Then we come to the First Carlist War. Lots of Brits know about Wellington in Spain, but not so many know about our 10,000-strong British Legion, consisting of English, Scots and Irish, fighting here in the 1830s in support of Queen Isabella and the Liberals against the Carlists. This was a serious military force that faced heavy fighting and made a significant contribution to the side we were supporting in the war. In 1836, Sir George De Lacy Evans was in command of the force at San Sebastián, and the legion held the fort at Mount Urgull de San Sebastián. In 1837, despite defeat at the Battle of Oriamendi, they helped prevent the fall of Madrid.
And, of course, plenty of Brits went to fight bravely on the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.
Sri Lanka
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to settle in Sri Lanka. And they were followed and supplanted as the leading European power there by the Dutch. Neither Portuguese nor Dutch, however, managed to take total control of the island. Both had been prevented from doing so by fierce resistance.
In 1795, we arrived in force on the island. Due to French influence over the Netherlands back in Europe at that time, we were rather worried about the French controlling parts of Sri Lanka, particularly the strategic port of Trincomalee with its magnificent harbour. The French Admiral Suffern had already taken it from us in 1782 and though we had got it back in 1783, we had made the mistake (as it subsequently turned out) of handing it over to the Dutch.
This time we weren’t to make the same error. We took Trincomalee and kept it until Sri Lanka became independent from us. In addition, we took other key places, like Colombo, Jaffa, Batticoloa, Galle and, in fact, nearly all the low-lying areas along the coast.
Before we could control the whole of the island we had the Kingdom of Kandy to deal with. I know that to many Brits the Kingdom of Kandy will sound like something out of a kid’s dream about sweets, but in this case it was a powerful kingdom based on the important city of Kandy in the centre of the island.
We didn’t find it easy to take control of the kingdom. In fact, we ended up fighting three wars against it.
The first war broke out in 1803 and we advanced boldly into Kandyan territory. A bit too boldly as it turned out. After fierce fighting on the way, we eventually took Kandy and set up our own local rival to the Kandyan ruler. But our advance got bogged down as the Kandy forces switched to guerrilla tactics. Even worse (from our point of view), they counter-attacked and among other successes (from their point of view) retook Kandy and virtually wiped out our forces. Then when the Kandyans advanced out of the mountains we managed to crush them. But when we advanced into the mountains again, we were crushed. A stalemate developed.
By the time of the second war, the situation had changed. By 1815, we had been able to exploit assorted internal disputes to get some key local figures on our side, and when Kandyan troops pursuing a fleeing noble clashed with our forces, we moved once again into Kandyan territory. This time our forces advanced easily and arrived in Kandy on 10 February. The king was exiled to India and we signed the Kandyan Convention with local nobles, effectively securing British control of the kingdom.
Already by 1817, discontent with the situation led to the Uve Rebellion or Third Kandyan War, in which locals, including nobles, rose against us. We reacted rather ferociously and crushed the rebellion. It was all over by 1818.
Sri Lanka became independent in 1948.
Sudan
Sudan is one of those countries that has a fascinating history about which few Brits are aware. We should know more about it. There are periods in it like the empire of Kush and Meroe, which are particularly interesting.
Britain started getting seriously involved in the area in the late nineteenth century, mainly via our involvement in Egypt. Nineteenth-century Egypt fancied expanding south into the Sudan and sent expeditions that gradually conquered the country. So as we became more involved in Egypt, we became more involved in the Sudan as well. So much so, in fact, that it even reached the stage where the Khedive of Egypt was appointing a Brit, one Charles George Gordon, as governor of the Sudan. He did at least try to stamp out slave-trading here.
