The Road to La Goulette: British Expatriates in the Maghreb

The Road to La Goulette: British Expatriates in the Maghreb

6 July 2020
Small but well-connected expatriate communities formed across the North African states, and came to have a vital role in local politics and trade

This is the first of a series of blog posts exploring the experiences and influence of British expatriates in the Maghreb in the second half of the seventeenth century.

Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli, the Ottoman ‘Regencies’ of the early modern Maghreb (North-West Africa), are popularly known for one thing: the dreaded Barbary corsairs. Famed for their daring raids across the Mediterranean and as far afield as the Bristol Channel, Ireland and Iceland, the corsairs are remembered as cruel and vicious pirates, who captured and enslaved hundreds of thousands of innocent European sailors and civilians and forced them to convert to Islam on pain of death. In their time, the terrifying corsair appeared to British audiences in plays, captivity narratives, sermons, broadside ballads, and even Robinson Crusoe. Since 9/11, certain sections of Western right-wing politics have used the corsairs to brand Islam as an inherently violent faith, to justify military action in the Middle East, to reject negotiating hostage ransoms with Islamic State, and even to minimise the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.[1]

Yet behind these simplistic popular stories lies a more complicated and ambiguous set of interactions. As early as 1622, it was reported by an English newsbook ‘that the Ambassador of the States of the Low Countryes Doctor Pinacker, had so well sped himself in his ambassage, that he had obtained an agreement betwixt those of Algier, and the united Provinces’.[2] Fifty years later an English ship arrived in Falmouth from Jamaica, reporting to the London Gazette, ‘that he met off of the Northern Cape, an Algiers man of War, who Treated him with much kindness; telling him of some Sally men of War that were abroad that way, upon which advice he altered his course, and so missed them.’[3] And in November 1694, the English merchant Robert Cole wrote to consul Thomas Baker, who was travelling to the east, ‘I cant be guilty of so great a Crime as to omitt any oppertunity of advising you the welfare of what I know so dear to you (your family) miss nora thundring girle, wants very littell of walkeing alone but not a tooth nor line of any, which betokens a long life, which God grant to your Comfort miss Deb hath ben a littell ill but well againe, the mother of them wants nothing but your Company to make her the happyest of all her sects, you have a thousand of good wishes for your safe Returne…for in truth Sr wee all want you, and cant live with out you.’[4]

How can we reconcile these stories of peaceful engagement and friendly domesticity with the bloodthirsty reputation conjured by the Maghreb’s corsairs? It’s true that many thousands of Britons were taken against their will, and many more, influenced by sensational portrayals in popular entertainment, feared and hated the ‘Moors’ and ‘Turks’ across the sea as a result. But others saw the North African states rather differently: as useful allies against their rivals in the Mediterranean, as profitable trading partners, or as even attractive places to live. Many adventurous sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Britons took up residence in North Africa achieved social advancement and riches in their armies, corsair fleets and trading communities. Less pious or actively dissenting Britons enjoyed the comparatively tolerant religious environment in the Maghreb, and many freely converted to Islam. In this way, and increasingly so as Britain established stable peace treaties with the Regencies through the seventeenth century, small but well-connected expatriate communities formed across the North African states, and came to have a vital role in local politics and trade.

In this blog, with the help of famous and long-ignored documents from the period, we will meet some of these adventurers: merchants and consuls, women and men, adults and children, Anglicans, Huguenots and renegades. We’ll explore their daily lives and relationships, walk with them through successes, failures, personal betrayals and national crises. And we’ll see how these free settlers influenced both diplomatic relations and public perceptions between Britain and the Maghreb.

Image Credit: Jans Jassonius, Barbaria (c.1650), copper engraving. Wikimedia Commons


[1] See for example John Feffer, ‘Piracy and Empire’, Institute for Policy Studies, 24 April 2009; Max Boot, ‘Why America Won’t Pay Ransoms to Islamic State’, Wall Street Journal, 28 November 2014; Lawrence Pintak, ‘The Muslims Are Coming! The Muslims Are Coming!’, Foreign Policy, 14 June 2016

[2] Brief Abstracts out of Diverse Letters of Trust, 18 October 1622

[3] London Gazette, 11-15 April 1672

[4] Robert Cole to Thomas Baker, 5 November 1694, Bodleian MS English Letters b. 31:11