Nabil Matar. Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005. xiii + 241 pp. $59.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8130-2871-2; $24.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8130-3076-0.
Reviewed by Robert McJimsey (Department of History, Colorado College)
Published on H-Albion (April, 2007)
Encounters of the Wrong Kind
This well-researched and fluently written book will repay the reader on a number of topics. In the form of straight history, the book recounts the military, diplomatic, and commercial dealings between England and the North African states comprising Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco. As a study of literature, it analyzes plays, pamphlets, and geographical writings depicting the Moor as a representative of the non-English other. In the process, the author illuminates various ways in which relations with Barbary impinged on English politics and self-understandings.
Throughout the period, the corsairs raided shipping and took captives from their base in the Mediterranean into the North Atlantic, often sweeping onto the coasts of Ireland and Cornwall. In response, English governments responded with efforts at convoy protection, attacks on the corsairs' home ports, and treaties calling for protection of trade, exchange of captives, and alliances against Spanish and French enemies. This latter course was possible because the Barbary states maintained grievances against their expulsion from Iberia and, correspondingly, were vehemently anti-Catholic and more willing to deal with Protestant England. All of these efforts suffered from the English state's chronic lack of resources. Although successive governments were supportive of attempts to protect trade, they often off-loaded that burden onto the trading companies. Even by the end of the period, when the English navy was gaining supremacy over the corsairs, the English outpost at Tangier had to be evacuated in 1684 due to a lack of means to maintain it.
The literature of the period usually distinguished between Barbary's land and people. In language that recalled the writings of Richard Hakluyt and Sir Walter Raleigh, appeals to establish permanent English outposts in North Africa depicted the area as a veritable Land of Cockayne, flowing with riches ready for the taking. By contrast, depictions of the Moor, including Othello and Caliban, created images of dark, devious, and dangerous personas. Sporadic attempts were made to describe the tenants of Islam, but for the most part writers engaged in a form a racial profiling based on appearances and translating these into behavioral expectations. Only by the end of the century, when the immediate dangers of corsair raiding had subsided, did writers draw the Moor as a figure of comedy.
Contacts with the Moors, who could be seen as traders and seamen tramping the streets of English seaports, highlighted a sense of an English identity. Protestantism was one defining characteristic, particularly when used as an appeal to settle Barbary lands as a messianic mission. For the most part, however, Englishness meant holding onto a birthright which a person carried forever and which defined them in any foreign circumstance. This notion carried with it a sense of superiority toward other peoples and cultures, thus contributing to the English garrison at Tangier remaining oblivious to the world outside its walls. And it benefited captive English women, who were allowed to maintain privileges according to their social status at home. On the home front this emphasis on a birthright also adds significant weight to the use of the term by radicals of the New Model Army at the Putney Debates of 1647.
In the same way, the government's lackluster efforts to protect trade and redeem captives brought forth protests, petitions, and overall criticism. The Petition of Right included complaints about corsair raidings and Charles I's ineffectual use of Ship Money to protect the coasts made that practice even more unpopular. More important, however, was a petitioning movement from wives of captives. The plight of over a thousand women left destitute without their husbands sparked a women's movement of sizeable and persistent expressions. Although their petitions were couched in terms that accepted the standard notions of male patriarchy, they represented a form of female activism hitherto unknown on the English political scene. In this way the author makes a singularly important contribution to our understanding of ways in which women came into the public square.
The taking, ransoming, and exchanging of captives was an ongoing feature of the period. Not only were the numbers significant, the process of raising a ransom could become snarled in governmental fumblings. Normally local parishes raised money, often transferring it to the government to carry out the final transactions. At this point confusions could take place, resulting in the failure to supply the needed funds. The resort to ransoming also highlights the state's inability to cope with the problem of captives by other means. At the same time the English took their own share of Barbary captives, often exceeding the numbers taken on the other side. As a result, in addition to the slave trade, the trafficking in human flesh within western Europe was both constant and sizeable.
These insights make this book a valuable guide to unexpected avenues of inquiry. This reviewer's only criticism concerns the author's argument that the English attitude toward Barbary included a desire of imperial domination. Given the English state's lack of resources and its continual wobbling between an emphasis on trade and military action, the commitment to an imperial policy seems premature. This is certainly not the period in which a confident and well-organized English navy could support the outcries that accompanied The War of Jenkins' Ear. That much said, this book remains a valuable contribution to an understanding of seventeenth-century England.
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the network, at: https://networks.h-net.org/h-albion.
Citation:
Robert McJimsey. Review of Matar, Nabil, Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689.
H-Albion, H-Net Reviews.
April, 2007.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13018
Copyright © 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.org.