‘… For it was founded upon a Rock’: Gibraltar and the Purposes of Empire in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In 1853–54, cholera in Britain forced the leadership at the tiny British fortress colony of Gibraltar to make a choice. Should the colony quarantine ships from Britain or leave the maritime frontier open to ships from the metropolitan centre of empire? The first choice secured imperial communication between London and the Rock, but it also jeopardised Gibraltar's land access to Southern Spain, as the failure to quarantine British ships would surely force Spanish authorities to close their border to protect against pandemic disease. Contrapuntally, the decision to protect Gibraltarian trade with Spain undermined any substantive claim to British ‘control’ over its colonial possession. The choice here was highlighted by Gibraltar's colonial governor, General Sir Robert Gardiner, who insisted that Gibraltar be governed as a British colony and kept open to the colonial centre at all costs, and Gibraltar's merchant community, a group that feared the economic consequences of a frontier closure at Gibraltar enough to favour keeping the Rock's quarantine policies in line with Spanish regulations rather than those set by Britain. As a result of this medical dispute, Gibraltar became a pivotal location, a metonym for a much broader conversation about the uses and purposes of Britain's overseas empire in the middle years of the nineteenth century.

Notes

The Gospel According to St. Matthew 7:25.

See Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’. See also Maglen, ‘Intercepting Infection’, 23–31, 64–68.

Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 218–19.

Ibid., 218–19, 247–8. See also Rosen, A History of Public Health, 260–3. For more on the consolidation of the medical profession as arbiters of sound scientific knowledge in the nineteenth century, see Gilbert, Cholera and the Nation, 67–90, 94–95, 104–07, 138–45.

Baly, Report, 1.

For Gardiner's perspective on the case of the Leopard, see Gardiner, Letter to Lord Howden. Though he seemed indifferent to the standing quarantine regulations, Robert Gardiner was deeply invested in tracking the movements of the cholera outbreak in Britain. Not only did he keep up with news in published accounts, he stayed in close contact with London about the conditions there. See Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (Jan. 11).

Blake, How to Capture and Govern Gibraltar, 83–84. See also Baly, Report, 2.

Maglen, ‘Politics of Quarantine’, 2873.

Newyear, Gibraltar, or the Pretender, 19.

The British would quickly violate most of these stipulations, particularly the clause that restricted Jewish settlement at the Rock. By 1713, the Jewish population at Gibraltar is estimated to have been nearly 150 people. Hassan, The Treaty of Utrecht (1713). See also Anonymous, The Report of the Commissioners Sent into Spain, preface.

Quoted in Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 333–34.

Conn, Gibraltar in British Diplomacy, 19.

The British seem first to have asked for the ‘double-cannon shot’ buffer zone, or a distance of about 4,000–5,000 yards, in 1713. See Carrington, Gibraltar, 11. This measurement continued to be the basis for Anglo-Spanish negotiations in the mid-eighteenth century, and it continued to appear in Anglo-Spanish international correspondence into the nineteenth century. See Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 140; D'Anvers, Danverian History of the Affairs of Europe, 91; Conn, Gibraltar in British Diplomacy, 128.

It was to Gibraltar that the heavily damaged Victory, carrying Nelson's body, returned on 28 Oct. 1805.

Dryden, The Indian Emperor, or, the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards; Sheridan, Pizarro.

Hamilton-Gordon, Letter to the Spanish Minister in London.

Martínez de Irujo y McKean, Duque de Sotomayor, Letter to Lord Aberdeen.

Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 229.

Ibid., 231.

Baly, Report, 1.

Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 231. See also Gardiner, Report on the Military Defences, Government, and Trade of Gibraltar, 155–56.

Howes, The Gibraltarians, i.

Gibraltar's status as a free port was reaffirmed multiple times. See Bland, Rules Humbly Propos'd, 122–24.

For popular images of Gibraltar as a symbol of security, one need look no further than Prudential Financial Inc. The company's logo has carried an image of Gibraltar since the 1890s, and its slogans have included such jingles as ‘Get a Piece of the Rock’ and ‘the Strength of Gibraltar’.

Booker, Maritime Quarantine, 124.

Ibid.

Gardiner, Report on the Military Defences, 109. See also Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 232–7.

Gardiner, Report on Gibraltar, 16.

In addition to distaining Gibraltar's colonial status, Gardiner was ill-disposed towards the Colonial Office more broadly. In an editorial in Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper dated from Sunday 11 Feb. 1849, he wrote that the Colonial Office was populated not by deserving civil servants promoted through the ranks by honourable service but rather by ‘influential insolvent[s], whose chief—and very often, whose only—claims are those of family and bankruptcy’. Gardiner. ‘The Colonial Office and Is Locusts’. Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, 11 February 1849.

Anonymous, Gibraltar, a Bulwark of Great Britain, 8. See also D'Anvers, Danverian History of the Affairs of Europe, 85. See also Anonymous, Considerations Offered upon the Approaching Peace, 30; Anonymous, A Letter to the Independent Whig, 9–10.

Hills, Rock of Contention, 378.

For more on the diversity of British attitudes towards empire, see Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 13.

Schemes to improve the health of the town and fortress at Gibraltar dated back to the eighteenth century. See Anonymous, A Scheme or Proposal for the Better Preservation of the Health.

