Gibraltar, Identity and Empire

E.G. Archer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781136005503
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The principal argument in Gibraltar and Empire is that Gibraltarians constitute a separate and distinctive people, notwithstanding the political stance taken by the government of Spain.

Various factors - environmental, ethnic, economic, political, religious, linguistic, educational and informal - are adduced to explain the emergence of a sense of community on the Rock and an attachment to the United Kingdom. A secondary argument is that the British empire has left its mark in Gibraltar in various forms - such as militarily - and for a number of reasons. Gilbraltar and Empire's exploration of the manifold reasons why the Gibraltarians have bucked the trend in the history of decolonization comes at a time when the issues in question have come to the fore in diplomatic and political areas.

1 Changing contexts, values and norms

In taking stock of the Britih influence on the Gibraltarian community and the interaction between Briton and Gibraltarian, and in relating the British and other influences to the Gibraltarians' assertion of their own national identity and their demand for self-determination, it should be borne in mind that a long time-scale has been involved. The influences and interactions have occurred over three centuries, in varying contexts and against a background of evolving values and norms, expectations and assertions.

The contexts of empire changed with the flow of history, at first colonial then post-colonial, involving overall European expansion and contraction during and after the events whereby ‘the British empire transformed the world’.¹ Central to this transformation have been sets of moral, social and cultural values, all helping to shape the ‘legacies of empire’, the inheritance of the new de-colonized nation-states. It is in the wake of this inheritance that a tiny Gibraltar has precariously sought to assert some form of separate identity. In time this appears to have become problematic as the distinctive identities of nation-states themselves have been put under pressure by new inter-state groupings and alliances and by the processes of globalization. ‘We live in a world in which the nation is in prolonged and often violent conflict with the confederation for the right to become the dominant mode of political association’ writes Anthony Pagden.² Some major aspects of contexts, imperial values and norms, inheritances and legacies, and nations and nationalism, are now considered.

Contexts

The broader historical context is that of empires world-wide, many dating from pre-European times. These and later non-European empires were usually landbased, a territory expanding through the conquest of an adjoining one. In contrast, modern fifteenth-century European expansion was maritime and wide-ranging. Various empires were constructed in parallel and large areas of the globe were affected by ‘the multiple imperialisms of Europe's autonomous components’.³ In January 2000, of the 188 members of the United Nations, 125 were states outside Europe which at one time were governed by Europeans, and about two-thirds of these had English, Dutch, French, Italian, Portuguese or Spanish as an official language. Much more than language was involved, of course: ‘Since the fifteenth century west Europeans sent forth their inhabitants, their several versions of the Christian faith, their attitudes towards nature, their languages, intellectual and political controversies, consumer goods, disease, death-dealing and life-enhancing technologies, commercial institutions, government bureaucracies and values.’⁴ Furthermore, while to some extent the different states did this in unison, they did so regularly in political and international rivalry with each other. This rivalry has underpinned the importance of Gibraltar to the British: its strategic position sometimes gave Britain an advantage over the others.

Some consider Colombus's first voyage in 1492 as the starting-point for modern European expansion. Others identify 1415, when King John of Portugal led a sea-borne force to take Ceuta on the African side of the Strait, as the start of the long history of modern European imperialism.⁵ In any event, Gibraltar did not become a British imperial possession until well into the first phase of expansion, which was mostly in the Americas. It was then that the European powers of Britain, France and Spain took their inter-state competitiveness abroad in their struggles to control the New World. ‘As the competition between the three major powers intensified, discovery, exploration and conquest became a crucial location for national pride’ and they measured their behaviour each against the other:⁶ These matters set the tone for all that was to follow. In 1704 when Gibraltar was captured by the British from the Spanish, Britain's imperial possessions were limited to North America and the Caribbean.⁷ A period of contraction followed, from 1775. Fifty years later began the massive European expansion into Africa, Asia and Oceania between 1824 and 1912, when the motives now focused rather more on commerce and profit. The parameters were set for the decades which followed. As regards the British share, by far the largest, the map of overseas territories clearly shows that Gibraltar had become ‘the first stop down the road’ to so much that was British. A final phase of decline followed between 1940 and 1980, Gibraltar remaining as one of Britain's few overseas territories in a largely de-colonized world.

