History of Gibraltar

The Rock of Gibraltar has always been a fortress and historians have tended to focus on its military role. By comparison, the history of the civilian population, particularly in its most recent aspects, has not been nearly so well documented.

Dr H W Howes’s study of the origins and development of the population of Gibraltar from 1704, was first published in 1951, and since then no detailed academic study has emerged to supplement his researches and bring them up to date. The aim of this extract is to do precisely that. That is to say, to chart the political and constitutional development of the people of Gibraltar from the problems created by the evacuation of the civilian population during the Second World War, up to the present day.

It is essential, however, to establish from the outset exactly who the people of Gibraltar are. When the Rock fell to an Anglo-Dutch force in 1704 during the War of the Spanish Succession, almost all its approximately 4000 Spanish inhabitants left for the neighbouring parts of Spain. Immigration from other Mediterranean regions then took place, with incomers from Malta, Genoa, and Portugal, among others, settling on the Rock. It was formally ceded by Spain to Britain under Article X of the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. Eight years later a count of civilians able to bear arms was taken and this revealed that 45 were English, 96 were Spaniards and above 169 were Genoese. This Genoese element supplied a vital contribution towards what was to make a Gibraltarian. By 1753 the civilian population had grown to 1816 persons, the main elements in which were 597 Genoese, 575 Jews and 351 British inhabitants. This British component were mainly merchants, who arrived on the Rock to service the needs of the military, and who soon recognised the importance of the place as a trading post from which to advance northwards into the Iberian peninsula, southwards towards Africa and east into the Mediterranean.

The first real census of inhabitants was taken in February 1777. It stands as testimony to the agglomeration of nationalities that have made the modern day Gibraltarian. The total number of civilians was 3201, of these 1832 were Roman Catholics, the rest were British Protestants. The majority of the Roman Catholics were classified either as natives (845), as Genoese and Savoyards (672), and as Spaniards (134). Other minor Catholic groups included English, Irish, Minorcans, Portuguese and French. It is significant to note the appearance of this ’native’ element in the registers of 1777, containing the implicit recognition of the birth of the Gibraltarian. Dr Howes concluded from his researches that ’the basic element in what has become the Gibraltarian is the Genoese’, conceding at the same time the importance of other groupings, namely the Spaniards, Jews and British.


Regarded for many decades purely as an appendix to the military base, the constitutional development of this heterogeneous community was understandably slow. Under letters patent a civil judiciary was authrised in 1720, and in 1739 criminal and civil jurisdiction was granted to Gibraltar, but no courts were created and this jurisdiction was exercised by the military, headed by the Governor himself. Justices of the Peace were appointed in 1753, and forty years later a Vice-Admiralty Court was established to tap the first real basis of Gibraltar’s wealth, the public auctioning of enemy ships captured by the Royal Navy.

The Governorship of General George Don, which started in 1814 and lasted for 17 years led to the first real advances in the political development of Gibraltar. In 1817 the Exchange and Commercial Library was founded, largely to rival the Garrison Library from which civilians, however eminent, were excluded. The Exchange Committee concerned itself with forwarding the interests of the prosperous merchant group which had grown up in the city. Initially, they had no political objectives, and concentrated on matters of a social and economic nature in so far as they affected the merchants. Thus the Exchange Committee had little to do with the first moves which led to Gibraltar being given the status of a Colony in 1830. A Charter of Justice was granted in that year, a civilian magistracy established, and civil rights bestowed on its inhabitants. A Supreme Court was also created by letters patent, with a resident chief justice and jury system. Only a year after Sir Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Force was created in London in 1829, Gibraltar followed suit, setting up what has become the second oldest British police force after Peel’s. "The City and garrison of Gibraltar in the Kingdom of Spain ", had become the "Crown Colony of Gibraltar. " The changes of 1830 were vitally important in that they recognised the inherent duality in a fortress-colony