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TANGIER IN THE RESTORATION EMPIRE*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 November 2011

TRISTAN STEIN
TRISTAN STEIN*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
*
Department of History, Harvard University, Robinson Hall, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA[email protected]
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Abstract

This article reintegrates the colonization of Tangier into our understanding of the development of the English empire in the latter half of the seventeenth century. At its acquisition in 1661, Tangier appeared integral to the imperial ambitions of the restored monarchy and promised to carry England's commercial and maritime empire into the Mediterranean. This article argues that the particular conceptions of imperial and commercial organization that underlay the occupation of Tangier isolated the city from England's wider empire and contributed to its failure. The creation of a free port and crown colony at Tangier reflected prevalent perceptions of the political economy of trade in the Mediterranean, but added to a wider process whereby ideological debates over the organization of trade and empire helped to create legal and jurisdictional boundaries that differentiated oceanic space. As a free port, Tangier was out of place within an empire increasingly defined by exclusive and restricted trade. It was, however, the ideological significance of Tangier's status as a crown colony that made it unsustainable. Unable to sustain or surrender its sovereignty over Tangier, the crown abandoned the city in the face of Moroccan empire-building.

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Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 54 , Issue 4 , December 2011 , pp. 985 - 1011
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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Footnotes

*

An earlier version of this article was presented to the London Group of Historical Geographers Seminar at the Institute of Historical Research. I would like to thank David Armitage, Miles Ogborn, Philip Stern, and Clare Jackson and the anonymous reviewers for this journal for their comments and suggestions on this article. I would also like to thank the Institute of Historical Research and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for their financial support and I am particularly grateful to the present earl of Sandwich for permission to carry out research on the journal of Edward Montagu, the first earl of Sandwich.

References

1 The older histories that remain the key references for the settlement of Tangier tended not to trace connections between Tangier and England's global empire, as in Routh's, E. M. G.Tangier: England's lost Atlantic outpost, 1661–1684 (London, 1912)Google Scholar, which remains the only full-length study of the English occupation of Tangier, or focused on the city's role for English naval history in the Mediterranean, as with Corbett's, JulianEngland in the Mediterranean: a study of the rise and influence of British power within the Straits, 1603–1713 (London, 1904)Google Scholar. Stephen Saunders Webb later presented Tangier as a training ground for the authoritarian governor-generals he saw as the primary drivers of the seventeenth-century English empire, 1676: the end of American independence (New York, NY, 1984), pp. 151–4, 203–4, and idem, Lord Churchill's coup: the Anglo-American empire and the Glorious Revolution reconsidered (New York, NY, 1995), pp. 18–25. Historians of Britain's seventeenth-century overseas expansion have begun to reintegrate Tangier into the wider early modern British empire, most influentially Linda Colley in Captives: Britain, empire and the world, 1600–1850 (New York, NY, 2004), ch. 1, passim.

2 Mather, James, Pashas: traders and travellers in the Islamic world (New Haven, CT, and London, 2009), pp. 129–30Google Scholar; Hornstein, Sari, The restoration navy and English foreign trade, 1674–1688: a study in the peacetime use of sea power (Aldershot, 1991)Google Scholar.

3 See Pietro Mocenigo's description of the English empire in his dispatch to the Senate of Venice, 9 June 1671, in Allen B. Hinds, ed., Calendar of state papers relating to English affairs in the archives of Venice (38 vols., London, 1864–1947), xxxvii1671–1672, p. 55.

4 These contrasting approaches are best represented by, respectively, Matar, Nabil, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (Gainesville, FL, 2005)Google Scholar, ch. 5, passim, and Colley, Captives, pp. 37–41.

5 Games, Alison, The web of empire: English cosmopolitans in an age of expansion, 1560–1660 (Oxford, 2008), pp. 289–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 For the relationship between the ideology of holy war and state formation in Morocco, see de Bakker, Johan, Slaves, arms and holy war: Moroccan policy vis-à-vis the Dutch Republic during the establishment of the ‘Alawī dynasty, 1660–1727 (Amsterdam, 1991)Google Scholar; Bennison, Amira K., Jihad and its interpretations in pre-colonial Morocco: state–society relations during the French conquest of Algeria (London and New York, NY, 2002), pp. 15–33Google Scholar; Brown, J. A. O. C., ‘Anglo-Moroccan relations and the embassy of Ahmad Qardanash, 1706–1708’, Historical Journal, 51 (2008), pp. 599–620 at p. 605CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Besides Tangier, several Spanish and Portuguese possessions remained perched on the African coast, including the cities of Oran and Ceuta, Bakker, Slaves, arms, and holy war, pp. 5–6.

