Malta
Malta is, of course, now a popular tourist destination. Older readers in particular will also know of Malta’s heroic defiance against German attacks during the Second World War and, of course, most people will be aware that Britain has strong connections with this little island nation. Not quite so many, however, will know how those connections came about.
Malta was already well known to us long before we took control here. There were, for example, Knights of Malta from Britain, like English Hospitaller Nicholas Upton, who was commander of the sea defences of Malta in July 1551 when he managed to fight off a surprise attack, only to collapse and die at the end of a long day’s fighting. And in the seventeenth century Admiral Sir John Narborough, leading a squadron in the area for operations against the Barbary Corsairs, decided that he would only salute the knights at Valetta if they would salute him back with their guns. The Knights refused and the Grand Master apparently questioned Narborough’s rank, but eventually the potential conflict was solved in a friendly fashion and Narborough based his squadron in Malta for a while from the middle of 1675.
Indeed our invasion of Malta, if you can call it that, was to be a rather friendly one as well – friendly that is to the Maltese, although considerably less friendly to the French.
In 1798, Napoleon dropped by Malta on his way to attack Egypt. By this time the Knights of Malta seem to have outstayed their welcome with the local Maltese, some of whom petitioned Napoleon to remove power from them. This Napoleon did, and left a French garrison there when he departed. Fairly rapidly, the French became deeply unpopular too and a rebellion started. Which is where we come in again.
We installed a naval blockade of the islands to prevent supplies and reinforcements reaching the French and we sent help to the rebels. In October 1798, Nelson turned up and in the same month the French surrendered the citadel of Gozo. In December 1798, Nelson sent Captain Alexander Ball to assist the rebels and he proved so popular with the locals that he was elected president of the Assembly in February 1799. Much better than just a polite ‘thank you’ or box of chocolates.
Then, in September 1799, 800 British troops under General Thomas Graham arrived, and in June 1800 another 800 British troops under Major General Henry Pigot landed. In September 1800, the French finally decided that they had had enough and surrendered. Under the Treaty of Amiens in 1802 we were supposed to evacuate the island, but we didn’t want to. War broke out again in 1803 and we stayed, with Ball returning as our representative. He died here in 1809 and is buried here, and in 1810 the Maltese built a memorial in his memory. There was plenty of support among the Maltese for British control, which in many ways was fortunate because the Treaty of Paris in 1814 confirmed British control.
Malta became independent on 21 September 1964.
Marshall Islands
The Marshall Islands are situated in the Pacific, a little north of the equator and a long way north of New Zealand.
A lot of nations have been involved with the Marshall Islands, although they are named after a Brit.
The Spanish were probably the first Europeans to reach the islands. Then Captain John Marshall turned up. In 1788 he was captain of the British Navy ship Scarborough, a ship of the First Fleet taking convicts to Botany Bay. On the return journey from Australia, he dropped in on the islands. He originally called them Lord Mulgrove’s Range. Fortunately, they eventually became known as the Marshall Islands. Otherwise the UN would now have a member country called Lord Mulgrove’s Range, which, since it sounds more like a kitchen feature in a large country house, would seem strange.
Eventually, the Spanish took control. In 1884, they sold the islands to the Germans, who lost them in the First World War to the Japanese who were then fighting on our side. And they, when not fighting on our side, lost them in the Second World War to the Americans. The Americans then used them for, among other things, nuclear tests. Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands, has given its name to the swimwear, but there were also some big, big explosions there in the post-war period.
Finally, the people of the Marshall Islands got to run their own country again.
Mauritania
Some Brits when they hear the word Mauritania will think of an enormous and rather impressive ocean liner built in the early twentieth century, the RMS Mauretania, sister ship of the unlucky RMS Lusitania sunk by a U-boat in 1915. But that’s Mauretania with an ‘e’ from the Roman North African province. This is Mauritania with an ‘i’, the enormous country in north-west Africa, with a long and varied history.
