Again there were more naval actions, including another victory for us over another Spanish (they were allied with the French at the time) fleet at another Battle of Cape St Vincent in 1797.
It was also during the Napoleonic Wars that we ended up occupying Portuguese territory for a time. Twice. Madeira was important to us, partly because of the wine, of course, and the English community on the island associated with it, but also because it had become a place where merchant ships were collected into convoy to go through the Channel. We occupied it briefly from 1801–02 when it seemed like Portugal might be turned against us. Then in December 1807, with Portugal under severe pressure from the French, we returned. A force of eight warships and fifteen transports under Rear Admiral Samuel Hood sailed in with over 3,500 troops. We annexed the island for four months, during which time it was a Crown colony, before un-annexing it once we were sure the Portuguese were really on our side. Four months – some Brits go on holiday to Madeira for longer than that today. It was a friendly occupation and we returned Madeira to the Portuguese safely in 1814.
Later in the nineteenth century we tried intervening in Portuguese politics again. This time we became involved in the delightfully named Liberal Wars. Nothing to do with David Steel or Nick Clegg, but an argument over the rights of the Portuguese crown and who should be wearing it. We took the Liberal side and dispatched a naval detachment. After a disappointing start, in which a squadron under Commander Glasscock positioned itself in the Douro and managed the unenviable achievement of being shelled by both sides, we made ourselves useful escorting Liberal forces to that place beloved of today’s Britons, Faro on the Algarve. Then, while we destroyed the other side’s navy, at the (yet another) Battle of Cape St Vincent, the Liberals took Lisbon. Finally, after a few more plot twists and turns, peace was declared and our side had won.
That was almost the end of it, in terms of us conducting military operations in Portuguese waters and on Portuguese soil, but it’s worth mentioning one more incident in the history of Britain and Portugal, one that, though it didn’t end in invasion, shows that even with this old friend there was still a potential for a serious disagreement. In 1889–90, in the Anglo-Portuguese Crisis, things got slightly heated between us when what the Portuguese called a ‘Portuguese scientific expedition’ and what we called a ‘Portuguese potential invasion force’ strayed out of Portuguese-controlled territory in West Africa and into what we regarded as our sphere of control. We responded with a naval show of strength, including sending a British squadron to Gibraltar, just along the coast from Portugal, and made assorted other threats, so that eventually the Portuguese withdrew their scientists and soldiers.
Anyway, when all’s said and done, British tourists who splash in the waters off Portugal today are only following a tradition established centuries ago.
9
QATAR TO RWANDA
Qatar
There was once a time when all that many Brits knew about Qatar was that it is the only country with a name in English that begins with ‘Q’. But the nation has, of course, been steadily growing as a massive economic and increasingly very significant political power.
The Persian Gulf was an area of great trading interest for us in the nineteenth century and we made frequent efforts to ensure things in the region were run the way we wanted. Thus in 1820, the East India Company ship Vestal ended up bombarding Doha in Qatar in 1821, destroying much of the town and forcing hundreds to flee.
In 1841 we were back shelling Doha again. Then in 1868 we imposed a settlement on Bahrain and Qatar after conflict in the area, which became an important point in establishing Qatar as an entity separate from Bahrain.
After that, Ottoman influence became significant in Qatar and it wasn’t until 1916, during the First World War, that British troops marched into Qatar. In November of that year Qatar, signed a treaty giving us control over its foreign affairs in return for our protection of the state.
Qatar became fully free of our control in 1971.
Romania
Didn’t Romania used to be Rumania or Roumania to us? Well, it seems to be Romania now, and however you spell it, we have spent time fighting here.
Captain John Smith, he of Pocohantas fame, rather less famously at one stage may have ended up with other English mercenaries and volunteers fighting in Transylvania (no vampire jokes here please), though the historical facts are a little unclear.
In the Crimean War, the Royal Navy blockaded the Danube, and a landing party attacked the small Romanian town of Sulina, drove out its Russian garrison and set light to it. The town not the garrison.
In the First World War, in a now almost entirely forgotten episode (see also Moldova) that deserves to be more widely known, the Royal Naval Air Service’s armoured cars were dispatched into Romania to help the Russians fight the army of the advancing German General Mackensen. There used to be a joke that RNAS stood for ‘Really Not A Sailor’. The armoured car unit didn’t operate as airman either. Also in the area were nurses of the Scottish Women’s Hospital and a unit of the British Red Cross Society.
Amid the chaos of fleeing refugees and appalling road conditions, the armoured car crews carried out their duties bravely and some of them were commended for their courage by the Russians. The fighting at Viziru ended in defeat for the Russian forces, but at least the RNAS armoured cars had performed well.
Russia
Many Brits who grew up in the Cold War spent some time worrying about the possibility of Russian tank divisions advancing up Whitehall. That didn’t happen, but British invasions of Russian soil and Russian water have happened.
