Eventually, in 1860, we signed the Treaty of Managua with Nicaragua and gradually British influence in the area waned as Nicaraguan and American influence rose.
But still today English is spoken by some groups in Nicaragua.
Niger
Not a country we’ve had that much to do with militarily really.
In 1805 Mungo Park (see Mali) set off to explore the Niger River and what was left of his expedition passed through what is now Niger in a canoe that he had named the ‘HM Schooner Joliba’. Unfortunately for him, what was left of his expedition wasn’t left very much longer, because they all died further down the river.
During the First World War there was a major Touareg rebellion against French rule in Niger, allegedly encouraged by pro-German elements. About 1,000 Touareg warriors attacked the town of Zinder, in Niger, just north of the Nigerian border. In response, we sent troops from Nigeria to help the French suppress the rebellion.
Nigeria
As with many areas in Africa, a lot our early interaction with the territory that is now Nigeria was involved with the slave trade. As early as the seventeenth century, Brits were trading in slaves here, but we didn’t take great interest in seizing land at this stage. Finally, in the early nineteenth century, we abolished the slave trade and attempted to bring an end to it by preventing others from carrying it on. Our West Africa squadron conducted extensive operations with this in mind, with its 3rd Division responsible for covering the Bights of Benin and Biafra.
By the middle of the nineteenth century, we were ready to start expanding influence over big chunks of territory. Our first target was Lagos, now the capital of Nigeria, and during the slave trading years a major slave port. In 1851, we bombarded Lagos in order to replace the local ruler with someone we preferred, and in 1861 we sailed and seized it for ourselves.
As the nineteenth century wore on, we proceeded to expand our control of territory, usually by signing treaties with local leaders. It became a race for control against the French, and then against the Germans as well. In 1882 Edward Hewett, the British Consul in the area, ventured up the Niger on board HMS Flirt (great name), attacking those whom he felt were resisting British rule, and signalling firmly to the French that this was a British area of influence – a fairly heavy-handed form of flirting then.
In 1886, the Royal Niger Company was chartered to run the area and the game of expansion by a mixture of treaty and force continued. Our expansion did not come without resistance. For instance, the Brassmen’s rebellion – a local revolt by the king and people of Brass against the Royal Niger Company – caused a fair amount of destruction and slaughter, and came as a big shock to us. But it did not stop us.
In 1895, we faced down the French when they attempted to expand their area of influence into what is now Nigeria and attempted to establish their right to sail down the Niger.
Then in 1896, with the Kingdom of Benin reluctant to acquiesce to our plans for it, an expedition under James Phillips headed for Benin in a badly planned attempt to deal with this issue. The expedition was ambushed and pretty much wiped out. In February 1897, a punitive expedition under Rear Admiral Henry Rawson invaded Benin. After ten days of heavy fighting, our troops reached Benin City, looted it and burned part of it. This is how many impressive Benin Bronzes came to be in Britain.
In 1900, the Royal Niger Company transferred control of its territories to the British Crown and the expansion accelerated.
Then there was the war in which we smashed the Aro Confederacy. The campaign started in November 1901 and by 28 December we had captured Arochukwu, though resistance dragged on into 1903.
In 1903, Frederick Lugard attacked Kano and then he attacked Sokoto as well. In 1906 an expedition was sent to destroy the Satiru rebellion.
Other wars dragged on, like the Ekumeku War, and all in all our invasion of what is now Nigeria could be described as long, messy and violent.
Nigeria became independent in 1960.
Norway
We have had plenty of Norwegian Vikings roaming the British Isles, and Norwegian waters and soil have seen plenty of armed Brits as well.
