page_title: History of Gibraltar
section_title: Gibraltar as a colony
hierarchical_section_title: History of Gibraltar / British rule (1713–present) / Gibraltar as a colony
caption_attribution_description: English: 1883 - Frederick William J. Shore Arengos palace - Old picture of Gibraltar altered by Neville Chipulina
context_page_description: The history of Gibraltar, a small peninsula on the southern Iberian coast near the entrance of the Mediterranean Sea, spans over 2,900 years. The peninsula has evolved from a place of reverence in ancient times into "one of the most densely fortified and fought-over places in Europe", as one historian has put it. Gibraltar's location has given it an outsized significance in the history of Europe and its fortified town, established in medieval times, has hosted garrisons that sustained numerous sieges and battles over the centuries.
  Gibraltar was first inhabited over 50,000 years ago by Neanderthals and may have been one of their last places of habitation before they died out around 24,000 years ago. Gibraltar's recorded history began around 950 BC with the Phoenicians, who lived nearby. The Carthaginians and Romans later worshipped Hercules in shrines said to have been built on the Rock of Gibraltar, which they called Mons Calpe, the "Hollow Mountain", and which they regarded as one of the twin Pillars of Hercules.
  Gibraltar became part of the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania following the collapse of the Roman Empire and came under Muslim Moorish rule in 711 AD.
context_section_description: Following the Great Siege, the civilian population of Gibraltar – which had fallen to under a thousand – expanded rapidly as the territory became both a place of economic opportunity and a refuge from the Napoleonic Wars. Britain's loss of North American colonies in 1776 led to much of her trade being redirected to new markets in India and the East Indies. The favoured route to the east was via Egypt, even before the Suez Canal had been built, and Gibraltar was the first British port reached by ships heading there. The new maritime traffic gave Gibraltar a greatly increased role as a trading port. At the same time, it was a haven in the western Mediterranean from the disruption of the Napoleonic Wars. Many of the new immigrants were Genoese people who had fled Napoleon's annexation of the old Republic of Genoa. By 1813 nearly a third of the population consisted of Genoese and Italians. Portuguese made up another 20 per cent, Spaniards 16.5 per cent, Jews 15.5 per cent, British 13 per cent and Menorcans 4 per cent. The young Benjamin Disraeli described the inhabitants of Gibraltar as a mixture of "Moors with costumes as radiant as a rainbow or Eastern melodrama, Jews with gaberdines and skull-caps, Genoese, Highlanders and Spanish." The inhabitants had a clear pecking order, with British officers at the top and Jews at the bottom. The American naval officer Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, writing in 1829, described the market traders and shoppers in what is now John Mackintosh Square:
  The high handed hauteur of his majesty's officer, as he lounges at a corner in utter scorn of the busy crew of bargainers; the supple cit[izen] who bows breast low to him in hope of a nod of condescension ... ; a rough skipper, accustomed to bang and bully and be a little king upon his own quarter-deck; the sullen demeanour of the turbaned Moor, who sits crosslegged at a shady corner ... ; the filthy, slipshod, abject Jew, who sells slippers or oranges, or serves officers, merchants, sailors, or Moors, as a beast of burden ...
  Gibraltar was an unhealthy place to live due to its poor sanitation and living conditions. It was repeatedly ravaged by epidemics of yellow fever and cholera, which killed thousands of the inhabitants and members of the garrison. An epidemic in the second half of 1804 killed more than a third of the entire population, civilian and military. Lord Nelson wrote the following March that he hoped that Gibraltar "will escape the dreadful scourge of last autumn, and I hope that General Fox has burnt down all the small houses at the back of the Town; and perhaps if half the Town went with them, it would be better for the Rock."
  During the wars against Napoleonic France, Gibraltar served first as a Royal Navy base from which blockades of the ports of Cádiz, Cartagena and Toulon were mounted, then as a gateway for British forces and supplies in the Peninsular War between 1807 and 1814. In July 1801 a French and Spanish naval force fought the two Battles of Algeciras off Gibraltar, which ended in disaster for the Spanish when two of their largest warships each mistook the other for the enemy, engaged each other, collided, caught fire and exploded, killing nearly 2,000 Spanish sailors. Two years later Gibraltar served as a base for Lord Nelson in his efforts to bring the French Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve to battle, which culminated in the Battle of Trafalgar in which Nelson was killed and Villeneuve captured. Nelson sailed to Gibraltar in June 1803 to launch the Trafalgar Campaign and oversee the blockades against France and Spain, though he spent little time ashore. On 28 October 1805, a week after the Battle of Trafalgar, the badly damaged HMS Victory returned to Gibraltar with Nelson's body aboard; Admiral Collingwood's dispatch to General Fox, announcing the victory and Nelson's death, was printed in the pages of the Gibraltar Chronicle. It thus became the first newspaper in the world to report the victory at Trafalgar, two weeks ahead of The Times.
  In the years after Trafalgar, Gibraltar became a major supply base for sup
caption: View across Gibraltar looking north, by Frederick William J. Shore (1883)
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