In 1807, after signing the Treaty of Tilsit with France, Russia was forced by Napoleon to declare war on us. We promptly responded by seizing the payroll of a Russian Mediterranean flotilla, which happened to be sitting handily in Portsmouth harbour, and then we sent Vice Admiral Sir James Saumarez to the Baltic with a fleet. Saumarez subsequently proceeded to annoy and harry the Russians in the area, getting involved in a number of actions and also attempting to blockade the Russian naval base at Kronstadt (outside St Petersburg).
Not content with operating only in the Baltic, we ventured as far as the Barents Sea and White Sea. HMS Nyaden, which we had originally nicked off the Danes at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807, launched a number of successful raids in the area in the summer of 1809, capturing assorted vessels and launching a night raid on a Russian garrison on Kildin Island. We also briefly took control of Catherine Harbour in the Kola region and seized assorted stores there.
Eventually, after Napoleon invaded Russia, the Russians, for fairly obvious reasons, made peace with us.
In the 1850s, we were back. The Crimean War is, not unreasonably, known as the Crimean War because a lot of it took place in the Crimea. The region is now part of Ukraine, so we’ll look at that part of the war in the Ukraine section. What is not so well known is that there was plenty of action going on outside the Crimea as well.
Once again, there was a lot happening in the Baltic region. In 1854, for instance, British and French ships made a couple of attempts against the Russian naval base at Kronstadt. And again there was action in the Kola region. On 23 July 1854, our ships Miranda and Brisk attacked the town of Novitksa. Then, on 23 August, the Miranda anchored off the town of Kola, demanding its surrender. When no surrender was forthcoming, the ship opened fire on the shore batteries and sent a landing party which captured the guns and put the garrison to flight. Government stores and buildings went up in flames.
But this time our operations also extended much further. In the south, along with actions in the Crimea, we operated more widely in the Black Sea and Sea of Azov. Several times we attacked the Russian port of Taganrog, the taking of which would have opened the way for us to the important strategic city of Rostov on Don. In the summer of 1855, a British and French squadron arrived off Taganrog and demanded its surrender. When surrender was refused, we bombarded Taganrog and then sent troops ashore to take it. Thi
s assault was beaten back by the defenders. The British and French ships retreated, only to return to bombard Taganrog again and make a failed attempt to enter the Don and then to return a third time and make another failed attack on the port.
We even attacked Russia’s Pacific coast, with a fairly disastrous (disastrous for us and our French allies, that is) attempt to capture Petropavlovsk in Kamchatka. A British and French squadron bombarded the town and put a landing party ashore to try to take it, but the landing party was ambushed by the Russians and we and the French had to withdraw.
For most of the First World War the Russians were our allies, but the revolution in Russia led to the country quitting the war and set the stage for our next invasions, this time to counter the Bolsheviks.
Our troops operated on a number of different fronts.
Campaigns in the Caucasus and the Caspian region are mainly dealt with elsewhere, but we also attacked territory in the region relevant to this section. For instance, British planes from Petrovsk bombed targets in Grozny and British planes from Baku bombed docks and shipping at Astrakhan.
Unsurprisingly, bearing in mind our past record in conflicts with Russia, the Royal Navy was active once more. In the Baltic, we blockaded the Russian fleet in Kronstadt, yet again, and not only that, a couple of daring raids by British Coastal Motor Boats were launched into Kronstadt Harbour itself, in which a number of Russian ships were sunk or damaged. On 17 June 1919, Augustine Agar set off with two Coastal Motor Boats. One had to turn back, but he pressed on with his boat, making his way through a destroyer screen. He had to stop to repair the boat after the hull had been hit, and he sank the Russian cruiser Oleg before escaping under heavy fire. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for his achievement, and a promotion.
In the White Sea region, operations included running a river force on the northern Dvina River.
This war also involved substantial land invasions in both the north and east of Russia as well.
In the north of Russia, in the summer of 1918, a British expeditionary force arrived to take control of Murmansk, and the North Russia Relief Force occupied Archangel. Along with Brits, there were also French and Americans, and a number of other nationalities, fighting the Bolsheviks in this area. Ultimately, though, it was decided that the intervention was not achieving much and the British troops were withdrawn. You can still see a captured British tank in Archangel today.
It was in the east, in Siberia, that perhaps our most spectacular invasion of Russia took place, an intervention which, though again achieving very little, still deserves to be better known, especially for the staggering distance our troops penetrated into Russia. It was an international intervention, including Britons, Americans, Canadians, Italians, Japanese, Poles and French. The 543 men of the 25th Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment landed in July 1918 and, after fighting against Red partisans on the Ussuri, advanced as far as Omsk, positioning garrisons along the railway lines to protect them. In October 1918, the 9th Battalion of the Royal Hampshire Regiment arrived in Vladivostok and headed for Omsk too. It’s worth taking a look at a map to see just where Omsk is in Russia. It’s a long, long way from Vladivostok. However, as the White forces opposing the Red Army began to crumble, it became increasingly obvious that this intervention wasn’t achieving anything much either, and British forces were withdrawn in 1920.
Rwanda
As the European powers carved up Africa, Rwanda’s territory eventually went to Germany.