Part of that long history includes invasion by us, perhaps inevitably bearing in mind its long coastline and its position not a huge distance, in global terms, south of these islands. One of the main things we were after there was gum (not chewing gum, but gum arabic). And we weren’t the only ones. Competition from other European powers was enthusiastic, and at times more than just enthusiastic. It was, frankly, violent.
In 1445, Prince Henry the Navigator set up a Portuguese colony on the island of Arguin, the main aim of this venture being gum arabic and slaves. In 1633 the Dutch pinched Arguin. Then we got hold of it in 1665. Then the French had it again. Then the Brandenburg/Prussians got in on the act. Then France. Then the Dutch. Then the French. Locals must have wondered whose flag they would see when they glanced up next.
And these gum wars weren’t fought just at Arguin. There was another gum arabic trading port on the Mauritanian coast at Portendic. In 1834, this was reckoned to be a British port, to the apparent irritation of the nearby French governor of Senegal who sent two warships to the port and ordered two British merchant ships waiting to load gum arabic to get out of there. When they refused to do so, the French opened fire on the locals and the gum they were waiting to load, and continued even though a British flag had been placed on the gum. There was much debate in Parliament over this gum crisis with the French, and the Royal Navy was accordingly sent out to protect our ships.
Mauritius
Mauritius lies in the Indian Ocean about 560 miles east of Madagascar. Since it’s stuck in the middle of an ocean, you are probably already by now thinking that it’s unlikely we never invaded it. And, of course, we have.
It was famously home to the Dodo. But an invasion of hungry European sailors soon saw to that.
Mauritius is named after Maurice. Not any Maurice, but one Maurice in particular, Prince Maurice of Nassau, stadtholder of the Dutch Republic, at the time that a Dutch admiral arrived on the island in 1598. English pirates seem to have taken an early interest in Mauritius. And the Dutch attempted to settle the island, but eventually gave up, allowing the French to move in and rename Mauritius Île de France, Island of France, a fairly clear message to the world who was boss here.
Not surprisingly, bearing in mind our long series of wars with the French, we didn’t take the hint.
In 1747–48, Rear Admiral Edward Boscawen attempted an invasion that turned into what must be one of our least successful long-distance military ventures. He set off from Britain in 1747 with six warships and a landing force. He attempted to invade Mauritius, only to be deterred by heavy surf, so he diverted to attack Pondicherry in India, only to run into trouble with the monsoon there and then peace was declared anyway.
As the Napoleonic Wars ground on, French naval forces based in Mauritius were increasingly making themselves a nuisance for Britain by preying on our trade routes to India, so in August 1810, a squadron of four British frigates arrived to blockade Grand Port. Once there we duly sent a landing party to capture the small, strategic, fortified island of Île de la Passe, and when a French squadron turned up shortly after we got ready for battle. Unfortunately for us, it didn’t quite go to plan. The French knew the waters rather better than us and we ended up with two ships captured and two others grounded and burnt to avoid French capture. It was the worst naval defeat we had suffered for a time and our hopes of capturing Mauritius seemed dead as, well, as a dodo. Later in 1810, when we had recovered o
ur strength, we returned to Mauritius. This time we were determined to end French control of Mauritius once and for all.
On 29 November the landing started at Grand Baie. By the evening the vanguard and naval brigades were ashore and by mid-day on 30 November the entire force had landed as the advance guard pushed rapidly forward pursuing the retreating enemy. On 1 December the French forces made a stand outside Port Napoleon, but were overwhelmed by the British assault. By 2 December it was all over.
We dumped the name Île de France and, not surprisingly under the circumstances, we dumped the name Port Napoleon as well.
Mauritius eventually became independent from Britain in 1968.
Mexico
As you would expect, Mexico got a fair amount of early attention from British buccaneers and privateers.
In 1568, for instance, Francis Drake was almost killed in a battle near San Juan de Ulua.