7 See Stern, Philip J., ‘“A politie of civill & military power”: political thought and the late seventeenth-century foundations of the East India Company-State’, Journal of British Studies, 47 (2008), pp. 253–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For the position of Europeans on the African coast, see Law, Robin, ‘“Here is no resisting the country”: the realities of power in Afro-European relations on the West African “Slave Coast”’, Itinerario, 18 (1994), pp. 50–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thornton, John, Africa and Africans in the making of the Atlantic world, 1400–1800 (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 66–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. E. H. Hair and Robin Law, ‘The English in Western Africa to 1700’, in Nicholas Canny, ed., The Oxford history of the British empire: the origins of empire (Oxford, 1998), pp. 260–2; Eltis, David, The rise of African slavery in the Americas (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 147–9Google Scholar.

8 Stern, ‘“A politie of civill & military power'”, pp. 257–61, 264–5.

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10 Hyde, Edward, earl of Clarendon, The life of Edward, earl of Clarendon (3 vols., Oxford, 1759), ii, p. 152Google Scholar; see also Jonathan I. Israel, ‘The emerging empire: the continental perspective, 1650–1713’, in Canny, ed., The Oxford history of the British empire, pp. 422, 428–9.

11 Beer, George Louis, The old colonial system, 1660–1754 (New York, NY, 1912), p. 115Google Scholar; Routh, Tangier, pp. 36–7, 115–16; Colley, Captives, pp. 25–30.

12 ‘A short discours of the late forren acquests which England holds’, The National Archives (TNA), State Papers (SP) 29/52, fos. 263v-4r. For Howell's authorship of this memorial, see Seaward, Paul, ‘A Restoration publicist: James Howell and the earl of Clarendon, 1661–1666’, Historical Research, 61 (1988), pp. 121–31, at pp. 127–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Howell's account of the advantages England derived from colonies and his use of examples drawn from Rome and Venice to prove their benefits evoke Elizabethan arguments in favour of plantation in Ireland and America; however, his attention to the importance of colonies for supporting English navigation and commerce reflects the emphasis that both the Commonwealth and Restoration monarchy placed on England's overseas trade. For the development of English ideologies of empire through this period, see Armitage, David, The ideological origins of the British empire (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13 Stern, ‘“A politie of civill & military power”’, pp. 255–7.

14 The proposed trading zone of the Morocco Company fell outside that of the Levant Company, which monopolized English trade to the Ottoman empire. The fact that both Tangier and the Moroccan coast fell outside its jurisdiction probably explains why the Levant Company's members do not appear to have been closely involved in the colonization of Tangier or debates surrounding it.

15 Petition of Robert Starr, 13 Aug. 1661, TNA, SP 71/13, fo. 107r.

16 British Library (BL), Sloane MSS 3509, fo. 4r. The docket largely mirrors Starr's request, but lists the grantees as ‘his Highness Royall, Lord Willoughby of Parham, Coll. William Legg, Thomas Cullinge, Alexander Bence, Robert Starr, John Lewis, Philipp Payne of London, Marchants’ and explicitly incorporates them as the Morocco Company for thirty-one years and with ‘all such clauses & authorities as have beene heretofore graunted in Charters of the like nature’.

17 Zook, George Frederick, The Company of Royal Adventurers trading into Africa (Lancaster, 1919), p. 13Google Scholar. For the succession of English companies trading to Africa, see Davies, G., The Royal African Company (London, 1957), pp. 38–46Google Scholar.

18 Routh, Tangier, p. 20.

19 Quoted in Foster, William, The English factories in India, 1665–1667 (Oxford, 1927), pp. 287–8Google Scholar.

20 Quoted in ibid., p. 70.

21 ‘Mr. Luke's reasons against the erection of a Morocco Company’, BL, Harleian (Harl.) MSS 1595, fos. 13v–14r. This memorial is undated, but a copy in Nathaniel Luke's copybook appears following a document dated 12 Sept. 1661, BL, Sloane MSS 1956, fo. 45r–v. It is not entirely certain if this piece was written by Nathaniel Luke or his brother, John Luke. However, Nathaniel Luke is the probable author, since he had been appointed consul to the ports of Morocco by Cromwell in 1657 and was serving as Peterborough's secretary when the memorial was written. On Nathaniel and John Luke, see Kaufman, Helen Andrews, ed., Tangier at high tide: the journal of John Luke, 1670–1673 (Geneva, 1958), pp. 13–14Google Scholar.

