When did Britain acquire Gibraltar?
Britain officially acquired Gibraltar through article 10 of the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713, which passed sovereignty of the territory from Spain to Britain “for ever”. The treaty ended British involvement in the War of Spanish Succession, a pan-European conflict fought to settle the question of whether a Bourbon or Habsburg claimant would rise to the Spanish throne after the death of Carlos II in 1700.
There is a common myth that ‘the Rock’ (as it soon became popularly known in Britain) had in fact been captured by the British in 1704. Notwithstanding the fact that Britain did not exist as a nation-state until the Act of Union in 1707, the coalition force that assaulted Gibraltar on 4 August 1704 was made up of around 2,000 English, Dutch, Spanish and Catalan servicemen. The commanding officer was the German prince George of Hesse-Darmstadt, and the territory was officially surrendered to Archduke Charles of Austria, the Habsburg claimant to the Spanish throne. Gibraltar’s first three governors after the
