So ended our occupation of Moroccan soil rather ingloriously. At least friendly relations with Morocco were gradually restored during the eighteenth century.
When Operation Torch, the Allied Invasion of Algeria and Morocco, took place in November 1942, the invasion of Morocco was basically an American mission, but British forces did play a minor supporting role; the escort carrier HMS Archer arrived in Casablanca on 18 November bringing US personnel and aircraft.
Mozambique
Mozambique was controlled by the Portuguese for a long time and, of course, Portugal has been a friend for a long time, so up until the twentieth century we hadn’t invaded it very much.
Our time came in the First World War. The local German commander Lettow-Vorbeck was leading a column wending its way around East Africa, keeping German hopes in the area alive. We were trying to catch him and defeat him. By November 1917 Lettow-Vorbeck was very short of supplies. In an extraordinary and little-known episode of the war, the Germans sent an airship to try to re-supply him. The naval airship L59 had made it all the way south to a position near Khartoum before the mission was called off.
Then, in late November 1917, Lettow-Vorbeck crossed into what is now Mozambique in search of supplies. We followed. British troops landed at Porto Amelia/Pemba and along with other British units moving south overland, pursued Lettow-Vorbeck not very successfully to the territory around the port of Quelimane. Further British troops were landed in the summer of 1918. On 3 July 1918, Lettow-Vorbeck attacked the railway station of Nhamacurra, defeating a British and Portuguese force. Many of those who died on our side did so because while trying to escape they drowned or were killed by crocodiles in the Nhamacurra River. Fighting in France and Belgium was mostly a hugely grim experience, but at least there weren’t that many crocodiles around. Eventually, Lettow-Vorbeck eluded the main forces pursuing him by turning north and moving out of what is now Mozambique. We followed. Again.
Namibia
Namibia is on the west coast of Africa, just north of South Africa.
We took an early interest in the area. In the late eighteenth century, HMS Nautilus was sent to Das Voltas Bay looking for a place for a penal colony. But it was decided to opt for New South Wales instead. Shortly after that we ‘took possession’ of a length of what is now Namibian coastline, which was news to the Portuguese who had claimed some of the same coastline about 300 years earlier. Anyway, it was all sorted out in 1815 and 1817 with us giving up claims north of Cape Fria in Namibia.
Having taking an initial interest in the area, we were unusually slow (by our standards) in trying to take genuine control. Eventually, we lost out to the Germans who, having started a lot later in building an empire, were in something of a hurry.
We only managed to hang on to two bits of present-day Namibia. Admittedly, they were very useful bits. We kept Walvis Bay, with its natural deepwater harbour. And we kept the Penguin Islands with their natural penguins (presumably) and, better still in commercial terms, their natural guano supplies. Both these became part of the Cape Colony.
In 1914, with the outbreak of war with Germany, we asked the South African government to invade what was then German South-West Africa. The Royal Navy transported South African troops north to take the port of Lüderitz in September 1914. Meanwhile, the Germans, in return, took the vulnerable Walvis Bay Enclave. So it was goodbye to our natural deepwater harbour for a bit.
On 25 September 1914, an attempt to invade from the south came to a disastrous end at the Battle of Sandfontein. The Germans struck back by briefly invading South Africa before being stopped at the Battle of Kakamas on 4 February 1915.
In March, General Louis Botha started advancing inland from the coast and Namibia’s capital Windhoek was captured on 5 May 1915. Other South African columns attacked from other directions and by July the remnants of the German forces that had retreated north surrendered.
In 1920, control of Namibia was given to South Africa as a League of Nations Mandate. In 1990, after a guerrilla war fought by SWAPO, Namibia became independent, with British troops helping in the United Nations Transition Assistance Group. In 1994, Namibia even got Walvis Bay and the Penguin Islands back from South Africa.
Nauru
Nauru is the world’s smallest republic, with an area of just 8.1 square miles. It’s an island country in the Pacific, sort of north of New Zealand, a bit over to the west, and east of East Timor.
Nauru’s quite a long way from most places and it wasn’t until 1798 that a European turned up. In this case it was a Brit, the sea captain and whaler John Fearn. He called the island Pleasant Island, so unless he had a strange sense of humour, we can assume he liked it.
In 1888, it was the Germans who (as already noted) having started late were in a hurry to catch up with the empire-building of their European competitors and added it to their empire.
Phosphate reserves were discovered on the island in 1900 and those huge phosphate resources have played an enormous role in Nauru’s history.
The First World War came to Nauru on 9 September 1914, when a radio station was destroyed by the warship HMAS Melbourne. The island wasn’t immediately occupied, but British phosphate miners here wanted the Germans out and on 6 November 1914, Australian troops took control of the island. At the end of the First World War, with Nauru’s financial worth estimated as several hundred million pounds, Britain, Australia and New Zealand vied for control. Eventually, control of the phosphate mining and the island was split between the three.
Even Nauru, despite being a very, very long way from Germany, didn’t escape unscathed from Hitler’s forces during the Second World War. In December 1940, the German auxiliary cruiser Komet shelled mining areas and oil depots. Then on 26 August 1942, it was the turn of the Japanese to arrive on Nauru. They surrendered to the Australians on 13 September 1945 and Nauru was made a UN trusteeship again under Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
Nauru became independent in 1968.