22 Thomas Povey, ‘Reasons against the same [Morocco Company]’, BL, Harl. MSS 1595, fo. 14v. Povey's undated memorial appears between documents dated 21 Sept. and 30 Sept. 1661 in Luke's copybook, BL, Sloane MSS 1956, fos. 50v–51v.

23 Povey's subscription for stock among the Royal Adventurers is recorded in the company's minute book, TNA, Treasury, 70/75, fo. 13r.

24 Povey to Edward D'Oyley, BL, Additional MSS 11411, fo. 21r–v. The letter is undated but probably from the fall of 1659. The papers surrounding the proposal for a West India Company are found in BL, Egerton (Eg.) MSS 2395.

25 Philopatris, , A treatise wherein is demonstrated, I. that the East-India trade is the most national of all foreign trades (London, 1681), p. 5Google Scholar. In 1667, the opponents of the short-lived Canary Company claimed that it was unnecessary and contrasted it to the East India Company, which, they argued, required a joint-stock in order to maintain forts and garrisons, Skeel, Caroline A. J., ‘The Canary Company’, English Historical Review, 31 (1916), pp. 529–44, at p. 542CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also, Stern, ‘“A politie of civill & military power”’, pp. 270–4.

26 Joint-stock companies operated as unified, centrally directed corporate bodies, while the members of regulated companies traded individually, within guidelines stipulated by the company. The best discussion of the ideological ramifications of the rivalry between the Levant and East India Companies may be found in Stern, ‘“One body corporate and politick”: the growth of the English East India Company-State in the later seventeenth century’ (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia, 2004), pp. 189–90, 195–7, 210–25.

27 Although there is no mention of the form of the company, its membership suggests that it would have been a joint-stock, as does a letter from Nicolas de Clerville to Colbert, in which he records that ‘une compagnie de marchands anglosi faict presentement un fond de cinq cens mil livres pour faire un port à Tanger’, de Castries, H., de Cenival, P., and Cossé Brissac, P., eds., Les sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc: deuxième série–- dynastie Filalienne: archives et bibliothèques de France (6 vols., Paris, 1922–60), i, p. 30Google Scholar.

28 Philopatris, A treatise wherein is demonstrated, p. 36.

29 BL, Harl. MSS 1595, fos. 15v–16r.

30 Ibid. fos. 14v–15r.

31 ‘The marchant's reasons against the Moroco Company’, BL, Harl. MSS 1595, fo. 17r. For the political significance of forts for the East India Company, see Watson, Ian Bruce, ‘Fortifications and the “idea” of force in early English East India Company relations with India’, Past and Present, 88 (1980), pp. 70–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 ‘The humble reasons of all the marchants that have beene the antient traders to Barbary without the straights’, BL, Harl. MSS 1595, fos. 18v–19r.

33 Compare Steven Pincus's recent arguments regarding later seventeenth-century political economy in 1688: the first modern revolution (New Haven, CT, 2010), ch. 12, passim, with Thomas Leng's characterization of mercantilist thought, ‘Commercial conflict and regulation in the discourse of trade in seventeenth-century England’, Historical Journal, 48 (2005), pp. 933–56.

34 Philopatris, A treatise wherein is demonstrated, pp. 17–18; Stern, ‘“One body corporate and politick”’, pp. 246–9.

35 Foster, The English factories in India, 1668–1669, p. 211, quoted in Louis Dermigny, ‘Escales, échelles et ports francs au Moyen Âge et aux temps modernes’, in Les grandes escales, 3e partie, periode contemporaine et synthèses générales (Recueils de la société Jean Bodin, vol. 34, Brussels, 1974), p. 567 n. 976. See also Maloni, Ruby, ‘Surat to Bombay: transfer of commercial power’, Itinerario, 26 (2002), pp. 61–73, at p. 65CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 See especially Armitage, , The ideological origins of the British empire, pp. 138–45Google Scholar, and Hont, Istvan, The jealousy of trade, international competition and the nation-state in historical perspective (Cambridge, MA, 2005), ch. 2, passimGoogle Scholar.

