The Garrison Revisited: Gibraltar in the Eighteenth Century

Abstract

In the 1940s, scholars across a variety of disciplines started using phrases such as ‘garrison state’ and ‘garrison mentality’ to describe societies where military imperatives predominated. They frequently argued that a perpetual sense of threat and a profound feeling of isolation shaped the outlook of residents in these communities. Such terms continue to surface in contemporary scholarship and popular media, where ‘the garrison’ often remains a stock image. Evidence from eighteenth-century Gibraltar, however, suggests that traditional readings of the garrison as an insulated fortress should be reconsidered. The survival of this strategic outpost actually required that colonial administrators rely on an array of foreigners to keep it supplied during times of both war and peace. At Gibraltar, the garrison was neither isolated from its surrounding environment nor perpetually threatened by its cosmopolitan residents—instead, inescapable dependence on a motley local population often rendered administrators willing to accommodate the alien in their midst and to acknowledge the interconnections between military and civilian.

Acknowledgements

My warmest thanks to Linda Colley, John Haldon, Marcus Muller, Daniel Rodgers, Vlasta Vranjes, and Thomas Weiss, as well as participants in the 2013 Northeastern Conference on British Studies, for their insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay. I am also grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers of The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History for the time and attention that they gave to the article.

Notes

Constantine, Community and Identity, 178.

http://www.oed.com (accessed March 16, 2011), and http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary (accessed March 16, 2011).

Harold Lasswell, a political scientist, predicted the rise of ‘garrison states’ in 1941. In 1970, Northrop Frye, a literary critic, argued that the Canadian imagination and national psyche might be characterised by a ‘garrison mentality’. Section I of this article will provide additional examples.

See the titles of recently published monographs, including Abadi, Israel's Quest for Recognition and Acceptance in Asia: Garrison State Diplomacy; Peers, Between Mars and Mammon: Colonial Armies and the Garrison State in India, 1819–1835; Tan, The Garrison State: The Military, Government, and Society in Colonial Punjab, 1849–1947.

See Foust, ‘Dispatches from FOBistan: The Garrison Problem’, http://registan.net/index.php/2009/03/20/dispatches-from-fobistan-the-garrison-problem (accessed February 22, 2012); Grunstein, ‘The Garrison Mentality in Afghanistan’, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/3481/the-garrison-mentality-in-afghanistan (accessed February 22, 2012); Haven, ‘Stanford Experts: How 9/11 Has Changed the World’, Stanford Report, August 31, 2011, http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/august/september-11-experts-083111 (accessed February 22, 2012); Vanaik, ‘Garrison State, Garrison Mentality’, http://www.tni.org/print/60974 (accessed February 22, 2012).

Gabriel Bodenehr, Gibraltar Harbour, 1704.

J. M. Carter, South Barracks from Rosia Bay, 1846; English School, Gibraltar from the Lower Signal Tower, nineteenth century; William Lee Hankey, Watercarriers at Gibraltar, date unknown; Willem van der Hagen, Admiral of the Blue Squadron Arriving at Gibraltar, 1722 (all images viewable through Bridgeman Art Library, http://www.bridgemanart.com). The series of American forts painted by Seth Eastman between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries also reflects this tendency to depict civilians and scenes from daily life alongside fortress walls.

This, indeed, is the interpretation most associated with the seminal essay published by Frederick Jackson Turner in 1893 entitled ‘The Significance of the Frontier in American History’ (in Turner, History, Frontier and Section). For Turner, the American frontier represented the ‘perennial rebirth’ and fluidity of American life shaped by the process of westward expansion. The frontier was a breeding ground of American democracy, creating a peculiarly American identity and character that was distinct from the identities and influences of Europe. Scholars in the early twentieth century, such as Walter Prescott Webb (see The Great Frontier), would take Turner's hypothesis out of its American encasement and cast the frontier as the ‘determining factor in modern Western civilization’, just as others such as Herbert Bolton would turn their attention to the Spanish Borderlands.

Thompson and Lamar, Frontier in History, 7. Lamar articulated this point in 1981, but he and others have written about the frontier as a zone of exchange, interpenetration and interaction extensively since then. Critics of Turner's frontier hypothesis have argued that his formulation is ‘an unsubtle concept in a subtle world’ and that scholarship should instead focus on showing the multiplicity of relations and hostilities involved in the process of expansion. See, for example, Limerick, Legacy of Conquest, 25.

For a useful overview of this literature, see Adelman and Aron, ‘From Borderlands to Borders’. The term ‘contact zone’ was introduced by Pratt, ‘Arts of the Contact Zone’ and Pratt, Imperial Eyes, and the idea of a ‘middle ground’ was explained by White, Middle Ground. Since then, these terms have become part of a common scholarly vocabulary.

