Gibraltar

Chris Grocott, Gareth Stockey

Description

A timely and up-to-date history of a place and people embroiled in an enduring international dispute.

Sujets

• Histoire
• History
• Gibraltar
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: University of Wales Press
• Date de parution: 15 juin 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783165216
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Gibraltar: A Modern History
Gibraltar: A Modern History
Chris Grocott and Gareth Stockey -->

UNIVERSITY OF WALES PRESS CARDIFF
© Chris Grocott and Gareth Stockey, 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any material form (including photocopying or storing it in any medium by electronic means and whether or not transiently or incidentally to some other use of this publication) without the written permission of the copyright owner except in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Applications for the copyright owner s written permission to reproduce any part of this publication should be addressed to the University of Wales Press, 10 Columbus Walk, Brigantine Place, Cardiff CF10 4UP.
www.uwp.co.uk
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-0-7083-2481-3 e-ISBN 978-1-7831-6521-6
The right of Chris Grocott and Gareth Stockey to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77, 78 and 79 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Cover image: Gibraltar Border © Kevin Fitzmaurice-Brown / Alamy. Cover design: Olwen Fowler
Contents
Acknowledgements
Map
Introduction
1 Gibraltar as British Fortress, 1704-1783
2 Trading Outpost and Naval Base, 1783-1906
3 Emergence of a Civilian Community, c .1865-1954
4 Relations with Spain, 1704-1969
5 Gibraltar and the Gibraltarians, 1954 to the present
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliographical note
Appendix: Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht (1713)
Acknowledgements
This work builds upon a combined total of twenty-odd years of research into the history of Gibraltar undertaken by the authors. Over this period we have accrued many debts of gratitude. It is, of course, impossible to give sufficient acknowledgement to all such debts, but here we would like to mention a few.
We are grateful for the support we have received in Gibraltar over the years, particularly from Lorna Swift, librarian of the Garrison Library; Tommy Finlayson and Dennis Beiso, archivists at the Gibraltar Government Archive; and to Pepe Rosado for encouraging us in our work.
Closer to home we are also grateful for the support, first as supervisers, and now as fellow academics and friends, of Professor Martin Blinkhorn and Professor Stephen Constantine. Yet still closer to home we acknowledge and are thankful for the help and encouragement of both our families and of, in particular, Dr Jo Grady and Dr Helena Chadderton; without their support this, and many other projects, would not have been completed. As to any errors contained herein, these are entirely our own doing.
Chris Grocott and Gareth Stockey