37 TNA, SP 29/52, fo. 272r.

38 Howell, James, A discourse of Dunkirk (London, 1664), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.

39 For instance, see earl of Peterborough, Tangier, 2 Apr. 1662, TNA, Colonial Office (CO) 279/1, fo. 127v; earl of Middleton to Arlington, Tangier, 12 Oct. 1673, Longleat House, Coventry papers, vol. 70, fo. 52r (microfilm read at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London); earl of Inchiquin, ‘Narrative of the state of Tangier from April 1678 to April 1680’, BL, Sloane MSS 1952, fo. 23v.

40 See ‘Description of Tangier’, TNA, CO 279/33, fo. 136r (anonymous and undated, this document is probably the report on Tangier that Peterborough was ordered to draw up when he was replaced by the earl of Teviot, in 1663, see ‘Instructions for the earl of Tiviott’, TNA, CO 279/2, fos. 24r–v); Lord Belasyse to the lords commissioners for Tangier, undated, BL, Sloane MSS 3509, fo. 104r; journal entry of the earl of Sandwich, 4 Sept. 1668, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 8, pp. 520, 526; Sir Henry Sheeres to Colonel Palmes Faireborne, Tangier, 5 Dec. 1678, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MSS A 342, p. 379 (microfilm read at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London).

41 This is recounted in ‘Mr. Luke's reasons against the erection of a Morocco Company’, BL, Harl. MSS 1595, fo. 13r. Peterborough's negotiations over the size of Tangier's garrison may be followed in ‘Propositions humbly offered to the Lords comittees appointed out of his majesties most honorable privy councill to consider upon the affaires of Tangier in Affrica’ and ‘The necessity of horse’, BL, Sloane MSS 1956, fos. 30v–33v and 38r–v. All of these writings are undated, but ‘The Necessity of horse’ follows an order from the king in council of 26 July 1661.

42 Wilson, Lisbon, 5 Oct. 1661, BL, Sloane MSS 3509, fo. 11r. It is unclear what point Wilson had in mind as the southern limit of his proposed empire. He described ‘Saphy’ as being ‘on our Plantations now in gamboa’, but it seems likely he was referring to the Moroccan city of Safi, ibid., fo. 12r. See also Alison Games's discussion of Wilson's proposal in The web of empire, pp. 295–6.

43 ‘A coppie of a discourse of Barbary sent his royal highness by my Lord sandwich’, 1662, BL, Sloane MSS 3509, fo. 25r.

44 Ibid., fo. 25v.

45 Ibid., fo. 27r.

46 Clarendon, The life of Edward, earl of Clarendon, ii, p. 151.

47 ‘Relazione Dell'Ambasciata Straordinaria in Inghilterra al Rè Gran Bretagna Carlo Secondo, per congratulazione del ritorno al suo Regno’, Jan. 1662, Archivio di Stato di Genova, Archivio Segreto, Relazioni dei Ministri 1/2717, p. 348. A copy of the ‘Relazione’ of Durazzo is in the British Library, Additional MSS 38884.

48 Les sources inédites de l'histoire du Maroc, i, pp. 29–30.

49 Ibid., p. 30.

50 Bodleian Library, Carte MSS 69, fo. 388r. This anonymous and undated memorial was written in response to a letter from a ‘Wm. S’ of Hamburg, dated 2 Aug. 1680. Internal evidence makes clear that the author is Horace Rumbold. For more information on this figure, see ‘Notes on the history of the family of Rumbold in the seventeenth century’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 6 (1892), p. 162 n. 2.

51 Cholmley, ‘Several discourses concerning the interest of Tangier’, BL, Lansdowne MSS 192, fo. 85r.

52 See Armitage, The ideological origins of the British empire, passim.

53 BL, Lansdowne MSS 192, fo. 85r–v; TNA, SP 29/52, fos. 268r, 269r–v.

54 Sheeres, Sir Henry, A discourse touching Tanger: in a letter to a person of quality (London, 1680), pp. 10–11Google Scholar.

55 Nicholas to the earl of Peterborough, Whitehall, 17 May 1662, TNA, SP 44/1, p. 51.

56 Cf. Games, The web of empire, pp. 294–7.

57 ‘Additional instructions which may bee given to the earle of Middleton’, Aug. 1669, TNA, CO 279/12.

