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II. The Barbary Corsairs in the Seventeenth Century1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 December 2011

G. N. Clark
G. N. Clark
Affiliation:
Regius Professor of History in the University of Cambridge
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Extract

The seventeenth century was one of the twelve during which, in spite of what geographers might regard as probable and proper, the two sides of the Mediterranean were in the hands of two separate and inimical civilizations, different in religion, morals, law, economy and knowledge. That sea was nevertheless a busy highway. The Levant trade, the most important of all for the French and the Italians, was also important for the English and the Dutch; but North Africa, from the Atlantic coast of Morocco to the Libyan desert, Barbary par excellence, was outside the European system of international law and conduct. Even when they were nominally at peace the Christians and the Moslems never trusted one another or succeeded for long in abiding by the rules on which they agreed. Both sides tried to enforce such rules by collective and vicarious punishments, by reprisals and by other devices to which men resort when there is no law between them. Each side, often in spite of express treaty stipulations, made slaves of prisoners from the other: the Islamic society was based on slavery, and the Latin states also manned their war-galleys partly with their own criminals but largely with Moslems captured at sea. To the seafaring men of Europe captivity in Barbary was a danger worse than shipwreck.

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Articles
Information
Cambridge Historical Journal , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , 1944 , pp. 22 - 35
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1944

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References

2 Slave-hunting was recommended by Monson to the Privy Council in 1620 as a method of financing war and was included in Allen's instructions in 1669: Playfair, R. L., The Scourge of Christendom (1884), pp. 37, 100.Google Scholar In spite of its unpromising title this is the best English book on Algiers.

3 A Plan of the English Commerce (1728), Part III, cap. 2. Within a few years after this date the Salee men were no longer a danger. Robinson Crusoe was published in 1719.

4 The work of the Redemptorist Father P. Dan, Histoire de Barbarie et de ses corsaires (1637), though valuable for its information, is intended mainly as a plea for support in this work.

5 16 Car. I, c. 24.

6 Letter of 21 September 1686 in , Plantet, Correspondance des deys d'Alger avec la cour de France, I (1889), p. 122.Google Scholar

7 See Bloom, H. I., Economic Activities of the Jews of Amsterdam in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (1937), pp. 75–82.Google Scholar

8 O. de Haedo, Topographia e historia general de Argel (1612), f. 18, gives a list of the captains of galiots in 1581: out of thirty-five, twenty-three were renegades, one a renegade's son and one a Jew.

9 In Morocco their status became better but they remained slaves [Pidou de St Olon, Relation de Vempire du Maroc (1695), p. 77].

10 This fragment is included in the collections of Malherbe's poems: I take the dating from La Roncière.

11 Sir Corbett, Julian, England in the Mediterranean, 2nd ed. I (1917), pp. 50–2.Google Scholar

12 For an emphatic statement of this view see Grammont, H. D. de, Histoire d'Alger (1887), pp. 197–8.Google Scholar The history of the French trading establishments is given fully in Masson, P., Histoire des établissements et du commerce franfais dans l'Afrique barbaresque (1903)Google Scholar, which has an excellent bibliography. The same writer's works on the Histoire du commerce français dans le Levant au XVIIe siècle (1896) and au XVIIIe siècle (1911) are important for the corsairs.

13 The history of French naval operations is narrated fairly fully by Roncière, C. de la, Histoire de la marine française, vols. IV-VI (1910-1932)Google Scholar; Sir Corbett, Julian, England in the Mediterranean, 2nd ed., 2 vols. (1917)Google Scholar, is more concerned with strategic questions, and the treatment of Jong'e, C. de, Geschiedenis van het nederlandsche zeewesen, 2nd ed., 6 vols. (1858–1862), is comparatively briefGoogle Scholar.

14 Did this in any way contribute to the revolution in Tunis by which from 1650 the deys made their office hereditary and autocratic? There are unfortunately no reports from French representatives in Tunis between 1641 and 1660 in Correspondance des deys de Tunis et des consuls de France, ed. Plantet, E., vol. 1 (1893).Google Scholar

15 For the failure of Colbert's convoy system see C. W. Cole, Colbert (1939), I, pp. 388 ff. Convoyed ships were not liable to be searched, and this was an advantage in commercial com-petition; for this reason the duke of York provided convoys in 1662: see Wood, A. C., History of the Levant Company (1935), pp. 212–13.Google Scholar

16 Tangier had to resist the Moors at a time when Morocco, in spite, of internal divisions, was full of vigour. Muley-Ismail, with French support, took the Spanish port of Mamora in the year after Tangier was evacuated and in 1689 Larache on the Atlantic coast. He began the twenty-six years siege of Ceuta, which was not raised till 1720.

17 Plantet, Correspondance Alger, I, p. 158.

18 In 1682 the sultan refused to help Algiers against Duquesne: this alienated Algiers, which in 1689 refused to receive a pasha sent at the instance of France.

19 Boutin, A., Les traités de paix et de commerce de la France avec la Barbarie (1902), p. 530.Google Scholar

20 Playfair, p. 125.

21 The history of Dutch Mediterranean passes is traced in Sandbergen, F. J. W. H., Nederlandsche en nederlandsch-indische scheepsnationaliteit (s.a.? 1932).Google Scholar Similar information on British and French passes seems not to be readily available.

22 Playfair, p. 190. For an example see the letter of Seignelay to the dey of Algiers, March 1685, in Plantet, I, pp. 112 ff.

23 Playfair, p. 136.

24 Ibid. p. 137.

25 Enid M. G. Routh, Tangier (1912), p. 185.

26 In their treaty of 1662 the Dutch agreed to supply the Algerines with naval stores; in the subsequent period both they and the English seem to have sent considerable quantities of masts, spars, cordage, pitch, tar and sailcloth to North Africa.

27 See his Relation (1670): there is an English translation of 1671.

28 For earlier instances see Corbett, I, pp. 78-9, 100–1, 240.

29 Sir Dalrymple, James, Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. II (1773), App. pt. I, p. 291.Google Scholar

30 Siècle de Louis Quatorze, cap. XVIII.