For instance, in 1665, there was the rather unfortunate (from the British point of view) Battle of Bergen. It’s an unsavoury tale of inefficient treachery. The Danes (who then ran Norway) were friendly with the Dutch. We weren’t since we were fighting them at the time. But King Frederick III in Copenhagen had let it be known to us that he had switched sides as and when there was a big rich Dutch East Indies convoy in one of his ports, so that we and he could pinch the boats and share the loot. When we learnt that just such a convoy was in Bergen, in Norway, Rear Admiral Thomas Teddeman set off with a force to capture it. Unfortunately, Frederick’s orders on switching sides hadn’t actually arrived in Bergen, so the Danes there and Commodore Pieter de Bitter instead defended the convoy vigorously and it was all a bit of a diplomatic and military disaster for us. The Commodore might have been de Bitter, but probably not half as much as Rear Admiral Teddeman was at the end of it all.
During the Napoleonic Wars we invaded Norwegian waters again, fighting a number of actions against the Danes and Norwegians during the so-called Gunboat War. It wasn’t all plain sailing for us, but we did put in some good performances.
For example, on 23 July 1810, we fought the Battle of Silda in which HMS Belvidera and HMS Nemesis saw off four enemy vessels while attacking the pilot’s station on the Norwegian island of Silda. On 6 July 1812, a small group of British warships fought a small group of Danish warships in the Battle of Lyngør. When we’d finished lingering at Lyngør, we’d sort of won, having destroyed one of their frigates and captured two of their ships (at least briefly – we abandoned them when they grounded).
And in the early part of the Second World War we spent a lot of time in Norwegian waters and some time on Norwegian soil as well.
In February 1940, there was the Altmark Incident. At this time, with Norway still neutral, a German tanker, the Altmark, was returning to Germany through Norwegian waters. On board were 299 British merchant seamen captured from ships sunk by the German raider Graf Spee. We then sent in the destroyer HMS Cossack and Churchill gave orders that unless the Norwegians stopped the ship Cossack would. The Norwegians refused, the Altmark ended up running aground and after a short fight with the Germans on board we freed the prisoners.
Rather less successful, in fact quite a lot less successful, was the Narvik operation. Some people might think there wasn’t much going on in Western Europe between the start of the Second World War and the invasion of France. Well one of the things that was going on was Narvik. The port of Narvik in northern Norway was of key importance to the German war machine, because through it much Swedish iron ore was transported to Germany. It was also an area that had been of interest to both us and the Germans for broader strategic reasons and both sides had long been discussing plans for the area. In early April 1940, the Germans occupied Narvik with a force of ten destroyers and we sent ships to Narvik too. In the ensuing fighting we destroyed the German naval force. Major General Pierse Joseph Mackesy was then sent with troops to take Narvik itself, and by the end of May an Allied force of British, French, Norwegian and Polish forces had taken the place. By that time the German invasion of France was under way and French and British priorities lay elsewhere. In June, the Allied forces were withdrawn by sea from Narvik and Norway was overrun by German forces shortly afterwards.
The Second World War also saw some notable British raids on Norwegian territory, including assorted commando landings on Norwegian islands. I’ll mention here just the raid on the Lofoten Islands in March 1941. Partly because it was the first, partly because the Lofoten Islands sound rather exotic in a Scandinavian kind of way, partly because the name of the raid, Operation Claymore, sounds suitably fierce, and mainly because during the raid, in addition to destroying a lot of shipping and the fish oil and glycerine factories that were the targets, we also captured Enigma cipher rotor wheels that were
of great importance.
There were also, of course, daring attempts by both sea and air to sink the Tirpitz in a Norwegian fjord, which we finally did, and assorted attacks on the Norwegian heavy water industry.
Then, in a little-known, but in some ways quite dramatic operation in late 1944 and on into 1945, in cooperation with Soviet forces in the area we helped exiled Norwegian forces land in and operate in northern Norway to help liberate the area.
Finally, in May 1945 in Operation Doomsday, the British 1st Airborne Division landed at Oslo and Stavanger to deal with the German surrender in Norway. There were fears of German resistance, but in the end things went quite smoothly and peacefully, and Major General Urquhart was there to greet Crown Prince Olaf and Norwegian government ministers when they arrived.