Interestingly, few of the works usually associated with ‘frontier studies’ focus on the military garrisons or fortresses that often dotted these landscapes. Scholars have been more concerned with analysing interactions between merchants, traders, indigenous peoples, enslaved peoples and settlers than they have with understanding the role of the military and its outposts in these societies.

Lasswell, ‘Garrison State’, 455–68.

Groth and Britton, ‘Gorbachev and Lenin’, 627–50. The Soviet garrison state, Groth and Britton argue, was characterised by an extensive security apparatus to combat both external and internal enemies and by a determination to impose tight restrictions on the circulation of ideas and information.

See, in particular, Lasswell, Essays on the Garrison State. See also Abadi, Israel's Quest; Winn, ‘North Korea’; Onishi, ‘North Korea Warns of More Nuclear Tests’.

Webb, ‘Army and Empire’ and The Governors-General.

Peers, Between Mars and Mammon.

See, in particular, Bayly, ‘The British and Indigenous Peoples’.

Tan, Garrison State.

Frye, Bush Garden, 217–36.

Atwood, Survival, 33.

O'Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided.

See Miljan and Cooper, ‘Canadian “Garrison Mentality”’, 1–18.

Greenwood, Legacies of Fear.

See Esman, ‘Toward the American Garrison State’; Haven, ‘Stanford Experts’.

One notable exception would be the literature on Roman frontiers, otherwise known as Limesforschung. Numerous papers, originally delivered at conferences, for example, stress that Roman frontiers, sometimes marked by castella or other fortified enclaves, were not merely barriers, but were zones characterised by commercial interchange and trade. Historians of the Roman and Byzantine periods have been more inclined to recognise that frontier zones might have both military and commercial advantages. See, for example, Pohl, Wood and Reimutz, The Transformation of Frontiers and Mitchell, Armies and Frontiers. I am grateful to John Haldon for having suggested that I look at these collections of papers.

Peers, Between Mars and Mammon.

Johnson, ‘Thesis of Garrison Government’, 408–30; Webb, ‘Data and Theory of Restoration Empire’, 431–59.

Colley, Captives, 70, 34.

See Petition from the Committee of Inhabitants of Gibraltar to Lord North, 23 May 1783, CO 91/30, The National Archives (TNA) and Petition from the Agents of the Inhabitants of Gibraltar to Lord North, 23 Oct. 1783, CO 91/30, TNA. Both levelled complaints against Governor Eliott. The petitioners claimed that they had been invited to Gibraltar under royal assurances of free trade and requested that it be restored as a free port. They charged that Eliott was treating it as a ‘mere place of arms’ and that they were entitled to civil courts of justice free from the ‘interference & controul of the Governour’.

Donaldson, ‘Britain and Menorca’, 534.

Field, Gibraltar, 30.

Drinkwater, History of the Late Siege of Gibraltar, 61.

Letter from Dundas to Boyd, 12 July 1792, CO 389/57, TNA.

Proclamation from Secretary's Office, 28 June 1779, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4 (1779–86), Government of Gibraltar Archives (GGA).

Field, Gibraltar, 111.

Constantine, Community and Identity. On page 236, Constantine quotes an 1889 report that stated: ‘We take it as an admitted principle that no person, whether British subject or an alien, has an absolute right to enter or remain in the Fortress of Gibraltar contrary to the wishes and commands of the Crown and its Officers.’ During both the Great Siege of Gibraltar (1779–83) and the Second World War, the civilian population was ordered to leave, and governors regularly issued proclamations that expelled ‘undesirables’ and ‘foreigners’ from the garrison.

Notice from Thomas Fowke, 8 Dec. 1755, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA.

Proclamation from Secretary's Office, 27 Sept. 1775, Civil Secretary's Register No. 3 (1774–78), GGA.

Proclamation for Sundry Jews, Strangers, to quit the Garrison, 4 Feb.1777, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA. The order reads: ‘the General therefore hereby publishes and declares that if any Jew or other Inhabitant lodges a Jew Stranger who does not produce a permit from this Office of his remaining here to transact his business (which permit will never be given for a longer term than a month) or on any account harbours such stranger after the expiration of his permit, the offender, even tho’ he should have been born under the protection of the British Government, shall not be permitted to reside in this Garrison.' In 1785, a similar ‘Proclamation against Foreigners coming in’ was issued, noting that foreigners who had lodged in the garrison without the governor's permission or whose temporary permit had expired were to be ‘sent out by Landport’, and that all ‘Residents of the Garrison who lodge Strangers in their dwellings or Hutts without permit in writing will be proceeded against for breach of a Regulation most essential to his Majesty's service’.

Orders to the Spanish Serjeant concerning Foreigners, 11 Feb. 1785, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA.

General Bland's Court of Inquiry, 1749, Crown Lands Series A, GGA.

Sample lease of a house agreement, 16 Dec. 1780, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA.