It’s at this point that Muhammad Ahmed comes into the picture. He led a religious and political rebellion against foreign rule and his followers had quite a lot of success against us. For instance, they defeated a British and Egyptian force near Al Ubayyid in 1882 and subsequently besieged and took Al Ubayyid. What happened then is that Gordon got himself stuck in Khartoum surrounded by the rebels and in January 1885 a British relief column reached the city two days after it had fallen and Gordon had been killed. Muhammad Ahmed himself died some six months after Gordon, but his regime lived on and attempted to spread into surrounding areas. Finally, in 1896, Kitchener, at the head of the British and Egyptian Nile Expeditionary Force, set off to invade Sudan. After assorted engagements on the way, Kitchener’s army arrived for the decisive battle at Omdurman on 2 September 1898. The massive firepower that Kitchener’s force was able to deploy helped to ensure a crushing defeat for the forces opposing him, with thousands of them dying, compared to only a few of the British and Egyptian force.
After that, in 1916 during the First World War, we were afraid that the Sultan of Darfur would assist the Ottomans against us in Egypt, so we invaded Darfur and incorporated it into Sudan.
We recognised Sudan’s independence on 1 January 1956.
Suriname
Suriname is on the north coast of South America, surrounded by Guyanas. Well sort of, it’s got Brazil to the south, Guyana to the west and French Guiana to the east. There was also once something called Dutch Guiana, which now consists of modern-day Guyana and Suriname itself. In terms of country names, Guyanas are to South America what Guineas are to Africa. There’s more than one and you can get confused if you don’t know the area. To be fair, it’s our fault, not theirs. We should know our world geography better. Suriname’s official language today is still Dutch, which many people wouldn’t expect of a country in South America where we tend to think of Spanish, Portuguese or local languages being spoken.
In 1630, a bunch of Brits led by one Mr Marshall arrived and set up a colony imaginatively called Marshall’s Creek on the Suriname River. Presumably it was on a creek of some sort. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch took control of our parts of Suriname and when it came to peace at the Treaty of Breda in 1667, we let the Dutch keep them and in return we got New Amsterdam, or New York as we had already called it. Fascinating swap. It would be interesting to compare property prices in Manhattan and Suriname today.
Swaziland
Swaziland has got South Africa on three sides and Mozambique on the east.
We were already in contact with the Swazi at the time of Mswati II, when he was looking for help against the Zulus. By 1894, the Swazi had come sort of under the colonial control of the authorities of South Africa, which they weren’t too happy about.
Then in 1899 came the Second Boer War and things got very complicated. Many of the Britons here left, and by October a Swaziland Commando led by Commandant C. Botha (raised from Boer settlers in Swaziland) was attacking a British police post at Kwaliweni. King Bhunu decided to add to the chaos by settling scores with some of his opponents, and in December he died and his mother Labotsibeni Mdluli took over as regent.
We worried that supplies to the Boers from Mozambique could pass through Swaziland, but the new Queen Regent was trying to remain neutral in the conflict, and Boers who fled into Swaziland were disarmed. Kitchener reassured the Queen Regent that as long as she remained neutral, no British forces would enter Swaziland unless the Boers invaded.
Eventually, retreating Boer units did cross into Swaziland and in 1901, with the Queen Regent’s agreement, British troops of the Imperial Light Horse and Suffolk Regiment crossed into Swaziland in pursuit. Assorted skirmishes followed as the British units gradually mopped up the Boer fighters. By February 1902 it was all over.
From 1902 to 1906 Swaz
iland was under British control as part of the Transvaal, and then from 1906 onwards it was separated from the Transvaal. Swaziland became independent again from Britain on 6 September 1968.
Sweden
Vikings, including at least some from Sweden, did, of course, spend quite a lot of time pillaging and plundering across Britain. By contrast we haven’t done anything similar on Swedish soil. Indeed, Sweden appears in this book as an example of the British Invasion That Never Really Quite Was. It is also a delightful example of The War That Killed Nobody.
Until 1810 Sweden had been happily fighting alongside Britain in the assorted conflicts that swirled across Europe and around Napoleon at the time. Unfortunately things went a bit badly for Sweden in the war and it meant that the country, under the January 1810 Treaty of Paris, was obliged to join a trade embargo of Britain. Since Britain was one of Sweden’s major trading partners, this was a problem for Sweden and much trade continued despite the treaty. Inevitably, this upset the French, who in November 1810 threatened to declare war against Sweden if Sweden didn’t declare war on Britain.
