitive squirrel gathering tasty nuts – admittedly like a very large imperial squirrel gathering tasty nuts, but like one nonetheless). In the 1840s began the fascinating episode of the so-called White Rajahs of Sarawak. One Brit called James Brooke, after helping out the Sultan of Brunei when he was in a tight spot, was made Rajah of Sarawak. He and his descendants ruled Sarawak as Rajahs all the way until 1946.
In 1846, we picked up Labuan as well. And in 1878 we leased Sabah from the Sultanate of Sulu. In 1909, we pinched a bunch of states off Siam and added them to the territories we controlled in what is now Malaysia. And where we weren’t actually taking control, we took sort of control by assigning British ‘advisers’ to local rulers. By the First World War we had direct or indirect control throughout the region.
During the Second World War, the Japanese invaded and took over the whole area. We tried to get it back. One thing we did was to support the Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army, a resistance force that had a strong element of ethnic Chinese in its ranks. People from our Force 136 landed to make contact with the resistance fighters, and by the end of the war we were sending in supplies by air.
By the summer of 1945 we were preparing to launch Operation Zipper to commence the liberation of Malaya and Singapore. The Japanese surrender meant the full implementation of the plan was unnecessary, and instead we moved in forces to implement the surrender, disarm the Japanese and return Malaya to British rule. On 28 August 1945, Task Force 11, which included the battleship HMS Nelson, two escort carriers and assorted other vessels, arrived in Penang.
But there was trouble ahead. The Malayan People’s Anti-Japanese Army had ceased to have the Japanese to fight, and as the world descended into the Cold War, Malaya descended into the so-called Malayan Emergency, in which we fought the guerrillas of the Malayan Peoples’ Liberation Army from 1948 to 1960. Eventually, we won the war against the guerrillas, but our time in control of the area was coming to an end.
In 1963 Malaysia became independent.
Maldives
A stunningly beautiful country. When we chucked the Dutch out of Sri Lanka, or Ceylon as it then was, we took over from them the influence they had had over The Maldives. In 1887 we signed an agreement with the Sultan by which we had control of the external relations and defence affairs of The Maldives.
During the Second World War we began to take more of an interest in the area from a military point of view. In 1941, engineers landed from HMS Guardian to build an airbase on Gan Island. There were also facilities for ships, jetties for flying boats, and coastal and air defence systems. In March 1944, there was action here when U183 torpedoed the tanker British Loyalty.
The Maldives became fully independent from us in 1965, but the last Brtitish troops didn’t leave Gan Island until 1976.
Mali
Mali is a huge country in West Africa that was well within the French sphere of influence during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, so we haven’t really invaded it much. However, Britons have had some dramatic times there.
And you’ll have heard of one of its major cities, Timbuktu. The town grew rich on trans-Saharan trade and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it became a sor
t of African El Dorado for Europeans, a legendary but unlocated golden city full of wealth. Consequently we set out to find it.
In 1805, a Scot named Mungo Park led an expedition including thirty soldiers and assorted officers along the Niger River towards Timbuktu, deep into what is now Mali. He had already been into the region back in 1796, when he had reached the Niger at Segou and followed its course until he ran out of supplies.
His 1805 expedition was both more successful, in the sense that he got a lot further, and less successful, in the sense that he (and lots of others) died. After resting for two months at Sansanding, in present-day Mali, he pressed on. Though his journals eventually made it home, dispatched by Park before his death, Park himself never did, and an investigation to find out what happened to him and his fellow men found only Park’s munitions belt. In 1824, a French geographical society offered a reward of 10,000 francs for the first non-Muslim to reach Timbuktu and return safely to tell about it. Another Scotsman, Gordon Laing, made it to Timbuktu in 1826, but didn’t have much time to celebrate since he ended up being killed there. As a result it was a Frenchman who finally picked up the ten grand in 1828 and set the scene for French, rather than British, expansion into the area.
Later, we had a chance to add a chunk of Mali to the British Empire, but we turned it down. In the late nineteenth century, Samori Ture created an empire that incorporated quite a bit of Mali. In January 1885, as part of his attempts to resist the French, he offered to put the empire under British protection, but we decided not to pick a quarrel with the French about the area.
The country came under Vichy French control during the Second World War and only switched sides after the Allied invasion of Algeria in 1942. Consequently, the only Brits arriving in Timbuktu in that period were prisoners. John Turnbull Graham and William Souter from the SS Allende are buried in war graves there.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 17