O'Hara, Letter to the Duke of Portland (14 Dec. 1800); O'Hara, Letter to the Duke of Portland (29 Dec. 1800). As Sanchari Dutta has noted, historians have long noted the confluence of medicine, disease, and empire. There remains, though, a need to investigate ‘the implications of disease for diplomacy’. Dutta, ‘Plague, Quarantine, and Empire’, 76.

Drinkwater, A History of the Late Siege of Gibraltar, 334.

Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 40.

Ibid., 38.

Ibid., 124. See also Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’; Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 49–58.

Ibid., 127.

Ibid., 79, 65, 201–04.

Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’, 567. See also Cooter, ‘Anticontagionism and History's Medical Record’, 89; Booker, Maritime Quarantine, xvii; Terris, ‘Changing Relationships of Epidemiology and Society’.

Terris, ‘Changing Relationships of Epidemiology and Society’, 442.

Gardiner, Report on Gibraltar, 11.

Ibid., 10.

Ibid., 16.

Ibid., 18.

Ibid., 20.

Ibid., 22–23.

Ibid., 24.

Jackson, The Rock of the Gibraltarians, 237.

Blake, Letter from William Carver and John Peacock, 6.

Anonymous, National Prejudice, 27–8. See also Anonymous, Reasons for Giving up Gibraltar.

Blake, How to Capture and Govern Gibraltar, viii. The British Library Catalogue attributes this pamphlet to Robert Gardiner, but the title and content make it quite clear that it was the product of Blake's pen.

Ibid., 3.

Blake, Letter from William Carver and John Peacock, 14.

Gardiner, Report on Gibraltar, 26.

Ibid., 31.

Italics in original. Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’, 567.

Baly, ‘On the Mortality in Prisons’, in Medico-Chirugical Transactions.

For more on Baly's career, see Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 180–82 and Gilbert, Cholera and the Nation, 125–27.

Quoted in Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 226. See also Baly and Gull, Reports on the Epidemic Cholera.

Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 218, 227.

Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (26 Feb. 1854). Here, Gardiner's position was supported by the comparative case of maritime quarantine at Minorca, which served almost fully as a naval base. As a result, Minorca tended to avoid quarantine even at times when Gibraltar, with its more substantial commercial community and more problematic geographic situation, tended to fall under quarantine regulations. Booker, Maritime Quarantine, 123.

Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (24 April 1854).

Cooter, ‘Anticontagionism and History's Medical Record’, 90.

For more on cholera's difficult place in the contagionist/anticontagionist debates, see Maglen, ‘Intercepting Infection’, 221. The garrison doctors at Gibraltar had similarly argued that yellow fever was not a contagious disease during the 1828 epidemic in an effort to keep the port open against quarantine. See Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’, 572–74.

Gardiner, Preliminary Report to Lord Howden, 19–20. See also Gardiner, Letter to His Excellency General Don Rafael Mayalde y Villarroya.

Cooter, ‘Anticontagionism and History's Medical Record’, 90.

Baldwin, Contagion and the State in Europe, 197.

Ibid., 107.

Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (14 July 1854), 7–8. Gardiner felt vindicated when cholera broke out in Spain without appearing in Gibraltar, and he continued to report on Spanish outbreaks in neighbouring towns across the remainder of 1854. See Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (10 Aug. 1854); Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (13 Aug. 1854); Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (23 Sep. 1854). Of course, Gardiner was wrong in so far as cholera is contagious. He was right, however, to doubt that mere exposure to a patient with cholera would transmit the disease. See Ackernecht, ‘Anticontagionism Between 1821 and 1867’, 587; Maglen, ‘Intercepting Infection’, 7; Gilbert, Cholera and the Nation, 3, 93–94.

For more on the ideological power of diseases, see Arnold, Colonizing the Body, 198.

For more on the ways European and British were collapsed upon one another as identifiers in other locations, see Levine, Prostitution, Race, and Politics, 6. See also Gilbert, Cholera and the Nation, 94.

Baly, Report, 5. For more on the British move away from quarantine, see Pelling, Cholera, Fever, and English Medicine, 63–64.

Baly, Report, 5.

Ibid., 6.

Ibid., 10–11.

Blake, How to Capture and Govern Gibraltar, 82.

Ibid., 77.

Gardiner, Report on Gibraltar, 28.

Ibid., 30.

Ibid., 33.

Ibid., 13.

Baly, Report, 3.

Gardiner, Letter to the Duke of Newcastle (14 July 1854), 13–14.

Blake, How to Capture and Govern Gibraltar, 22.

Ibid., 55.

Ibid., 22.

Gardiner, Is England a Military Nation or Not, 8.

Ibid., 17–18.

Indeed, Gardiner eventually published no fewer than five pamphlets related to his thinking about the Indian situation.

Gardiner, Question of Legislative Military Responsibility, 11.

Gardiner, Cursory View of the Present Crisis in India, 15.

Gardiner, Question of Legislative Military Responsibility, 11.

Gardiner, Military Analysis of the Remote and Proximate Causes of the Indian Rebellion, 10.

Anonymous, Gibraltar, a Bulwark of Great Britain, 55.

Harrison, Public Health in British India, 137.