So the Swedes gave in and declared war. But, and this is the best bit, without actually making war. In fact, throughout the ‘war’ a British fleet was based at Vinga Sound, just 14 miles from Gothenburg. The men planted vegetable gardens on the small islands around them, and what they didn’t grow was discreetly supplied to them from Gothenburg.
No Britons or Swedes were killed by the other side, but it could be argued that the Swedes sort of lost by an own goal. An attempt by the Swedish government to conscript more farmers led to riots in which thirty Swedes were killed by other Swedes.
Finally, the Swedes and French fell out again and Sweden signed the Treaty of Örebro with Britain, thus bringing to an end the long bitter years of bloodshed – sorry my mistake, the short, comparatively amicable years of no bloodshed.
Switzerland
The Swiss have long been neutral and even managed to avoid being invaded in the First and Second World Wars. Plus they are land-locked, so you would think they might not have been invaded by Brits. But if you think that, you would be wrong.
In 1375 British knights, along with French knights, invaded the Swiss plateau in what is known as the English War, or the rather more fun Gugler War. It almost sounds like this is made up, but apparently it actually happened. Even more delightfully, Guglers may mean ‘hoodies’, because apparently it was winter so the knights wore hoods or cowls, in German a gugel, over their helmets to keep themselves warm. A less jolly interpretation of the name is that it came from the pointy helmets some of the knights wore.
At the time there was a lull in the Hundred Years War that left a lot of knights on both sides without gainful employment and without slaughtering and looting to do. As a consequence, when Enguerrand VII de Coucy decided he wanted to put together an army to pursue his inheritance claims, he found no lack of volunteers. In fact, the army he assembled is said to have numbered at least 10,000–16,000 and maybe more. The knights came from both sides of the Hundred Years War, with plenty of Englishmen involved, and seem to have included the fascinating Owain Lawgoch (Owain of the Red Hand). As Welsh as his name (except for being born in Surrey) and descended from Llyweln the Great, Owain was a claimant to the title Prince of Gwynedd as well as of Wales. He spent much of his life in France organising assorted attempts to invade and claim the throne of Wales before being assassinated by a squire, John Lambe. At a time when he wasn’t trying to invade Wales, Owain joined the Guglers as they headed for Switzerland. Owain didn’t have much luck with invading Wales and, as it turned out, he didn’t have much luck invading Switzerland either.
The Guglers plundered Alsace in autumn 1375 before heading south. In December 1375 they crossed the Jura Mountains and headed into Switzerland. You can see why they needed their hoods, as it must have been a distinctly chilly journey. Owain Lawgoch set himself up at the Abbey of Fraubrunnen. But the locals resisted the Guglers. Three hundred knights were killed at Buttisholz on 19 December, a Bernese citizen force killed more Guglers at Ins, and then on 27 December, the Guglers were attacked at Fraubrunnen. Another 800 Guglers were killed here, but Owain himself survived. Finally, the Guglers had had enough of Switzerland and departed, with the Gugler army itself soon to dissolve.
Syria
We’ve invaded Syria more than once over the centuries.
As early as the First Crusade, armed Englishmen seem to have been roaming Syria. When the army of the First Crusade turned up at the Syrian port of Latakia in 1097, after they had sweatily walked all the way across the Balkans and Turkey, they may have been somewhat surprised, and perhaps a little miffed, that an English fleet seemed to have got there first. Having said that, nobody now seems entirely sure what this English fleet was doing there, or who was in control of it. In a little-known fact of British history, after the Norman invasion of England substantial numbers of Anglo-Saxon exiles seem to have enlisted in the Emperor of Byzantiums’ Varangian Guard (a sort of French Foreign Legion of its day, or rather Byzantine Foreign Legion) and it has been argued that this English fleet was part of the force.
