Singapore joined Malaysia in 1963 and became independent in 1965.
Slovakia
Slovakia has not been an area where armed Britons have spent much time.
On 29 August 1944, though, in an episode that deserves to be better known in Britain, the Slovak army rose against Slovakia’s pro-Nazi government. Thus began the Slovak National Uprising. It was brutally crushed by the Nazis, but before that happened teams from both SOE and the American OSS (US intelligence operations) were flown into the area.
The SOE team, led by Major John Sehmer, parachuted in on 18 September. It was supposed to be on its way to Hungary, but once it arrived it worked with the leadership of the Slovak uprising. In October, the German counter-offensive began and the SOE team and Slovak fighters were forced back into the mountains. The SOE team, with local help, managed to evade capture and meet up with the OSS team on 6 December. Tragically, on Christmas Day, both groups were surrounded. None of the SOE and OSS teams survived. Some were killed immediately. Others were executed in Mauthausen concentration camp.
Slovenia
A country we have come perilously close to not invading at all. We have done so, though.
As early as the fourth century, Magnus Maximus, who was later to enter Welsh legend as Macsen Wledig, led an army from Britain into mainland Europe to seize the imperial throne. He specifically recruited more Brits for an attempted invasion of Italy and some of his forces ended up in action in what is now Slovenia, losing to the forces of Theodosius.
And we did just scrape across the border from Italy at the end of the Second World War.
In a confused situation in which Tito’s victorious Yugoslav partisans were taking back Yugoslav territory previously annexed by Italy, and even pushing on into territory that forms part of present-day Italy, passions were running high and the tensions that were to lead to the Cold War were already evident on the ground.
In this chaos, the disputed territory known as the Julian March was divided in two in June 1945 by the Morgan Line. Most of the area came under Yugoslav administration, but a thin western strip, including, for example, the present-day Slovenian town of Sezana, came under joint British-American control.
In 1947, at the Paris Peace Conference, the areas of Slovenia held by Britain and America were handed to Tito.
Solomon Islands
Among early British visitors to the area were Lieutenant Shortland and Captain Manning in the late eighteenth century.
In the 1870s, HMS Rosario clashed with islanders on Nukapu, leading to the ship landing a party here and destroying a local village.
Then, in the late nineteenth century, there was the familiar competition among European powers to take control. In 1893, we declared a protectorate over the southern islands, including Guadalcanal, and in 1899 we took over control from the Germans of the northern islands. In return, we recognised their control over Western Samoa.
During the Second World War the Japanese invaded, followed by the Americans, leading to the crucial actions at Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Members of the British Solomon Islands Protectorate Defence Force also played a brave and important role at this time.
The Solomon Islands became independent in 1978.
Somalia
This is a country that, to put it mildly, has been through difficult times recently and is still, in many ways, going through them at the time of writing.
As you would expect by now, we have played a large part in conflict in Somalia, at times. At quite a lot of times, in fact.
We started taking a serious interest in the area in the late nineteenth century, and by 1888 we had established a protectorate over what became known as British Somaliland. It wasn’t a part of the empire that was hugely valued by Britain, and in the early twentieth century we began to realise that some of the locals weren’t too enthusiastic about us either. In particular, there was one Somali clan leader, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan, who was very unenthusiastic. In fact, he was so unenthusiastic that he led a long war of resistance attempting to drive us out and build a state.
Hassan started his campaign in 1899 and we soon clashed with him and his forces. We fought him in assorted actions up until 1905, with very mixed fortunes. In 1903 at Gumburu, for instance, his forces overran a reconnaissance force of ours after all their ammunition was expended and almost 200 of our men were killed. At Erego in 1902, Hassan’s men ambushed a British column and bitter fighting followed. Finally, on 9 January 1904, we won what seemed a decisive victory at Jidballi in which thousands on the other side were killed. And in 1905 a peace treaty was signed.