Of course, Gibraltar existed physically long before the British arrived, although the Gibraltarians tend not to claim the more distant past as theirs: for them the beginning was 4 August 1704 when, after conquest by the British, all the residents left, making way for the creation of a new people. Before that there had been 242 years when the population had been Spanish, from a far from unified Spain. Preceding that there had been over seven centuries of Islamic control, begun in 711 with the defeat of the Christian Visigoths. The modern Gibraltarian sense of identity incorporates none of the earlier years and events.

Yet there has been continuity in a geographical and military sense over the longer time-span, Gibraltar being variously described from very early times to the present as safe-harbour, beach-head, port, fortress, staging-post, supply-base or observation-post. Struggles among all manner of interests — factions, dynasties, faiths, countries — have characterized the centuries of the Rock's history, struggles which latterly became struggles between expanding European nation-states. One siege followed another from 1309 to the Fifteenth Siege which ended in 1985, all described in W.G.F. Jackson's authoritative history,⁸ The Rock of the Gibraltarians. By the 1770s ‘Gibraltar had ceased to be just a dynastic pawn in European affairs and had become a strategic fortress in Britain's growing empire’.⁹ Thus it remained, during the struggles with Napoleon, at sea and in the Peninsular Wars; during the struggles with Germany and the First and Second World Wars; and beyond through the Cold War years against the USSR, continuing into the twenty-first century with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) base there. Therefore, although a relic of Britain's imperial past, Gibraltar has retained a wider, if diminishing, strategic significance.

Many Gibraltar histories, including the most recent, Maurice Harvey's Gibraltar, published in 1996,¹⁰ are largely concerned with such military matters and the changing military context. At the same time, the context for the populace, with which this study is primarily concerned, also changed regularly, sometimes dramatically. The sustaining thread throughout has been the cumulative development of the community and the associated establishment of a truly native population, based on a varied ethnic mix. The contributory factors are the subject of the chapters that follow. First, a sequence of extracts provides a vivid chronological ‘panorama’ of a changing Gibraltar.

1776

Ademas de la guarnicion habitan en tiempo de paz como tres mil personas de ambos sexos i de todas edades: quinientos son Ingleses, como mil Judios, i hasta mil quatrocientos Catolicos, Portugueses, Italianos, algunos Españoles, i la mayor parte Ginoveses. Era de temer por la diversidad de religiones, de costumbres é intereses de los habitantes, que se experimentáran en Gibraltar las pendencias i atrocidades que en otras ciudades de la provincia. La severidad del gobiemo militar las ha precavido; porque certificados los individuos que alli concurren, de la pena que les amenaza en caso de incurrir en algun delito, certificados de que alli no se gana a los ministros, ni se cohechan los jueces, fundan su seguridad en no interrumpir la agena; i por un efecto de leyes tan bien establecidas como observadas pasan muchos años sin que se vean los asesinatos i violentas muertes que en otras poblaciones mas pequeñas i de vecinos uniformes en religion i leyes.

In peace-time, in addition to the garrison, there are as many as three thousand people of both sexes and all ages. Five hundred are English, as many as one thousand Jews and up to one thousand four hundred Catholics, Portuguese, Italian, some Spanish and the majority Genoese. It was feared that, because of the varied religions, customs and background of the inhabitants, the same level of disputes and atrocities would be experienced as in other cities in the province. The strictness of the military government guarded against that. Since those living there had permits of residence, there could be trouble should they commit an offence. Permits could not be easily obtained from officials, nor could the judges be bribed, and their security depended on not upsetting the applecart. Therefore, as a result of laws that were equally well-established and observed, many years passed without the assassinations and violent deaths found in smaller places with only one faith and one set of laws.¹¹

1860

En Gibraltar son tan diversas las costumbres como las religiones y los paises de donde proceden sus habitants. Todos los habitantes de Gibraltar a cualquiera nacion que pertenezcan o de donde procedan, si bien conservan algunas de sus costumbres nacionales, están barnizados con un tinte inglés, que forma una mistura indescifrable. Los espanoles, los genoveses y otros mandan sus hijos a educar a Inglaterra, y vuelven estos de alli tan inglesados, que a veces cuesta trabajo descubrirles la hilaza.