In the modern period, you would think our invasions of Syria would start with the Syrian War of 1839–40 in which we played such a large part. And it probably does, just about. Confusingly, the Syrian War (also called the Second Syrian war, or Egyptian-Ottomon War, or Second Egyptian-Ottoman war) saw extensive action on the land and in the waters of present-day Lebanon, Israel and Egypt, but not that much, or at least not that much involving us, in the area of present-day Syria. But since our ships’ operations seem to have extended all the way from Alexandria in Egypt to ‘Scanderoon’, the rather jolly English spelling of present-day Iskenderun in Turkey, it seems reasonable to assume that we were in Syrian waters at least at some point.
There are no such questions over the British invasion of Syria in 1918 though. We were here, and here in force. After Allenby’s decisive victory over the Ottoman forces at the Battle of Megiddo (see Israel) on 19–21 September, his forces swept through Syria. Allenby’s troops, along with Lawrence and fighters of the Arab Revolt, entered Damascus at the beginning of October, with Lawrence in an open-top Rolls-Royce. Homs fell on 16 October and Aleppo was taken on 25 October. For a time after the war we maintained troops in Syria.
Eventually, the French were to take control of Syria under a League of Nations Mandate. Which meant that after the German invasion of France in 1940 and the creation of the Vichy French government, Syria in 1941 was a problem for us. Indeed, there were fears that German operations through Syria could undermine our position across the Middle East, particularly in Iraq.
On 8 June 1941, Operation Exporter went into action. British, Commonwealth and assorted other forces invaded Syria from the south, from what was then the Palestine Mandate. British and Commonwealth forces also invaded Syria from Iraq to the east. Despite a setback at Quneitra, and bitter fighting against often determined Vichy defenders, the force attacking from Palestine had taken Damascus by 21 June. Further north, the force attacking from Iraq took the fabulously historical city of Palmyra on 2 July. On 3 July, William ‘Bill’ Slim won the Battle of Deir ez-Zor and by 8 July, the 10th Indian Division was approaching Aleppo. An armistice was signed on 14 July.
Tajikistan
Lying to the north of Afghanistan, Tajikistan was on the Russian side of the net during the Great Game of the nineteenth century. But there is some evidence that we tried to cause the Russians trouble here when we could.
In the late nineteenth century we were using Afghanistan, which we partly controlled, as our proxy in the area to control Russian expansion southwards. In 1883, allegedly under British influence, the Afghans broke an agreement between us and the Russians of 1873 and invaded part of present-day Tajikistan in the region of Shighnan and Badakhshan. The local Tajiks seem to have preferred Russian rule to Afghan rule and threw the Afghans across the Panja after fighting at Somatash and Yaims.
In the late ninetee
nth century we helped to ensure that our ally the Emir of Afghanistan got control of a chunk of disputed land in this area to create the so-called Wakhan Corridor, that strange, sticking out, pointy bit at the top right-hand corner of Afghanistan. It’s a narrow piece of land that stretches all the way to China and it served an important purpose. It helped ensure that the British Empire and the Russian Empire didn’t have to share a border here, and it’s there to this day.
Then, after the Russian Revolution, suddenly Russian control of what is now Tajikistan seemed vulnerable. The most effective local opposition to Soviet rule came from local rebels (particularly in the Fergana region of Tajikistan). Some of the Soviets were convinced we must be arming and aiding these rebels.
Tanzania
Tanzania isn’t an ancient name. Originally there were two separate entities, Tanganyika and Zanzibar. Tanganyika became independent from Britain in 1961 and Zanzibar became independent from us in 1963. In April of 1964, they joined together to become the United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar, which, let’s face it, is quite a mouthful. In October 1964, they abbreviated it all down to the much handier United Republic of Tan-Zania, or Tanzania. I just put the hyphen in to show the join.
Zanzibar and Tanganyika had very different histories for a very long time. The Zanzibar archipelago consists of a group of islands off the East African coast, but the two main ones are Zanzibar itself and Pemba.
Fascinatingly, for a long time Zanzibar wasn’t paired with Tanganyika, but with Oman a long way to the north. It wasn’t to last. When one particular sultan died, one of his sons became Sultan of Oman and the other became Sultan of Zanzibar.
All the Countries We've Ever Invaded Page 25