North Africa Through the Eyes of England

Throughout the seventeenth century, English people and the English Empire expanded their influence across much of the world. By 1700, England was a colonial empire with outposts across the globe and thousands of colonists, and English vessels traveled more broadly and in greater numbers than ever before. Through this century, English travelers brought goods and knowledge (and, in many cases, people) from across the world back to England, and English presses published numerous texts that offered more detailed images of the world.

One such region, and one rarely considered in this context, is the North African coastline, extending from Morocco on the Atlantic across the Mediterranean Coast along a space the English referred to as “Barbary.” This area was home to numerous city-states such as Algiers, Tripoli, and Tunis, as well as Egypt, which was part of the Ottoman Empire. These lands were the focus of many published materials. While English travelers, sailors, and even armies had ventured into this region in the past, the seventeenth century brought new heights of English presence in the region, reaching its peak with the establishment of the English colony of Tangier, which the Crown received from Portugal in 1661.

Conflict defined the relationship between England and North Africa. The English occupation of Tangier was hardly well received: native Moroccan forces attacked the English numerous times in the decades that followed, and the Moroccans finally reclaimed the city in 1684. Nor was Morocco the only state English people had issues with at this time. Throughout the 1600s, North African privateers, known as the “Barbary corsairs,” captured English sailors at sea. Some of these sailors returned to England, and their published texts (for example, Thomas Phelps’s A true account of the captivity of Thomas Phelps, at Machaness in Barbary: and of his strange escape in company of Edmund Baxter and others, as also of the burning two of the greatest pirat-ships belonging to that kingdom, in the River of Mamora; upon the thirteenth day of June 1685, Folger P1982) formed another key source of information for English people on this distant and different land, and the people who lived there.

Even at the beginning of the seventeenth century, North Africa and its city states were known to some Englishmen through Shakespeare’s The Tempest, which mentions Algiers and Tunis. The English state had diplomatic connections to many North African states including Morocco, and a Moroccan ambassador visited London in 1637. However, English understandings of the region were still quite flawed. An account of the ambassador’s visit, The Arrivall and Intertainements of the Embassador, Alkaid Jaurar Ben Abdella, with his Associate, Mr. Robert Blake (I. Okes: London, 1637), mentioned that in Africa lives “a people…with one eye in the Fore-head…some with heads like Dogges, some with long tailes…” as well as dragons (Folger STC 18165, p. 43).

The most common sources of information for most people in England were texts from people taken captive by North Africans. Captivity narratives like these were popular texts that offered English audiences a glimpse into North Africa. The early modern Mediterranean was a place of great conflict between the navies of Italian, French, and Spanish states with North African privateers, a conflict with religious dimensions between the Christian north and the Muslim south. Captive-taking frequently occurred across these boundaries. English ships who sought to reach the profitable ports of the Mediterranean ran the risk of attack. Throughout the seventeenth century, English presses published dozens of narratives by English sailors who had escaped North African slavery. Illustrations in texts like A relation of seaven yeares slaverie depicted the grizzly torments unleashed on enslaved people in North African cities. However, these texts were hardly neutral in their depictions of North African cities, cultures, and people.

The English acquisition of Tangier was especially significant, as it marked the first English colonial presence in the Mediterranean at the crucial strategic point of the straits of Gibraltar. England obtained the city as part of the marriage pact between English king Charles II and the Portuguese Catherine of Braganza. Unlike contemporary colonies in North America, Tangier was not part of the English Empire through indirect means such as a joint-stock company or charter. Instead, the Crown directly administered the city. The English saw Tangier as an extremely valuable outpost, not for its position in North Africa, but as an outpost in the Mediterranean. The English spent years repairing the damaged fortifications, and on building a mole, a large seawall to protect the outpost from naval assault. In G.P.’s The present state of Tangier in a letter to His Grace the lord chancellor of Ireland and one of the lords justices there: to which is added the present state of Algiers (London: Henry Herringman, 1676), it is hailed as “the greatest and most noble undertaking in the World” (Folger 145- 502q, p. 31).

In 1669, the famous engraver Wenceslaus Hollar was sent to Tangier as part of a royal mission and created several images of the city and its extensive fortifications.

North Africans did not take the arrival of a new European colonial power lightly. North African cities were frequently sacked and occupied by European powers like Spain and Portugal. Tangier itself had been conquered by the Portuguese in 1471. England’s entry into this colonial space also brought its entrance into colonial wars in the region. The English Navy fought battles against Algiers and Tripoli, but the greatest threat was Morocco, who besieged Tangier numerous times. These conflicts were recounted in vivid detail with dramatic titles like The Moores Baffled (London, 1681) and Tangers Rescue (London, 1681). Despite the grand titles of these pamphlets, English efforts to maintain the city eventually failed. In 1683 the famous administrator Samuel Pepys arrived at Tangier to oversee the evacuation of the colony, and the destruction of the mole.

By the end of the seventeenth century, English people had a far more complex understanding of North Africa. Through publications like captivity narratives (which continued to be published in the eighteenth century) and pamphlets detailing the circumstances of Tangier, English audiences could read about the region and its people in great detail. While the English Empire would return to the Mediterranean in 1704, it would establish itself on the European side, in Gibraltar. It would not be until the nineteenth century that the British would again colonize North Africa, in Egypt.

Works Consulted

Bejjit, Karim, editor. English Colonial Texts on Tangier, 1661-1684: Imperialism and the Politics of Resistance. Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2015.

Braudel, Fernand. The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II. Translated by Sian Reynolds. London: Collins, 1972.

Colley, Linda. Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850. New York: Anchor Books, 2002.

Earle, Peter. Corsairs of Malta and Barbary. London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1970.

Friedman, Ellen G. Spanish Captives in North Africa in the Early Modern Age. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.

Matar, Nabil. Britain and Barbary, 1589-1689. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2005.

Matar, Nabil. Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.

Panaite, Viorel. Early Western books on Islam, Turks, and Ottoman Empire preserved at Folger Shakespeare Library (facsimiles of title page openings from EEBO, gift of the author, 2006).

Routh, E.M.G. Tangier: England’s Lost Atlantic Outpost, 1661-1684. London: John Murray, 1912.