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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 May 2020
Historians of empire are well aware of the importance of finding moments and spaces of connectedness between empires. The question of how to do so meaningfully remains open. This article brings to light a significant moment of imperial connectedness, through imperial contest. It tells the story of the humiliating expulsion of the British consul John Falcon from the strategic Mediterranean port of Algiers, during the Napoleonic wars. Both France and Britain sought to establish an informal imperial presence in the regency of Algiers, for access to the grain that both needed – France for its southern regions and armies, and Britain for the supply of its Mediterranean base in Gibraltar. The consuls of both powers were obliged to deal with a Jewish trading house that acted as middleman, both in trade and in diplomatic relations in the regency: the House of Bacri and Busnach. As the two powers competed, and sought to shut one another out, they attributed failures and frustrations to this trading house. Through French and British perceptions of Falcon's expulsion, and both powers’ understanding of the role of the trading house in events, this article offers a picture of imperial connection, bringing together middlemen, diplomacy, and international relations.
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44 Thainville to Talleyrand, 5 floréal 11 (25 April 1803), AMAE, 8CCC/36, p. 368.
45 Falcon to Pelham, 23 April 1803, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 23.
46 Ibid., p. 24.
47 Ibid.
48 Thainville to Talleyrand, 5 messidor 12 (24 June 1804), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 12.
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50 Falcon to Pelham, 27 April 1803, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 28.
51 Richard O'Brien, 10 Jan. 1801, Atlanta, GA, National Archives and Records Administration, State Department consular despatches, Algiers series, M23, roll 6, vol. 5.
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53 Falcon to Pelham, 7 June 1803, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 37.
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63 Falcon to Pelham, 7 June 1803, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 37.
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65 Falcon to Charles Yorke, 18 Jan. 1804, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 89.
66 Nelson to Nepean, 22 June 1803, cited in Nicolas, Nelson, v, p. 94.
67 Algiers was a corsairing port. Although, as James McDougall notes, corsairing was ‘marginal’ after the seventeenth century, with just a short resurgence during the chaos at sea created by the Napoleonic wars, the idea of corsairing continued to loom large in the polemic and popular imagination. McDougall, History of Algiers, p. 45.
68 Falcon to Michael Falcon, 3 April 1801, TNA, FO 3/9, p. 29.
69 Thainville to Talleyrand, 5 messidor 12 (24 June 1804), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 49.
70 Thainville to Talleyrand, 21 messidor 12 (10 July 1804), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 69.
71 Thainville to Talleyrand, 17 fructidor 12 (4 Sept. 1804), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 97.
72 Thainville to Talleyrand, 20 nivôse 13 (10 Jan. 1805), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 164.
73 Thainville to Talleyrand, 21 messidor 12 (10 July 1804), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 69.
74 John Falcon, ‘Reflections upon Algiers. The duty and situation of the English consul. 1803’, TNA, FO 3/10, p. 79.
75 Talleyrand to Thainville, 29 messidor 10 (18 July 1802), AMAE, 8CCC/36, p. 183.
76 Falcon to Duke of Portland, 5 Sept. 1801, TNA, FO 3/9, p. 105.
77 Falcon to Pelham, 9 Dec. 1802, TNA, FO 3/9, p. 343.
78 Falcon himself went on to become paymaster-general at the Cape of Good Hope, and lived to the age of eighty, dying in Hertfordshire in 1846.
79 Thainville to Talleyrand, 20 nivôse 13 (10 Jan. 1805), AMAE, 8CCC/37, p. 163.
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83 See Kalman, Orientalizing the Jew, pp. 117–18. Patricia Lorcin has shown that ideas of malign Jewish power in the regency continued into the late nineteenth century: Lorcin, Patricia, Imperial identities: stereotyping, prejudice and race in colonial Algeria (London, 1995), pp. 185–6Google Scholar.
84 The exact money trail is impossible to follow, but Pierre Deval stated repeatedly that the debt had been disbursed. Of the 7 million francs owing, he claimed that Michel Busnach (the brother of Naphtali) received 2.5 million, and Jacob, now the last remaining Bacri brother, 2 million, plus a further 1.5 million, to be paid out to creditors in Algiers. The balance was kept by France, to pay off the house's creditors there. See, for example, a letter from Deval to the Count de la Ferronays, 28 Feb. 1828, AMAE, 2MD/3, p. 28. The full story of the debt is told in Kalman, Orientalizing the Jew, pp. 91–118.
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89 Meeks, France, Britain, and the struggle for the revolutionary western Mediterranean, p. 2.
90 Cited in Zwierlein, Imperial unknowns, p. 113, emphasis in original.