But by 1907, fighting had broken out again. In 1913, in the Battle of Dul Madoba, our Somaliland Camel Constabulary suffered badly; thirty-six members died, including the commander Colonel Richard Corfield.
Conflict continued and Hassan was still around, so in 1920 we prepared for another offensive. This time, instead of relying on ground forces, a major role was allotted to the new RAF. Planes were being used against men who had never seen an aircraft before. The air and ground forces developed techniques of cooperation in which aircraft would bomb a fort, and ground forces would then attack with aerial support. After just three weeks, Hassan’s main fort at Taleh was taken and he himself fled into the Ogaden. He died later the same year.
To the south of British Somaliland was an area called Italian Somaliland. For a time, this wasn’t a problem from our point of view, but in the Second World War it became a problem. A big problem. In August 1940, the Italians invaded British Somaliland with an overwhelming advantage in terms of troops, artillery and tanks. It could only end one way and we managed to evacuate almost all of our troops by sea to Aden.
But Italy wasn’t to hold on to British Somaliland for long. By 1941, it was time for us to invade Somalia again. We started with Italian Somaliland. In January, Cunningham’s forces advanced north from Kenya into the territory. His troops moved rapidly, taking the port of Kismayu on 14 February and reaching Mogadishu itself on 25 February.
Then in March, Operation Appearance, the first successful Allied assault on an enemy-held beach of the war, went into action, with British and Commonwealth forces from Aden landing on both sides of Berbera and eventually linking up with Cunningham’s forces. The whole of British Somaliland was soon back under British control.
British Somaliland became independent from Britain in 1960 and shortly afterwards joined with former Italian Somaliland to become Somalia.
Our naval forces recently returned to the area to counter pirates.
South Africa
Almost everybody knows we have had a lot to do with South Africa so I won’t go into it in detail in this book, except to cover some of the basics.
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to spend time in the area of what is now South Africa, but they didn’t try to settle. Unlike the Dutch, who settled here later, along with Germans, some Scandinavians and so on.
As with a lot of other Dutch-controlled territory, we got our hands on the Cape during the Napoleonic Wars, when it seemed likely that the French might make use of Dutch-controlled territories against us. We took it in 1795, gave it back to the Dutch for a bit after a temporary peace in 1803, then took it again in 1806 and kept it at the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
In 1820 we brought in settlers to the East Cape, which established a large British civilian population in the area.
Gradually we began to extend our area of control. We fought a long and bitter series of wars against the Xhosa people that extended right up until 1879 as our forces gradually pushed the Xhosa back and eventually took control of their territory. This involved much suffering for the Xhosa and large numbers of casualties.
We weren’t the only ones extending our area of control in the region in the early nineteenth century. Shaka, chief of the Zulus, built a massive kingdom through military might as well. In 1879, we invaded it. On 22 January 1879, a British force was defeated by the Zulus at the Battle of Insandlwana, but in a subsequent action, the Zul
us failed to take Rorke’s Drift, which was stoutly defended by our hugely outnumbered forces in an epic action that led to the award of no less than eleven Victoria Crosses and, of course, the 1960s film Zulu. Eventually, the forces of the Zulu King Cetshwayo were decisively defeated at the Battle of Ulundi.
Meanwhile, many of the settlers of Dutch descent, the Boers, had become frustrated with British rule and moved further inland in search of fresh territory beyond British control. New Boer states emerged: Natal, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State. In 1842 we took Natal and annexed it in 1845.
In 1869 diamonds were found near what was to become Kimberley. The diamond fields were in territory claimed by Nicholas Waterboer, leader of the Griqua people, and also by Boers. In 1871 we annexed the area anyway.
In April 1877, even though the Boers protested, we moved in to take over the Transvaal. This didn’t last long because in 1880, the Boers of the Transvaal rose against us and in the First Boer War defeated British forces at the Battle of Majuba Hill on 27 February 1881. Transvaal became independent again and in 1883 Paul Kruger became its president.