8
OMAN TO PORTUGAL
Oman
Our forces have spent time in Oman. In 1798, serious British involvement with the area began when the Sultan signed a treaty with the British East India Company.
Then in 1883, HMS Philomel helped with its guns to defend besieged Muscat. And in 1915, troops rushed from India helped to repel another attack on Muscat.
More recently, in the 1950s, British forces assisted the Sultan’s forces in the Jebel Akhdar War. And in the 1960s and 1970s, Brits again assisted the Sultan’s forces in the fighting in Dhofar.
Pakistan
Pakistan is a fascinating country with a wealth of culture and tradition. In terms of the British Empire, though, it’s also the location of the famous North-West Frontier, where Brits battled locals for a very, very long time in a very, very long series of military encounters.
Because it’s such a long, complex story, and because many Brits already know something about our military involvement with Pakistan, and because this book is supposed to focus on the lesser-known events, this will be only a brief summary of what happened.
Britain gradually gained control of the different sections of territory that now make up Pakistan. For instance, in 1843, Sir Charles Napier invaded and took over Sindh after victory at the Battle of Miani.
The First Sikh War ran from 1845–46 and saw bitter fighting between East India Company forces and the forces of the Sikh Empire. The result was a victory for the company, but only after a series of tough encounters. Then in 1848 the Second Sikh War broke out. In November, Sikh forces won something of a victory at the Battle of Ramnagar. The Battle of Chillianwala in January 1849 was a bitter encounter that led to heavy losses on both sides, but ended in something of a draw. Finally, things began to go the way of the British forces. The Battle of Gujrat was fought in February and by the end of March the war was over and the Punjab was annexed.
In the north-west, a series of engagements, conflicts and rebellions ran pretty much continuously from when we started pushing into the area after the annexation of the Punjab and began taking chunks of territory that had previously been Afghan, until the time we left. There are so many of these military confrontations that it’s impossible to list them all here, so some examples will have to do to give a taste of what went on in Britain’s almost unending attempts to subdue the area.
In 1863, for example, the Umbeyla Campaign targeted Pashtuns and Bunerwals. After the initial attack got bogged down against local resistance, reinforcements were sent in and the force made it through to Malka and burned it.
Or there was the Hazara Expedition of 1888, which ended with the village of Pokal being destroyed.
Or there was our conquest of Hunza and Nagar in 1891.
Or the Chitral Expedition of 1895, which was dispatched to relieve British forces surrounded and besieged in a fort in Chitral.
Or in 1897, the Malakand Campaign, launched as a result of local hostility to the line we had decided to draw between Afghanistan and British-controlled territory. Winston Churchill himself was present at the Siege of Malakand.
The same year there was the Tirah Campaign.
Or what about the operation in the Tochi region in 1914–15? Or the assorted campaigns in Waziristan that followed the Third Afghan War of 1919? Or Pink’s War of 1925 in which we bombed Waziri tribesman? Or the fighting again in Waziristan in 1936–39?
Pakistan became independent in 1947.
Palau
Palau is an island nation lying about 500 miles east of the Philippines and a long, long way south of Japan.
Here is an interesting story about our early involvement with the Palau Islands. No invasion, in this case, for a change. Englishman Henry Wilson, captain of the East India Company vessel Antelope, was shipwrecked off Ulong in 1783. Wilson and about fifty men survived and became friendly with the King of Palau, assisting in fighting his wars, and the king’s son accompanied Wilson back to Britain in 1784. Soon after arriving, the son died from smallpox. He was buried in St Mary’s Churchyard, Rotherhithe, and the East India Company built a memorial.
At the end of the eighteenth century, a Brit named McCluer laid a foundation stone for a fort on Palau that was to be called Fort Abercrombie, but it never got any further than that.
In the nineteenth century, different European powers competed for control of the islands and we inevitably got involved in the area. In January 1881 HMS Lily arrived to try to impose a settlement in a dispute involving a looted wreck, and in 1883 HMS Espiegle tried to end a local war.
