Manchester University Press - Community and identity

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.

With Gibraltar's political future still today contested this is a matter of considerable political importance. Community and identity: The making of modern Gibraltar since 1704 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.

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