Introduction
In recent years, books and articles dedicated to specific aspects of Gibraltar s history have proliferated. Ink has flowed on the Rock s military history, its relations with the Royal Navy, its famous Barbary macaques, its political development, and, with increased vigour in the past twenty-five years, its civilian community. So diverse are the subjects tackled that, in 2001, even a history of the Rock s telephone and telegraph services was published. In Britain, Gibraltar has traditionally enjoyed an iconic status. As a fortress and as a naval base, the Rock captured the imagination of a nation that, by and large, welcomed its global imperial mission. This led some commentators to hyperbole. At the turn of the twentieth century, the Chairman of the Institute of Civil Engineers, replying to a paper whose subject was the improvements to Gibraltar s dockyard and military fortifications, went so far as to suggest that it is the duty of every Englishman to go to Gibraltar and see the Empire s fortress that guards the Mediterranean . 1 Clearly not everyone followed this advice. Nevertheless, in the twenty-first century the Rock is a popular tourist destination: the Government of Gibraltar s budget for 2007 estimated that the number of day visitors to the Rock in that year was around 9.5 million people. 2 While statistics which break down this figure by nationality are not available, it is a safe assumption that the thousands of plates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding served in Main Street pubs - even in stifling summer heat - are catering largely for British tastes.
Popular interest in Gibraltar is not fuelled solely by the vision of the Rock as an imperial museum-piece, however. True enough, the Rock s status as one of the last pink bits on the world map is certainly a curious relic, and the notion of a bit of Britain in the sun can be a lure to tourists. 3 Nevertheless, the contested nature of Gibraltar s sovereignty regularly returns the Rock to the media spotlight. Frequent reports of the diplomatic wrangling between the respective governments of Britain, Spain and, increasingly, Gibraltar itself, remind people of the British presence and that such a presence is not universally accepted. To understand the dispute today, however, we must understand Gibraltar s history.
This volume examines the various trends that have affected the Rock s inhabitants since its capture from Spain in 1704 by an Anglo-Dutch force, and its subsequent cession to Britain in 1713. As a British colony, Gibraltar s impressive fortifications and dockyard played a crucial role in the conduct of war and in imperial communications. This meant that Gibraltar was, at the same time, both a dangerous and a lucrative place to be. It also meant that the Rock s fortunes, and those of its inhabitants, were dependent upon wider affairs in the British Empire, Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean world more broadly. In addition, the same factors that made Gibraltar an important strategic possession also caused tension between the British Government, British officials on the Rock, Spain and, increasingly, the Gibraltarians themselves. At the level of international relations, British occupation of a portion of the Iberian Peninsula - which many Spaniards considered to be part of their homeland - generated responses from Madrid which ranged from bitter acceptance to military initiative. At the local level the development of a separate community of Gibraltarians complicated the Gibraltar dispute still further by adding the existence of a third party who called the territory home and increasingly asserted their right of self-determination. While British and Anglo-Spanish themes are, therefore, writ large in this volume, it is the development, amid such grand forces, of a distinctive, self-aware and increasingly self-assertive Gibraltarian community which forms the central narrative thread of this volume.
This modern history of Gibraltar is designed to introduce those with little or no knowledge of the history of Gibraltar to the events and people who have shaped today s Gibraltarians. Nevertheless, the dedicated scholar of the Rock will also find this work of interest. It builds upon new research and upon developments in the historiography of Gibraltar that have occurred in the past twenty-five years or so. Both are recorded in detail throughout the extensive endnotes provided in each chapter. This volume is innovative for reasons other than its use of unused primary and innovative secondary material, however. Herein, new perspectives are proposed on the development of Gibraltar s, and Gibraltarians , political affairs and cultural identity. It is worthwhile examining some of these here.
First, a conscious decision has been made to begin our analysis in 1704. Several general works on Gibraltar take their analysis much further back. Both George Hills, in Rock of Contention , and Sir William Jackson, in Rock of the Gibraltarians , began their narratives with the period up to the Islamic capture of Gibraltar in 711. 4 This volume rejects attempts to study pre-1704 Gibraltar as something akin to the territory that existed after 1704. In place of the region or greater Gibraltar , British Gibraltar was, by way of administration, law, taxation and sovereignty separate from the region around it and should be studied as such. Any study designed to analyse the creation of modern Gibraltar must therefore begin with the moment of capture from Spain.
Secondly, the lens through which Gibraltar s society is viewed is a deliberately wide one. Many histories of Gibraltar have been concerned solely with elites or with the influence of certain key figures on Gibraltar s political development. This is particularly notable in Jackson s work, cited above, but it can also be seen in the number of histories, autobiographies and biographies of key individuals, families and businesses in Gibraltar. 5 In a colonial society such as Gibraltar s there was, of course, direction and coercion from both the colonial authorities and from entrepreneurial elites that affected the lives of Gibraltarians more broadly. Such issues are important. All too often, however, historians have focussed on these numerically small groups while ignoring wider forces within the Rock s society. By examining the Rock s history with thought to the lives and ideas of working-class Gibraltarians, as well as members of the colonial administration, and of the merchant elite, we allow a fuller picture of life on the Rock to emerge.
Thirdly, thinking about the lives of ordinary people on the Rock invites us also to think about the extent to which such lives were affected by changes to the British imperial world and to the Rock s relationship with Spain. Drawn out here are the broad themes of Anglo-Spanish relations over Gibraltar s contested status, and the way in which Gibraltar s society interacted with its Spanish neighb