In 1885, the then Pope, Leo XIII, was dragged into the dispute, being asked to adjudicate between Britain, Spain and Germany. The Pope accepted the Spanish claim to the islands, but gave us and the Germans economic concessions. In 1898, Spain lost the Philippines in the Spanish-American War and decided to sell the islands to the Germans anyway.
Not that Germany managed to hang on to them for long. They lost them to Japanese control in the First World War. And then Japan lost its control of the islands in the Second World War.
Panama
Panama has a long coastline on both sides, and used to be controlled by Spain, so not surprisingly we have invaded it a number of times.
To begin with, being in the part of the world where it is, assorted British raiders, pirates and privateers have done a certain amount of damage here.
Panama, for obvious reasons, had long been a place connecting the Pacific and Atlantic. Francis Drake, for instance, dropped in to try to capture the town of Nombre de Dios early in his career because this was where gold and silver from Peru was put onto ships from Spain. He got into the town, but his forces withdrew when he was wounded. Drake ended his career off Panama as well, being buried at sea off Portobelo when he died of dysentery in 1596.
Henry Morgan, under an official commission to attack Spanish interests, invaded Panama in 1670. In December he captured the fortress of San Lorenzo on Panama’s Caribbean coast and then headed across the peninsula with about 1,400 men towards Panama City. When he and his men arrived, in January 1671, he defeated the Spanish garrison and sacked the town. Much of it went up in flames and a new settlement of Panama would eventually be built a few miles away. Apparently unknown to Morgan, by the time he attacked, Spain and England had signed a peace treaty. This was all slightly embarrassing and Morgan ended up being dragged back to England under arrest. However, he convinced the authorities that he really hadn’t known about the treaty and by 1675 he was in Jamaica, knighted and now lieutenant-governor of the island.
At the end of the seventeenth century, an event took place in Panama that may have changed the face of Britain rather more than it did Panama. A Scot called William Paterson had helped found the Bank of England and a lot of people would view that as enough to put on their CV as a lifetime achievement. But Paterson wanted to do more. He decided that what the world and particularly Scotland needed was a settlement in Panama that would facilitate trade across the isthmus, a sort of Panama Canal, in a sense, without actually building a canal. So Paterson set up the so-called Darien Scheme to establish such a settlement. Thousands of Scots invested, thousands volunteered to be settlers. The English parliament, fearing a threat to En
glish trade, forced English investors to withdraw from the scheme.
When the settlers arrived in what they called New Caledonia, the scheme rapidly turned into a disaster. There were two expeditions, but large numbers of the settlers died from disease and malnutrition, and the Spanish sent forces to attack the Scots. By the time the scheme had collapsed and the remaining settlers had struggled home, more than 2,000 had died and Scotland was faced with large financial losses from the enterprise. Some have argued that the impact of Darien contributed to acceptance of the Act of Union with England in 1707.
Later in the eighteenth century, it was the British Navy’s turn to have a go at invading Panama, in an attack that would leave an interesting legacy today. This time the target was Portobelo, a major Spanish naval base on Panama’s Caribbean coast. Yes, we were at war with Spain yet again, this time in the War of Jenkins’ Ear. So, in a rather dashing attack, with only six ships, Vice Admiral Edward Vernon arrived in the harbour (surprising the Spanish defenders somewhat), British sailors and marines scaled the fort walls and the Spanish surrendered. We stayed in Portobelo for three weeks, generally wrecking important parts of it. British losses were light and Brits everywhere were very pleased with Vernon and started naming things after his victory. Hence the Portobello Road in London and the Portobello area of Edinburgh as well.
Papua New Guinea
So do you know where New Britain and New Ireland are? They have had something of a Germanic flavour in the not too distant past. They used to be called New Pomerania and New Mecklenburg (and they are both still in the Bismarck Archipelago). So now do you know where they are?
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 20