In the First World War, though, the area became a battle zone between the European powers. But while a British force under Brigadier General Crew advanced south to Bukoba (in Tanzania) on the shores of Lake Victoria, it was the Belgians advancing from the then Belgian Congo to the west who occupied the territory of Rwanda and Burundi, taking Kigali on 6 May 1916. After the war, Belgium retained control of the territories as a League of Nations Mandate. The Belgians did briefly cede Gisaka, a part of Rwanda, to us for incorporation into Tanganikya, before it was reattached to Rwanda in 1924. So we have controlled a bit of Rwanda for a short while.
The British Army sent troops to take part in the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda, as it struggled to deal with the aftermath of the horrifying massacres there in 1994.
Rwanda became a member of the Commonwealth in 2009.
10
SAINT KITTS AND NEVIS TO TUVALU
Saint Kitts and Nevis
When I started looking at the history of Saint Kitts & Nevis, I began to wonder who Saint Kitts was, since I can’t ever remember hearing of a church dedicated to him or her. It turns out that just as Kit is a recognised abbreviation for Christopher, so Saint Kitts is an abbreviation for Saint Christopher, the island’s formal name.
The name Nevis has an interesting origin too. You might think it had been named after a Mr Nevis, but apparently not. It seems that when there were clouds on its peak, they reminded the Spanish of the story of Nuestra Señora de las Nieves, or Our Lady of the Snows. So a Caribbean island is called ‘snow’.
Saint Kitts was not only the site of the first permanent English colony in the Caribbean, but it was also the site of the first permanent French colony in the Caribbean. Interestingly, here, the English and French worked together. This, though, turned out to be exceedingly bad news for the local Kalinago population.
In 1538, Huguenot refugees from Dieppe briefly established a colony on Saint Kitts, which they imaginatively called Dieppe. But the Spanish were none too thrilled and kicked the French off the island a few months later.
In 1607, John Smith (of Pocahontas fame) popped in for a visit but didn’t stay.
Then in 1623, an English captain, Thomas Warner, gave up trying to establish a colony on the South American mainland and decided to try Saint Kitts instead. In 1624, he established the colony of Saint Christopher. Shortly afterwards, in 1625, a French captain, Pierre Belain d’Esnambuc, turned up, having lost some of his expedition in a clash with the Spanish and, instead of trying to kick the visitors off the island, Warner helped the new arrivals settle in.
Quite possibly the reason for Warner doing this was that he had decided on a European takeover of the whole island from the Kalinago, because in 1626 the English and French cooperated in killing thousands of the Kalinago at the aptly named Bloody Point.
In 1628 Anthony Hilton with eighty settlers colonised Nevis from Saint Kitts.
But there was trouble ahead for the English and the French. In 1629, the Spanish invaded and the English and French fled before managing to return shortly afterwards.
Then as relations between England and France soured, the French overran the entire island and held it from 1665–67 before the English got their half back under the Treaty of Breda.
In 1689, the French overran the island again and Governor Codrington led an invasion of Saint Kitts in response. On 1 July 1690, British ships opened fire on the French defenders. That night Codrington secretly landed 600 men south of the French position and in the morning landed a further 600 in front of the French position, while those who had landed earlier attacked the French from behind. English losses were ten dead and thirty wounded and by 26 July the French surrender of the entire island was complete.
The French attacked Saint Kitts again in 1705, holding it until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. And they attacked yet again in 1782, holding the island until 1783 and the Treaty of Paris.
In 1778, the Bath Hotel on Nevis became the first official tourist destination in the Americas.
Saint Kitts and Nevis became independent in 1983.
Saint Lucia
Saint Lucia is a really beautiful island, and for quite a small country it has a dramatic history. In terms of invasions, most of them involve Britain and France. Not much surprise there then.
Spanish, French, Dutch and English all took an early European interest in the island. In 1605, an English ship called the Olive Branch ended up on Saint Lucia by mistake. It had originally been heading for Guyana. The people on board tried to sett
le on Saint Lucia. It was another mistake. Disease and the local Caribs wiped out a large number of them in weeks and the others departed. In 1638, we were back, but not for long. The Caribs and disease saw to that.
It turned out that the French were to have a little more luck than us. In 1643 the governor of Martinique, one Parquet (nothing to do with flooring), set up a colony on Saint Lucia under one De Rousselan.
In 1664, Thomas Warner arrived to claim Saint Lucia for England, but like our previous efforts on the island, this was a disaster too. Soon the French were back in overall control. And so it went on seesawing to and fro, with the British and French both competing to be the dominant European power on the island, and with Saint Lucia changing hands many times.
In December 1778, for instance, with the French temporarily in control, a British fleet turned up to do something about it. On 13 December the fleet started landing British troops on the island at the delightfully named Grand Cul de Sac. On 15 December a French fleet attacked the British fleet, but failed to do much damage to the British operation. The French rushed reinforcements onto the island and the Brits and French clashed in the Battle of Morne de la Vierge. We won and by the end of the year Saint Lucia was ours again. For a time.
Finally, with the end of the Napoleonic Wars, the seesaw stopped tipping and we ended up with long-term control of the island.
Saint Lucia became fully independent on 22 February 1979.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 22