Nepal
Ever wondered what the origins of the Gurkha regiments in the British Army are? Well as you might suspect, it’s all down to our invasion of Nepal.
We had already sent men on a mission into Nepal in 1767 under Captain Kinloch. It hadn’t been a success.
By 1814, with a border dispute between us and Nepal festering, we decided to try again. We planned an attack on two fronts, with two columns in each front. Three of the columns failed to make much headway in the face of tough terrain and tough opposition. But the last column under Major General Ochterlony managed to defeat Nepalese General Thapa on 9 May 1815. In 1816, Ochterlony was back with more men and more artillery, and made a bold move through a rarely used pass, which put the Nepalese defenders at a disadvantage. We were victorious in the fighting at Makwanpur in February and eventually the Nepalese were forced to agree to peace terms.
We took away a lot of their territory, but then later gave some back. In the progress of the war, we had been so impressed by the fighting spirit of the locals that in the period after the war we started recruiting locals into Gurkha units in the British army. And we still do today.
Netherlands, The
These days, the Netherlands is a partner with us both in the EU and in NATO, and many Brits don’t really think of the Netherlands as being an area we have invaded much. But, of course, we have. A lot. Sometimes to help the Dutch, but sometimes to fight them.
Mind you, some of our early military ventures into the area weren’t about either fighting against the Dutch or even alongside them. Like at Battle of Sluys in 1340, it was the French we beat, destroying most of their fleet.
In the late sixteenth century, the Netherlands was an area of major strategic interest for us. After the Treaty of Nonsuch gave England a serious say in Dutch affairs (and also paved the way for the dispatch of the Spanish Armada against us), in 1585 and 1586 Elizabeth sent two armies under Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, to fight in the Netherlands in support of the locals against the Spanish. The poet
and soldier Sir Philip Sidney (who also happened to be a relative of Dudley’s) briefly ended up as governor of Flushing (one of a number of Dutch towns that had English garrisons) and in July 1586 he successfully attacked Spanish forces near Axel, before eventually getting shot at the Battle of Zutphen and dying shortly afterwards at Arnhem, a place that is particularly special in British history because of events there during a much more recent war.
By the middle of the seventeenth century, things were getting a little less friendly between us and the Dutch. In fact, a lot less friendly.
The First Anglo-Dutch war of 1652–54 saw naval actions both in English and Dutch waters.
Then we (sort of) lost the Second Anglo-Dutch war of 1665–67.
Subsequently, in the Third Anglo-Dutch War of 1672–74 we tried to get our own back with a planned invasion of the Netherlands, working with the French. It was all a bit messy (and not very successful), and included assorted naval actions in Dutch waters, like two Battles of the Schooneveld and the Battle of Texel. During this war, the Duke of Monmouth led a brigade of troops accompanying the French invasion of the Netherlands, and they were present at the Siege of Maastricht in 1673.
Then, in 1688, William III left the Netherlands to become king over here, which obviously changed relations between us and the Netherlands. For most of the eighteenth century we tended to be on the same side as the Netherlands in assorted wars. For instance, in the War of the Spanish Succession, Marlborough commanded Dutch troops as well as English. And we were on the same side again in the War of the Austrian Succession, even though it wasn’t an entirely successful war from our point of view. A British force under the Duke of Cumberland, along with our Dutch allies, was defeated near the borders of what is now the Netherlands, just outside Maastricht, in 1747 at the Battle of Laufeld.
Eventually, the love affair between us and the Dutch wore off. In 1780–84 we fought another war against the Dutch, instead of alongside them, and blockaded the Dutch coast and temporarily occupied a fair number of the territories they controlled in the East.
During much of the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars, the Netherlands was firmly on the side of the French. This led to some invasions by us, ones that few Brits have ever heard of.
How many Brits know about the British and Russian expedition to Holland in 1799? Yep, there was one. An expeditionary force of Russian and British troops landed on the North Holland Peninsula and won assorted engagements, including the Battle of Callantsoog and the Battle of Krabbendam, before being forced to withdraw.
Then in 1809 there was the Walcheren Campaign. This was a bit of a disaster. In fact, a lot of a disaster. The idea was to open another front against France. Indeed in July 1809 we took something like 40,000 troops accompanied by thousands of horses and loads of artillery across the sea to invade the Dutch island of Walcheren. The campaign accomplished a few things, like, for, example, taking Flushing in August, but large numbers died from disease and generally the brief invasion was a huge and costly failure.
After the Napoleonic Wars, things settled down between us and the Dutch, and it wasn’t until the Second World War that we invaded the Netherlands again, this time to help free the Dutch. After assorted military activity in the Netherlands during the war, including sending support for Dutch resistance groups, in the second half of 1944 British forces along with other Allied units were advancing towards the Netherlands.
