Inventing a Border

Abstract

This chapter examines the process by which the boundary between Spain and the British colony of Gibraltar formed during the second half of the nineteenth century. Although the Spanish conceded Britain’s right to maintain a naval garrison there in 1713, they never recognized Gibraltar as a British sovereign space. As a result, no boundary was ever drawn, leaving a vaguely defined neutral zone that worked to the benefit of Spanish political dissidents and smuggling networks. In the nineteenth century, a number of new pressures, including the British ideology of free trade, the politics of revolutionary Spanish liberalism, and the global rise of cholera, created the need for a more precisely defined and regulated border. The result was a somewhat expanded British colony, which bred consternation among later Spanish nationalists but at the time was viewed locally as a practical solution to a range of problems.