58 A copy of the charter granted to the city of Tangier is contained in the entry book of the city's Court of Records and Sessions, TNA, CO 279/45. For the nomination of the Genoese merchant Carlo Antonio Soltrani to the common council, opposition to that nomination, and resolution of the resulting debate, see the Register of the Proceedings of the Corporation, 21 Aug. 1668, TNA, CO 279/39, fo. 2r, and the 28 Aug. 1668 journal entry of the earl of Sandwich, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 8, pp. 476–7.

59 William Bullman, ‘Constantine's Enlightenment: culture and religious politics in the early British empire, c. 1648–1710’ (Ph.D. thesis, Princeton, 2009), pp. 96–112.

60 de la Vérone, Chantal, Tanger sous l'occupation anglaise: d'après une description anonyme de 1674 (Paris, 1972), pp. 16, 74Google Scholar. A copy of the charter for the court merchant appears in TNA, CO 279/10, 1668. See also Ingacio Martínez Ruiz, José, ‘De Tánger a Gibraltar: el estrecho en la praxis comercial e imperial británica (1661–1776)’, Hispania, 221 (2005), pp. 1043–62, at p. 1046CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

61 Kelly de Luca, ‘Beyond the sea: extraterritorial jurisdiction and English law, c. 1575–c. 1640’ (Ph.D. thesis, Columbia, 2008), pp. 55–69.

62 Masson, Paul, Les ports francs: d'autrefois et d'aujourd'hui (Paris, 1904)Google Scholar, and Dermigny, Les grandes escales, ch. 5, passim. For the free port of Livorno, see the work of Frattarelli Fischer, Lucia, especially ‘Livorno città nuova: 1574–1609’, Società e Storia, 46 (1989), pp. 873–93Google Scholar, and ‘Livorno, 1676’ in Franco Angiolini, Vieri Becagli, and Marcello Verga, eds., La Toscana nell'età di Cosimo III (Florence, 1993), pp. 45–66. The only study to compare Tangier to other Mediterranean free ports is Kirk's, Thomas Allison, Genoa and the sea: policy and power in an early modern maritime republic, 1559–1684 (Baltimore, MD, 2005), pp. 193–6Google Scholar. For free ports in English economic thinking, see Leng's ‘Commercial conflict and regulation’, pp. 942, 946–7.

63 ‘Instructions for the earle of Peterburgh, generall of our army designed for Tanger in Africa’, TNA, CO 279/1, fo. 29v–r.

64 de Divitiis, Gigliola Pagano, ‘Il porto di Livorno fra Inghilterra e Oriente’, Nuovi studi livornesi, 1 (1993), pp. 43–87Google Scholar, and idem, English merchants in seventeenth-century Italy, trans. Stephen Parkin (Cambridge, 1997), passim.

65 Downing to Clarendon, The Hague, 6 Jan. 1662, Bodleian Library, Clarendon MSS 106, fo. 31r; BL, Sloane MSS 3509, fos. 11r, 25v. For the use of the example of Livorno, see also BL, Lansdowne MSS 192, fo. 12v; Sheeres, , A discourse touching Tanger (London, 1680), p. 46Google Scholar.

66 Cholmley to William Coventry, Tangier, 11 July 1670, North Yorkshire Record Office (NYRO), ZCG V 1/1/3, p. 99.

67 Enthusiasm for free ports initially co-existed with proposals to restrict colonial trade to English ships; however, support for free ports faded following the passage of the Navigation Act of 1651. The Act of 1660 further required that the most valuable colonial products be brought first to English ports before they could be re-exported to European markets, creating a theoretically closed system of English colonial trade, see Brenner, Robert, Merchants and revolution: commercial change, political conflict, and London's overseas traders, 1550–1653 (London and New York, NY, 2003), pp. 613–20Google Scholar, and Leng, ‘Commercial conflict and regulation’, pp. 942, 948–52. Nuala Zahedieh provides an excellent introduction to England's colonial system and its legislative foundations in ‘Economy’, in David Armitage and Michael J. Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic world, 1500–1800 (Houndmills and New York, NY, 2002), pp. 51–3. See also Beer, The old colonial system, especially ch. 2, and Harper, Lawrence A., The English navigation laws: a seventeenth-century experiment in social engineering (New York, NY, 1973)Google Scholar.