Constantine, Community and Identity, 15, 40.

Ibid., 20–29; List of Inhabitants (1777), GGA and List of Inhabitants (1791), GGA.

This is the number traditionally cited by historians of Gibraltar. In Rock of Contention, Hills notes that its provenance is a November 1712 report, preserved in Add. MS 10034, f. 136 at the British Library, made by Joseph Bennett, the engineers colonel who claimed that ‘there remained about 30 families … and six clergymen, but the whole number of men, women and children did not exceed seventy in all’ (177). Constantine estimates that 5,000 Spanish civilians fled Gibraltar and went into exile when it was captured in 1704. Community and Identity, 35.

List of Inhabitants (1777), GGA. It should be noted that there were 13 ‘English and Irish’ included within the 1,832 ‘Roman Catholic Inhabitants’. Overall, the numbers point to a preponderance of ‘Roman Catholics’ and ‘foreigners’.

Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht forbade the settlement of Jews in Gibraltar: ‘her Britannick Majesty at the request of the Catholick King, does consent and agree, that no Leave shall be given, under any pretence whatsoever, either to Jews or Moors, to reside or have their Dwellings in the said Town of Gibraltar.’ For the full text of this article, please see Israel, Major Peace Treaties, 223–24. Nonetheless, as numerous historians have noted, Jews regularly settled in Gibraltar. They remained valuable inhabitants and trading partners, whose contacts often provided food supplies to the garrison.

Lists of Porters for the Garrison for 1774 and 1775, Civil Secretary's Register No. 3, GGA; Orders & Regulations concerning the Boatmen & Fishermen, 26 Jan. 1774, Civil Secretary's Register No. 3, GGA.

Indeed, historians have speculated that Queen Anne declared Gibraltar a free port in 1706 in the hopes that merchants and traders might be induced to settle there and might be attracted by the prospect of supplying the garrison and by broader opportunities for trade in the Mediterranean. This was, as Constantine notes, a proclamation published locally. Free port status meant that most goods could be shipped into and out of Gibraltar without the payment of additional duties, although port duties and service charges might still be collected.

See Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht in Israel, Major Peace Treaties, 223. The same article, however, did allow for ‘Communication by Sea with the Coast of Spain’.

See Article II of the Treaty of Peace and Commerce between the King of Great Britain and the Emperor of Morocco dated July 28, 1760.

Rogers, History of Anglo-Moroccan Relations, 129.

Indeed, a recurring issue in governors' correspondence is the problem of provisioning and the various threats to a steady supply of grain or cattle. See CO 91/23, TNA, for a letter explaining that if a certain debt is not paid to a prominent official, the emperor of Morocco will order additional taxes on each head of cattle sent to Gibraltar. See CO 91/33, TNA, for a letter in which Governor Eliott notes that the emperor of Morocco is suddenly insisting on higher duties on provisions than those stipulated by treaty. See CO 91/35, TNA, for a letter in which military personnel indicate that they are taking certain precautions to keep the garrison supplied lest the emperor of Morocco capriciously decide to prohibit grain exports.

Sidi Mohammed, the formidable sultan of Morocco between 1757 and 1790, occasionally vowed to suspend shipments of grain or cattle to the garrison of Gibraltar when British governors or consuls did not comply with his wishes, a threat that usually worked and enjoined administrators to pay further ransoms or damages. One British official remarked that ‘it has been found convenient for the protection and advancement of our navigation and commerce in general, as well as for supplying his Majesty's garrison of Gibraltar, and his fleets when in the Mediterranean, with fresh provisions, to be at peace with these people’. See Colley, Captives, 71.

Letter from Cornwallis to Egremont,11 Sept. 1763, CO 91/14, TNA.

Braudel, The Mediterranean, 147, 1239.

Mediterranean Passes remain an under-explored topic. For some excellent shorter pieces about British Mediterranean Passes, see Anderson, ‘Great Britain and the Barbary States’; Benady, ‘Settee Cut’; Richardson, ‘Mediterranean Passes’.

The fractions of British seamen required to secure a Mediterranean Pass varied, ranging from two-thirds to three-quarters. At times, the form of the oath merely asked the master to state how many of his seamen were his majesty's subjects.

Letter from Fraser to Mostyn, 25 July 1772, FO 3/4, TNA.

Copy of Order in Council with Instructions for the delivery of Mediterranean Passes at Gibraltar and Port Mahon, 14 June 1722, Admiralty Book No. 1, GGA.

At the Court at Kensington—Orders to the Admiralty and Treasury about calling in old passes and issuing new ones, 14 June 1722, PC 2/88, TNA.

Letter from Eliott to Sydney, 25 June 1784, CO 91/31, TNA. The letter encloses several observations and documents relating to Mediterranean Passes.