In Gibraltar the customs are as diverse as the religions and the lands from whence the inhabitants come. All the inhabitants of Gibraltar, to whatever nation they belong or from whence they come, even though they may retain some of their national customs, are marked with an English veneer, forming an indecipherable mix. Spaniards, Genoese and others send their sons to England for their education and they return so English that at times it is difficult to identify their true character.¹²

1900

The voyager, as his ship passes under the Rock, comes to regard it as one immense mass of fortifications, which Nature seems specially to have constructed for the reception of artillery. Batteries frown on its precipitous sides, batteries crown its rugged summit; batteries line the water's edge; and batteries project audaciously even into the very sea. Half way up the slope may be seen the walls of the old Moorish castle. To the right, the irregular buildings of the town, of all imaginable shapes and colours, are clustered in picturesque variety at the foot of the precipices. To complete the picture, the Bay is studded with numerous craft, from the stately man-of-war and the great India-bound steamer, to the smart-looking felucca which spreads its lateen sails to the Mediterranean breeze.

On landing, the traveller pushes his way through a motley crowd, crosses the double enceinte, ditches and drawbridge, and enters the market-place, an open area surrounded by barracks, four, five and six storeys high. Here are to be seen a throng of interesting characters: Algerians and Morocco merchants, with half-naked legs, slippered feet, their shoulders wrapped in their large white bernouse, and their head crowned with turban or tarbouche; Jews, with venerable beards, black robes and pointed bonnets; the turbaned Moors, with loose flowing robes, and vests and trousers of crimson cloth; and the Spanish peasants, with velvet breeches and leggings of embroidered leather, and the navaja or knife, thrust into their tight crimson sash. Among these the English soldier winds his way, neat, erect and clean-shaven, as on parade in St. James' Park; or the Spanish lady lightly treads, her face concealed by her black mantilla, and her hand fluttering the inevitable fan.¹³

First World War (1914–1918)

Gibraltar never proved its worth to such an extent as during the Great War and though no actual fighting took place on the Rock itself yet it served most useful purposes such as a refuge for steamers avoiding submarine attack, coaling station, entrepot for obtaining fresh supplies of water and provisions, repairing port for damaged vessels and last but not least as a naval station and dockyard of the highest order for British and Allied men-of-war. The Allied Navies established bases at Gibraltar, the most important one being that of the United States of America.

The arming and disarming of many merchantmen was also carried out. The Dockyard workmen behaved most loyally throughout, working overtime daily to meet the needs of the Royal Navy and merchant service and the Patrol Boats exercised continual vigilance over the Straits to prevent the passage and attacks of enemy submarines and to examine all ships that passed through, and, whilst so doing, several vessels and lives were lost.

All the Military and Colonial Departments were also very hard worked and continual overtime had to be performed. Thousands of sailors, crews of many torpedoed vessels, were brought into Gibraltar. The Army too performed its duty most gallantly and strict supervision was maintained by all the different units comprising the Garrison and this watchfulness was unceasing. The continuous arrival of transports on their way to the different fighting fronts gave Gibraltar an opportunity of seeing the best regular and other regiments passing through its streets.

The arrival of Hospital Ships with wounded men was the occasion for Gibraltar to show its proverbial charity by its inhabitants loyally coming forward and helping to ameliorate the hard lot of the poor men who had been disabled in the defence of the British Empire.

The sons of Gibraltar, both on the Rock and in other remote parts of the world, voluntarily enlisted in the British Navy, Army and Royal Air Force, to fight for liberty and justice, and although no official data is available numbered several hundreds, some of whom were killed and others are disabled. War distinctions have been bestowed on not a few Gibraltarians.¹⁴

1944–1950

Overcrowding had been a problem in Gibraltar since time immemorial. The fact that many of the repatriates who had previously lived in Spain would now have to be accommodated in Gibraltar created many problems. Nor would many of the returning Gibraltarians be content to accept the poor quality accommodation they had tolerated before the War. Those who had been billetted in the ‘better’ areas of London had sampled the luxuries of modernstyle housing, and they would naturally hanker after similar amenities on their return to the Rock. As one evacuee put it: ‘there will be a lot of changes to be made in Gibraltar when we go back’. All this gave a tremendous boost to the house-building programme, and led to th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Introduction
• 1 Changing contexts, values and norms
• 2 Environmental aspects
• 3 Ethnic factors
• 4 Economic influences
• 5 Political and constitutional matters
• 6 Religion and the churches
• 7 Language and the community
• 8 Education 1704–1972: A system born and re-born
• 9 Education 1972–2000: Gibraltar takes control
• 10 Informal influences
• 11 The wider recreational and cultural scene
• 12 Concluding discussion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index