The story of Gibraltar is one of siege, starvation, plague, and battles interspersed with periods of peace. The colony's civilian population is made up of a rich and complex racial mix of exiled Jews, French royalists, Maltese merchants, emigrants from India, and Genoese fishermen who fled Napoleon. This history provides the background to a unique community and a chronicle of a remarkable chapter in British military history. Even now, the future of the tiny territory is still uncertain. An important RAF base, it is a fragment of Britain's imperial past set uneasily in the territory of a fellow member of the European Union apparently eager to reclaim it. Gibraltar's dramatic history is far from over.