In 1886, geology and politics once again caused an explosive combination. In 1886, gold was found at Witwatersrand, Johannesburg was founded, and large numbers of non-Boers moved in to mine the gold. In 1895, one Captain Leander Starr Jameson launched the so-called Jameson Raid in a failed attempt to set off an uprising and seize the area. In 1899, however, non-Boers at Witwatersrand petitioned Queen Victoria, asking her to intervene on their behalf on assorted political and economic issues, and it all ended with Kruger leading the Transvaal and Orange Free State into a war against us.
This was the Second Boer War. Key events like the sieges of Kimberley, Ladysmith and Mafeking are well known, as are setbacks for us at Magersfrontein, Colenso and Spion Kop. Our forces suffered, but in the end we ground down Boer resistance. In June 1900, Pretoria was taken and in October we won a major victory at Bergendal. The Boers continued a guerrilla war for another two years and we responded with harsh tactics, such as the rounding up of Boer civilians into concentration camps. These weren’t extermination camps. They were camps where people were concentrated, but they were still terrible places where large numbers died from disease. In 1902, the Treaty of Vereeniging was signed and the Boer republics finally came under our control.
South Africa became independent from Britain through a series of steps.
South Sudan
As with Sudan, we became involved with South Sudan via Egypt, which had taken control of the area in the nineteenth century. For instance, with British involvement and a British governor, the Egyptians set up the province of Equatoria in the south of South Sudan in 1870.
As with Sudan, South Sudan saw the rebellion of Muhammad Ahmed. And in 1887, an expedition from Britain was sent up the Congo River to rescue Emin Pasha, Charles George Gordon’s successor as governor of the Province of Equatoria, from the rebels. After a long and difficult journey, the relief force, known as the ‘Advance’ reached Emin Pasha. They couldn’t save his regime, but they did save him and eventually reached the coast with Pasha in 1888.
In 1898, Kitchener’s British and Egyptian expedition reconquered the area, with the final decisive battle taking place at Omdurman (see Sudan) on 2 September. By 18 September, Kitchener had advanced into South Sudan and instead of facing the rebels, he found that he was facing the French. Yes, they were there too. In one of those famous ‘incidents’ that pepper British history of the nineteenth century, in this case the Fashoda Incident, a French force trying to establish French control of the area had set itself up in a fort at, you guessed it, Fashoda, now Kodok. Kitchener arrived with a flotilla and a tense stand-off developed. In the end, on 3 November, the French withdrew.
We recognised Sudan’s independence on 1 January 1956 and South Sudan became independent in 2011.
Spain
Brits tend to be well aware of the time in 1588 when the Spanish Armada almost invaded England. But they don’t tend to be quite so aware of the frequency with which Brits have invaded Spain.
In the late fourth century, Magnus Maximus led an army including Britons into Europe in pursuit of the imperial crown and held Spain for a while.
And at the beginning of the fifth century, Constantine III led another army from Britain into Europe. This time a British-born general, Gerontius, was sent with an army to take Spain, which he succeeded in doing. However, Spanish troops recruited into his army were later to turn against him in a move that led to his death in an epic siege. He and a few others found themselves surrounded in a house and held off the Spanish troops, killing 300 of them, until they ran out of arrows.
In the period after the end of the Roman Empire, Brits settled in north-western Spain in an area of Galicia that was known for a while as Britonia. By 572, Mailoc, a bishop of Britonia, was present at the Council of Braga. As with the British settlement in Brittany, we don’t know how much violence was involved in this settlement, or whether it was entirely peaceful, but the fact is that Brits seem to have taken control of an area of Spain.
During the Middle Ages we were involved with assorted activities in Spain. In 1367, the Black Prince invaded Spain from Aquitaine with an Anglo-Gascon army in support of Peter of Castile in the Castilian Civil War. At the Battle of Nájera, our longbowmen helped win a crushing victory over the opposition. Not that it achieved too much in the long run as Peter and the Black Prince fell out with each other over money.