68 ‘Petition of the deputy-governor, council, and assembly of Barbadoes to the king’, 21 Oct. 1670, and ‘The assembly of Barbadoes to Sir Peter Colleton and ten other gentlemen planters in London’, 20 Apr. 1671, in W. N. Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of state papers, colonial: North America and the West Indies (45 vols., London, 1860–), vii:1669–1674, pp. 116, 200. For the use of free trade rhetoric among colonial opponents of the navigation laws, see Koot, Christian J., ‘“A dangerous principle”: free trade discourses in Barbados and the English Leeward Islands, 1650–1689’, Early American Studies, 5 (2007), pp. 132–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Commissioners of the customs, 5 Feb. 1661, Longleat House, Henry Coventry papers, vol. 103, fo. 30r (microfilm read at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London).

70 Brewster, Francis, Essays on trade and navigation (London, 1695), p. 29Google Scholar.

71 A proclamation declaring his majesties pleasure to settle and establish a free port at his city of Tangier in Africa (London, 16 Nov. 1662).

72 Journal entry of the earl of Sandwich, 26 Aug. 1668, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 8, pp. 450, 453; Grant, W. L. and Munro, James, eds., Acts of the privy council of England: colonial series (6 vols., Hereford, 1908–12), i: 1613–1680, pp. 486–7Google Scholar. See also John Finch to Arlington, 14/24 Sept. 1667, TNA, SP 98/8, and CO 279/10, which includes a list of ten ships arriving at Tangier from the plantations between June 1666 and March 1668.

73 ‘Reasons against the permitting of any goods or merchandize of the production of the English plantations to be brought to Tanger before they have been first unladen in England’, 19 Jan. 1669, TNA, CO 279/12. For the navigation laws as a tool to turn England into a European entrepôt, see Zahedieh, ‘Economy’, p. 53.

74 The humble remonstrance of John Blande of London merchant, on behalfe of the inhabitants and planters in Virgina and Mariland (n.p., 1661). On the use of Tangier as a loophole through the navigation laws, cf. Pagano de Divitiis, English merchants in seventeenth-century Italy, p. 180.

75 John Bland, ‘Reason and motives why his majesties cittie of Tanger should enjoy a free Trade with the other his majesties plantations’, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 9, p. 358.

76 Ibid. p. 359.

77 ‘Reasons for the permitting the productions of the English plantations in America to bee brought directly to Tanger before landed in England submitted to consideration if valluable to what been said in contra’, BL, Eg. MSS 2395, fo. 652r. This memorial is undated but was written in response to the petition of the farmers of the customs, of 19 Jan. 1669; although unsigned, its argumentation and phrasing closely resembles Bland's memorial. Bland was in England in early 1669, further suggesting he wrote or contributed to this rebuttal of the farmers’ arguments.

78 Ibid. fo. 659v.

79 Ibid. fo. 658r.

80 Ibid. fo. 658v.

81 Journal entry of the earl of Sandwich, 20 Jan. 1669, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 9, p. 96.

82 This clarification comes in a summary of the Navigation Acts that follows an ‘Answer of the commissioners of the customs about the Act of Trade & Navigation’ to Lord Danby, 12 May 1675, London, TNA, CO 324/3, fo. 13v. Cf. Ruiz, ‘De Tánger a Gibraltar’, pp. 1049–50.

83 Coke, Roger, England's improvements (London, 1675), p. 113Google Scholar.

84 Benton, Lauren, ‘Legal spaces of empire: piracy and the origins of ocean regionalism’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 47 (2005), pp. 700–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, A search for sovereignty: law and geography in European empires, 1400–1900 (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 137–48.

85 Cholmley to Mr Mico, Tangier, 6 July 1665, NYRO, ZCG V 1/1/1, pp. 172–3; Cholmley to William Coventry, Tangier, 2 Oct. 1670, NYRO, ZCG V 1/1/3, p. 156.

86 BL, Lansdowne MSS 192, fo. 85v.

87 See Johan de Bakker, Slaves, arms and holy war, passim.

88 Earl of Middleton to the lords commissioners for Tangier, Tangier, 5 Feb. 1673, TNA, CO 279/16, fo. 289v.

89 Journal entry of the earl of Sandwich, 4 Sept. 1668, Mapperton House, journal of the first earl of Sandwich, vol. 8, p. 532.

90 Matthew Hale, The prerogatives of the king, ed. D. E. C. Yale (London, 1976), p. 43 n. 1.

91 Francis Stock, Leo, ed., Proceedings and debates of the British parliaments respecting North America, 1542–1688 (5 vols., Washington, DC, 1924–), i, pp. 278, 281, 283–5, 288Google Scholar; Steele, Ian K., ‘The British parliament and the Atlantic colonies to 1760: new approaches to enduring questions’, Parliamentary History, 14 (1995), pp. 29–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at p. 38 n. 44.

