This fluent, accessible and richly informed study, based on much previously unexplored archival material, concerns the history of Gibraltar following its military conquest in 1704, after which sovereignty of the territory was transferred from Spain to Britain and it became a British fortress and colony. Unlike virtually all other studies of Gibraltar, this book focuses on the civilian population. It shows how a substantial multi-ethnic Roman Catholic and Jewish population derived mainly from the littorals and islands of the Mediterranean became settled in British Gibraltar, much of it in defiance of British efforts to control entry and restrict residence. To explain why that population arrived and took root, the book also analyses the changing fortunes of the local economy over three hundred years, the occupational opportunities presented, and the variable living standards which resulted. Although for most of the period the British authorities primarily regarded Gibraltar as a fortress and governed it autocratically, they also began to incorporate civilians into administration, until eventually and recently Gibraltar, though still a British Overseas Territory, became internally a self-governing civilian democracy. The principal intention of the study is to show how the demographic, economic, administrative and political history of Gibraltar accounts for the construction, eventually and problematically, of a distinctive 'Gibraltarian' identity. With Gibraltar's political future still today contested this is a matter of considerable political importance. This book will appeal to both a scholarly and a lay readership interested particularly in the 'Rock' or more generally in nationality and identity formation, colonial administration, decolonisation and the Iberian peninsula.

Table of Contents

List of tables List of abbreviations Map of Gibraltar, 1952 Foreword: Professor Martin Blinkhorn Introduction and acknowledgements 1 The demographic roots of Gibraltarian identity, 1704 to1819 2 A fortress economy, 1704 to 1815 3 Government and politics, 1704 to 1819 4 Demographic management: aliens and us, 1815 to the 1890s 5 Economy and living standards in the nineteenth century 6 Governors and the governed, 1815 to 1914 7 Demography and the alien in the twentieth century: creating the Gibraltarian 8 Earning a living in the twentieth century 9 Government and politics in the twentieth century, 1915 to 1940 10 Big government and self-government, 1940 to 1969 11 Towards the future: Constructing a Gibraltarian Identity Guide to sources and a select bibliography Index

Author Biography

Dr Stephen Constantine is a Senior Lecturer in History at Lancaster University