Sir Christopher Myngs, English admiral and pirate, mercilessly sacked San Francsico de Campeche so brutally in 1663 that Charles II was prompted to suspend such attacks for a while.
British raiding in the area continued in the eighteenth century. In 1743, Commodore Anson, on his lengthy and challenging jaunt around the world, intercepted Spain’s yearly Manila galleon from the Philippines off Cape Espiritu Santo and seized more than 1 million gold coins. He must have been a happy man.
And in the nineteenth century, when the President of Mexico suspended interest payments to foreign countries, we sent in the ships again, this time in alliance with the French and Spanish. The Royal Navy arrived in Vera Cruz in 1861 and helped put troops ashore there. However, we soon realised that the French were in for rather more long-term aims than just getting their money. So we left the French to get stuck into a lengthy and messy civil war, while we got out.
Micronesia
What we are talking about here is the Federated States of Micronesia, because Micronesia itself is a much bigger region, with loads and loads of islands. Most of them small islands. The clue is in the name Micro-nesia from Greek mikros for ‘small’ and nesia, ‘island’.
There are four states in the Federated States – Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosrae – and the country’s flag has four stars on it.
Generally speaking, our armed forces haven’t had that much to do with the area, but they have been there. HMS Rosario operated in the area in the 1870s, and in September 1878 Captain Dupuis and HMS Rosario turned up on Kosrae hunting for the notorious pirate Bully Hayes. In the Second World War, Chuuk Lagoon, or Truk Lagoon as it was then known to us, became a major Japanese naval base. The main Allied effort against Truk/Chuuk was conducted by the United States, but our forces were involved too. In June 1945, a British Pacific Fleet carrier task force bombarded Truk with naval gunfire and launched air raids against it.
Moldova
It’s fair to say that this country hasn’t seen a lot armed Brits through its territory. But it has seen at least a few.
In the First World War, the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) also ran armoured cars, and in 1916 a bunch of them, plus other Brits including transport and nursing units, found themselves trying to assist the Russians to hold back the German General von Mackensen’s advance through Romania towards Russia. There is a sharp pointy bit of what is present-day Moldova that reaches down to the Danube in the vicinity of where these operations took place, with Romania on one side of it and what is now the Ukraine on the other side. We have a record of some of the RNAS armoured cars at one time at Braila on the Romanian side of the pointy bit of Moldova, and at another time a few miles away at Reni on the Ukrainian side. We know that they brought cars up the Danube by barge, so that could have taken them through Moldovan waters. Equally, if any of the units used the main railway line from Russia to reach Braila, then that too would have taken them through Moldovan territory. Obviously, at the time, the men and women of these units had much more important things to think about (matters of life and death) than whether they were passing through something that would one day be Moldova, but it’s an intriguing minor historical mystery nonetheless.
Anyway, whatever happened near the front, at least some RNAS armoured cars did definitely make it into Moldova, because they were sent to be repaired and refitted at Tiraspol, the second largest city in the country.
Monaco, Principality of
An interesting case this. Tiny Monaco is one of the very few countries we may not basically have invaded. And yet it’s also one of the relatively few countries that have sort of invaded us. Amazing. Charles Grimaldi of the ruling dynasty of Monaco took part with his ships in the sack of Southampton in 1338.
And in another bizarre twist in the Southampton/Monaco relationship, it is HMS Southampton that has one of the better British claims to having been in action in Monaco, or at least in what are now its territorial water. HMS Southampton is recorded as capturing the ship Corso off Monaco on 2 December 1796. It’s also worth noting here that Nelson found himself patrolling the area off Monaco. Though having said that, it doesn’t seem to have been one of his most exciting experiences. He noted with some disgust at one point that there were no significant vessels in any bay from Monaco to Vado.
We came close to invading Monaco on land in the Second World War, but didn’t in the end. In 1944, British paratroopers, having parachuted into southern France as part of Operation Dragoon, fought their way along the coast as far as Grasse and Cannes, only a few short miles outside Monaco, before being ordered to embark at Cannes on 26 August and sail to Naples. Monaco itself was liberated by US paratroopers on 3 September. It’s possible that some Britons were involved in the liberation of Monaco on some level, but I don’t have the evidence of that right now. If you do, let me know.