Passes returned in March 1777, Admiralty Book No. 1, GGA; List of Inhabitants (1777), GGA. Those responsible for these lists tended to classify inhabitants as being from certain hometowns or provinces, including Genoa, Lorno, Sarona, Estepona and Majorca, which were the names of towns, provinces or islands within present-day Italy or Spain.

Letter from Eliott to Hillsborough, 2 May 1781, CO 91/27, TNA.

See Articles of Peace between his Sacred Majesty Charles the II and the City and Kingdom of Algiers, 1664, 1671, 1687.

Enslavement in North Africa was a fate shared by many Europeans, and the formal and informal mechanisms that emerged to broker their redemptions were many, ranging from religious orders, to charitable organisations, to merchants acting as agents for families or governments, to consuls appointed to treat directly with Barbary. The number of British subjects taken captive is, as many have noted, difficult to estimate given that so few left written records. Most recently, Linda Colley has argued that approximately 20,000 Britons were taken captive during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though the largest percentage were captured before 1660 (Colley, Captives, 89). John Wolf posits that somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 Christians were sold in the slave markets of Algiers alone from 1660 to 1830, averaging about 2,000 per year (Wolf, Barbary Coast, 151). For additional accounts of European enslavement and systems of redemption in North Africa, see Corbett, England in the Mediterranean; Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters; Fisher, Barbary Legend.

I use this title since it is the one used in official correspondence. The Dey of Algiers, ruler of the regency of Algiers, was under the nominal if not effective control of the Ottoman sultan, and Algiers remained, in theory, a province of the Ottoman Empire.

Correspondence relating to this case can be found in CO 91/28; CO 91/29; CO 91/30; FO 3/6; FO 113/3, all of which are in TNA. An extract in FO 3/6 lists Podesta and others as ‘taken by the Algerines the 27 September 1780’. Davisons' letter to Fox dated 6 June 1782, also in FO 3/6, notes that Podesta and his crew were taken ‘near two years ago’.

Letter from Eliott to Sydney, 28 May 1787, CO 91/34, TNA.

Letter from Davison to Eliott, 25 May 1782, FO 3/6, TNA.

Report of the Transactions at Algiers between the Dey & Regency & Sir Roger Curtis, 20 Nov.1783, FO 113/3, TNA.

Secretary's Office Entries, 10 Dec. 1783, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA.

I refer to these definitions of subjecthood as ‘expansive’ because they recognised all inhabitants of Minorca and Gibraltar as ‘subjects’ whereas case law would have required that those inhabitants be born in a British dominion (so in Minorca or Gibraltar after each had become British) in order to be recognised as subjects. Treaties often conferred subject status on the inhabitants of conquered or ceded territories, but the questions this raised were numerous. The lords commissioners for trade and plantations, for example, sought the attorney general's advice on precisely how the inhabitants of the territories ceded by treaty in 1763 were to be viewed and treated. Noting that they had been born out of the allegiance of the king, this board wondered whether the French and Spanish inhabitants of Canada, Florida and Grenada were to be considered as aliens and strangers. The following year, the attorney general determined that they were not aliens, but went no further in his ruling. For a more detailed analysis of the differences between case law and between the many other legal understandings of subjecthood that existed in the mid-eighteenth century, please see Muller, ‘Empire of Subjects.’

Letter from J. Baker, 27 April 1715, CO 174/15, GGA; Letter from J. Baker to the Dey of Algier, 13 Aug. 1715, CO 174/15, GGA.

Treaty quoted in Benady, ‘Settee Cut’, 283.

See Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Great Britain and the Kingdom of Tripoli concluded September 19, 1751; Treaty of Peace and Commerce between Great Britain and the State of Tunis concluded October 19, 1751.

Letter from Methuen to Cotton, 7 March 1716/17, CO 389/54, TNA.

Most civilians attended Roman Catholic masses, whereas most members of the military garrison attended Anglican services. Officers might frequent the Garrison Library, though soldiers were more likely to be found in the alehouses and brothels of the town, most of which were located right next to civilian homes.

Governor Home referred to an order published in 1758 forbidding foreigners from remaining in the garrison ‘on pain of being reputed and treated as Spies’ (CO 91/13, TNA). A warrant for the execution of Antonio Juanico was issued in 1782 on the grounds that he was a spy ‘employ'd by the Enemies of GB and coming to this Fortress with Traiterous Intentions’ (CO 91/28, TNA).

See the petitions of Peter Romero and John de la Rosa, who noted that their fathers were ‘esteemed British Subjects, having thereby shaken off their Allegiance to the Crown of Spain’ (CO 389/56, TNA). See also the letter of Salmon Seruha, most likely a Jew of North African origin, who argued that he was a British subject and, as such, entitled to have his valuables protected by British ministers (CO 91/28, TNA).

Passport for Mr Gavino, 1 May 1782, Civil Secretary's Register No. 4, GGA.

Frye, Bush Garden, 217.