In September 1944, Operation Market Garden was launched and the bravery of the Allied troops involved liberated significant parts of the Netherlands, but left a lot of the country under German control after the tragic events at Arnhem. In October 1944, there was heavy fighting around Overloon. At the end of October and beginning of November, British forces, including troops from the British Special Service Brigade, were once again invading the island of Walcheren, this time along with Canadian troops. The last German forces in the Netherlands did not surrender until May 1945.
New Zealand
Almost everybody in Britain knows of our close relationship over the years with New Zealand, so I’m not going to focus in too much depth on the country in this book.
The British presence on the islands all started off quite peacefully, but then it all got a bit messy.
In 1642, the Dutchman Abel Tasman (of Tasmania fame) turned up and was the first European to discover the islands. Subsequently, they were named New Zealand. Slightly confusingly, because today Zealand is a Danish island, whereas we now call the Dutch place they were originally named after ‘Zeeland’. Oh well.
Then in 1769, our James Cook turned up and mapped most of the coastline of the islands. By the 1830s, Britain and France were both interested in taking control of the islands and eventually in 1840 our Captain William Hobson negotiated the Treaty of Waitangi with Maori chiefs and declared British sovereignty.
Soon after the treaty, disputes, particularly over land, started between the Maoris and settlers, and rapidly the situation ended up in war, or, in fact, a series of wars.
From 1845–46 there was the Flagstaff War, so named because a local Maori leader and the local British leadership went through a bizarre contest whereby the flagstaff flying the British flag was chopped down, then replaced, then chopped down again, then replaced again and so on until it all ended in bloodshed. We won eventually, but only after some bitter fighting and significant losses.
There was a string of other campaigns and wars. There was, for example, the First Taranaki War of 1860–61, which we sort of won, but not hugely convincingly. This was followed by the Invasion of Waikato in 1863–64 and the Second Taranaki War of 1863–66. In Te Kooti’s War, 1868–72, the prominent Maori leader Te Kooti waged a long guerrilla battle. Then there was Titokowaru’s War. And finally, in the 1890s, there was the Dog Tax War, which was over, you guessed it, dog tax.
It’s an extraordinary story of conflict and hardship, particularly for the Maoris, that deserves far more space than can be given in a small book like this.
New Zealand became independent from Britain through a series of steps that gradually gave it more and more control over its affairs.
Nicaragua
People who lived through the Cold War will also remember the war in Nicaragua in which the Americans backed the Contra guerrillas fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government.
But many people who are aware of that war, aren’t aware that we have fought our own wars in the country’s territory as well.
Nicaragua lies on the wide bit of the Central American isthmus, with Honduras to the north and Costa Rica to the south. If you’ve been reading this book in alphabetical order you’ll probably already have worked out by now that lying in a tempting, handy-for-the-ocean, not-far-from-the-Caribbean-and-South-America location like this, and having been controlled by the Spanish for a long time, the country is extremely unlikely to have escaped the attention of British pirates and, of course, it didn’t.
Granada, on Lake Nicaragua, was a major target because it was a wealthy town and control of it and of Lake Nicaragua pretty much gave control across the isthmus from Pacific to Caribbean. Granada is one of those slightly confusing names, because there seem to be a lot of Granadas and/or Grenadas. This Granada is not to be confused with the Caribbean Island, the place in Spain, the TV company, or the car made by a well-known company.
In 1665, pirates including Henry Morgan ventured up the San Juan river to Lake Nicaragua and proceeded to sack Granada. To protect the San Juan River, the Spanish built the Fortress of the Immaculate Conception. This didn’t stop William Dampier in 1685 landing on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast and burning down the colony on 8 September.
As the years wore on, we formed an alliance with the local indigenous Miskito Kingdom and with a society that developed in the coastal regions of Nicaragua and Honduras that involved both Miskitos and ex-slaves. Together Brits and their local allies would raid the Spanish-held areas.
In 1740, we concluded a Formal Treaty of Friendship and Alliance wi
th the Miskito Kingdom, or Mosquito Kingdom as we tended to know it. Under the terms of this treaty, the Miskito King, Edward I, accepted King George II’s overlordship in return for military protection. In 1762, during the Seven Years War, a combined expedition attacked the Fortress of the Immaculate Conception, but was held off in a heroic defence led by 19-year-old Rafaela Herrera, daughter of the recently deceased garrison commander.
In 1780, Nelson himself was involved in yet another British expedition to try to capture Granada. In March, forces including elements from both the army and navy set off up the San Juan River, with the intention, once again, of making it to Lake Nicaragua. Nelson saw hand-to-hand combat, capturing a Spanish battery on Bartola Island. At the end of April they had managed to capture Fort San Juan (5 miles upstream), but by the time of the surrender, Nelson had fallen ill and been taken back down the river. He was not the first to fall ill, or the last. By the time we were forced to withdraw from the fort in November hundreds had died.
Under the 1786 Convention of London we pulled out our settlers from the area, but we continued to claim it was our protectorate. In the early nineteenth century, Spanish imperial control in the region ended, and we were still interested. Particularly in the region’s mahogany. In 1841, we helped the Miskitos occupy San Juan del Norte and in 1848 we occupied it ourselves, calling it Greytown after Jamaica’s then governor.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 19