Blue-Water Empire

Book excerpt: For nearly two hundred years the Mediterranean lay at the heart of British power overseas and was a key arena for all the major wars Britain has fought. It was also a place where many thousands of Britons chose to settle, their graves now scattered from Gibraltar to Corfu, from Malta to Cyprus. Control of shipping lanes and fortified bases gave Britain a stranglehold over the countries bordering the Mediterranean, which was widely resented but which also protected many regimes, both good and bad. Robert Holland's sweeping new book tells the story of this extraordinary involvement, which has left legacies of language, law and architecture in the most surprising places and which combined the most brutal military colonialism with a romantic enthusiasm for Mediterranean life that endures in various forms today. From Nelson's great victories over the French to El-Alamein and the Malta convoys, the Mediterranean has shaped Britain's own fate as much as Britain has shaped the fate of its colonies and clients there: a mass of very different cultures which found themselves, with greater or lesser willingness and success, cooperating with these strange, arrogant outsiders. While never underplaying the dark side of this history, Blue-Water Empire also celebrates the unique societies created by this relationship, a relationship which, for good or ill, determined the destinies of millions.