It was in the sixteenth century, though, that things really started hotting up between us and Spain. We’ve already mentioned the Spanish Armada, but the same conflict also saw us attack Spanish territory on a number of occasions. Most memorably on 19 April 1587, prior to the Armada, Francis Drake did his ‘Singeing the King of Spain’s Beard’ by taking between thirty and forty English ships into Cadiz harbour and destroying loads of Spanish vessels. The English were back in Cadiz in 1596, with Sir Walter Raleigh and the Earl of Wessex destroying ships in the harbour and taking the town.
And we didn’t stop there. There was plenty more to come in the seventeenth century. Though the 1625 Raid on Cadiz (Cadiz, yet again) has to rank as one of England’s more disastrous military expeditions. The attacking English troops landed and took a fort they didn’t have to. Then, because they didn’t have enough provisions with them, the troops ‘liberated’ some wine vats. With most of the expedition now drunk, some made it back to the ships and the rest were slaughtered, in both senses of the word, when the Spanish defenders attacked them.
Under Cromwell we were attacking Spain again and a fleet was dispatched with Admiral Blake to take the war into their home territory and water. In 1656, the English were back at Cadiz, not drunk this time, and blockading the port. The Battle of Cadiz was a huge defeat for Spain and a huge victory for England. Blake followed it up on 20 April 1657 with victory at the Battle of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in which he virtually destroyed another Spanish fleet.
The eighteenth century was also going to be a big century for attacking Spain. The War of the Spanish Succession got under way early in the eighteenth century and we soon had troops roaming the country. In October 1705, an allied army under Charles Mordaunt, the Earl of Peterborough, captured Barcelona. James Stanhope followed that up with assorted other victories, including the capture of Minorca, and victories at the Battle of Almenar and Saragossa. However, he rather lost out to the French at Brihuega and eventually had to surrender in December 1710. Still, by the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, we kept Minorca, and of course Gibraltar.
By contrast, during the War of the Quadruple Alliance, the Spanish managed to set foot in Britain when 300 Spanish marines landed in Scotland to link up with local Highlander forces before being defeated with their local allies at the Battle of Glenshiel in 1719. Late the same year, we were back to invading Spain again, landing at Vigo and taking it, before marching to Pontevedra.
And in the Seven Years War of 1756–63 we were once again fighting in Spanish waters and on Spa
nish soil. In 1756, we lost Minorca, but by 1762 we had British troops on the ground in mainland Spain fighting alongside our Portuguese allies and defeating the Spanish at the Battle of Valencia de Alcántara. And we got Minorca back at the end of the war anyway. Although we lost it for the last time in 1781 to a combined Spanish and French force.
And then we come to the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Most Brits have heard of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but many of them tend to think of Nelson defeating the French there. What they often forget is that there were Spanish ships opposing our ships as well, and that Cape Trafalgar itself is on the Spanish coast, not the French. Mind you, Nelson’s attack on Santa Cruze de Tenerife in 1797 hadn’t been such a great success. That’s where he got the wound that cost him part of his arm.
When we think of Brits invading Spain during the Napoleonic Wars, we usually tend to think of one Arthur Wellesley (later created Duke of Wellington). We had had successes as well as failures in the period before Wellesley’s arrival in Spain. Sir John Moore’s death at the Battle of Corunna is one of those memorable incidents in British military history. Wellesley led a gritty campaign against the French and their local allies as the tide of battle ebbed and flowed over the Portuguese border, and as the Spanish increasingly rose against the French, but eventually he managed to push deep into Spain and stay there. In 1812, he captured Badajoz and after victory at the Battle of Salamanca, the French lost control of Madrid. Finally, in 1813 he chased the French out of Spain back across the Pyrenees into France.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 24