Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #316973 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 496 pages

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