Mongolia
Mongolia is one of the few countries in the world where not only have we not invaded, but we don’t seem to have done anything military with it at all. In 1918, during the Allied intervention in Russia after the revolution there, we had a British military mission at Irkutsk, a mere 50 miles north of the Mongolian border, but so far I haven’t found any evidence that we got any closer than that.
This was probably the time we had most influence in Mongolia. We briefly offered support to Grigory Semyonov, who at one stage was operating along the Mongolian border. He was a warlord partly of Buryat descent and spoke fluent Buryat and Mongolian and had served in Mongolia. And Major Dockray, a retired British Army officer, was responsible for the new radio tower in Urga (the former name of the capital Ulan Bator).
Montenegro
Montenegro, if you think about it (or even when you don’t), means ‘black mountain’ in Italian. The Montenegrins call it Crna Gora which, unsurprisingly, means ‘black mountain’ in their language.
Montenegro has a long and beautiful coast, so it has received occasional visits from us. During the Napoleonic Wars, for example, a Royal Navy detachment under Captain William Hoste of HMS Bacchante took Kotor from the French garrison. He worked with local forces to haul ships’ gun to positions above the fortress there and started bombarding it. After ten days, on 5 January 1814, the French gave up and surrendered.
During the First Balkan War we helped assorted other nations blockade the port of Bar in Monetenegro. Bar was barred, in fact.
In the First World War, Kotor was a big enemy submarine base and the focus of assorted actions by the Allies.
There was a certain amount of British involvement in Montenegro in the Second World War. In 1941, for example, when the Italians took Kotor, a Royal Navy submarine, HMS Regent, was dispatched to Kotor to try to evacuate British and Allied personnel. In 1944, with the Partisan Second Division in Montenegro under particular pressure, we helped organise an emergency landing strip near the village of Brezna, in which waves of British and American Dakotas protected by Spitfires and Mustangs rescued more than 900 of the wounded. German forces were only about 5 miles away when the last plane took off and they reached Brezna itself soon after.
Morocco
Loads of Brits now head to Morocco for their holidays, most of whom won’t be aware of our long and fascinating history of involvement with the country. To be fair, a lot of that history has been about peaceful collaboration, but there has been military action as well, and it’s such an interesting and little-known story, I’ve got to give it all a quick mention here.
When Brits think of Queen Elizabeth I, they don’t tend to think of Morocco, but the fact is that she got on rather well with the Sultan of Morocco, Ahmad al-Mansur, apart from anything else because both of them feared and disliked Philip II of Spain. There was plenty of trade and even discussions of possible joint attacks on Spain. It was all rather warm and cosy.
And to some extent this spirit of friendship and cooperation continued under their successors. In 1632, for instance, English and Moroccan forces cooperated to capture the city of Salé in Morocco from pirates.
However, things were to get a little less friendly towards the end of the seventeenth century. That was when we took over Tangier. Charles II was given it as a wedding present from the Portuguese when he married Catherine of Braganza. Some people give fondue sets (which are very nice, I love a fondue). The Portuguese, however, were thinking on a rather bigger scale and gave Tangier instead. So, in a sort of peaceful invasion, we actually occupied and ran Tangier from 1661 to 1684. Yes, temporarily we controlled a little bit of Morocco. We thought it would make an excellent naval base and spent a lot of time and money building a mole there, of the harbour kind obviously, not some kind of large imitation of a small, furry tunnelling creature. However, not all the locals were very enthusiastic about our presence. In 1664 they killed the second English governor there, Lord Teviot. The Sultan decided he wanted us out as well, and as it became clear that our base in Tangier was more of a liability than an asset, we decided to leave. Before we did so, we demolished bits of the town, including our expensive mole, which we blew up.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 18