92 Grey, Anchitell, Debates in the House of Commons, from 1667 to 1694 (10 vols., London, 1763), vii, pp. 96–101Google Scholar; Routh, Tangier, pp. 238–42.

93 Bland to the earl of Shaftesbury, Tangier, 1680, BL, Sloane MSS 3512, fo. 283r–v.

94 Grey, Debates in the House of Commons, viii, pp. 4–21.

95 Cholmley to Henry Norwood, London, 2 Sept. 1667 and 1 Nov. 1667, NYRO, ZCG V 1/1/2, pp. 70, 111–12.

96 Marshall, P. J., ‘Western arms in maritime Asia in the early phases of expansion’, Modern Asian Studies, 14 (1980), pp. 13–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Prakash, Om, European commercial enterprise in pre-colonial India (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 146–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Colley, Captives, pp. 38, 255–6; Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Explorations in connected history: Mughals and Franks (New Delhi, 2005), p. 203Google Scholar.

97 For this point, see Bakker, Slaves, arms, and holy war, pp. 4–9.

98 Matar, Britain and Barbary, p. 158.

99 Fryer, John, A new account of East India and Persia (London, 1698)Google Scholar, quoted in Love, Henry Davison, Vestiges of old Madras, 1640–1800 (4 vols., Delhi, 1988), i, p. 318Google Scholar.

100 For the relationship between South Asian state-building and political economy in this period, see Subrahmanyam, Sanjay, Penumbral visions: making polities in early modern South India (Ann Arbor, MI, 2001), ch. 4, pp. 104–14, 131–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and idem, Explorations in connected history: from the Tagus to the Ganges (New Delhi, 2005), ch. 3, passim.

101 Watson, ‘Fortifications and the “idea” of force’, pp. 71–81; Stern, ‘“A politie of civill & military power”’, pp. 254–67.

102 For the full diplomatic context of this letter, see Bakker, Slaves, arms, and holy war, pp. 7–9, 72–85. Cf. Nabil Matar's treatment of this letter in Britain and Barbary, pp. 161–2.

103 The letter here refers to the Spanish and Portuguese possessions on the Moroccan coast, in addition to Tangier.

104 The translation here used is the original contained in TNA, CO 279/30, fos. 353r–36v, which largely parallels the modern translation by J. F. P. Hopkins in Letters from Barbary, 1576–1774: Arabic documents in the Public Record Office (Oxford, 1982), pp. 23–30, which is derived from the original Arabic letter in TNA, SP 104/4, #110. Hopkins provides the letter's date of 11 Sha'ban 1094, or 5 Aug. 1683. Hopkins also gives the original Arabic term for ‘jewry’ as mallah, which referred to the Jewish quarters of Moroccan cities.

105 Hopkins specifies that ben Haddu cited the jizya, or poll tax, when he referred to Tangier paying taxes to Moulay Ismaïl, Letters from Barbary, p. 28. For background on the significance of this tax within Islamic law and its relationship to subject status, see Edhem Eldem, ‘Capitulations and Western trade’, in Suraiya N. Faroqhi, ed., The Cambridge history of Turkey: the later Ottoman empire, 1603–1839 (Cambridge, 2008), pp. 293–4.

106 For the ideological basis of opposition to the exclusion bills and to parliamentary intrusion on royal authority, see Harris, Tim, Restoration: Charles II and his kingdoms, 1660–1685 (London, 2005), pp. 220–37, 252–8Google Scholar. See also Scott, Jonathan, England's troubles: seventeenth-century English political instability in European context (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 435–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

107 Eldem, ‘Capitulations and Western trade’, pp. 293–6.

108 Kirke to Jenkins, Tangier, 9 Aug. 1683, TNA, CO 279/32, fo. 74v.

109 ‘Copie of Colonel Kirke's second letter to the Morocco embassador’, Tangier, 9 Aug. 1683, TNA, CO 279/32, fo. 72r.

110 Bayly, C. A., Origins of nationality in South Asia: patriotism and ethical government in the making of modern India (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 37–49, 214–19Google Scholar.

111 Stern, ‘“A politie of civill & military power”’, pp. 264–7.