Examines Robert Montgomery’s early years as consul in Alicante, Spain focusing on his multiple identities as Irishman, American, and Spaniard. Discusses Alicante’s evolving commerce and the growth of American shipping networks despite the impact of the Barbary Wars.

Chapter 2 examines the local context of the pueblo of El Cobre and its members’ response to the privatization of the mining estate and their ensuing enslavement. It probes the unorthodox character of this community and the villagers’ vernacular collective self-identification as “cobreros,” or natives of El Cobre, an identification that they pressed on the court to counter their captivity and make other claims. The bonds of pueblo towered over and above possible internal cleavages along formal free or slave status, class, race, and gender. The cobreros’ collective action was possible precisely because of their social bonds and (informal) organization as a pueblo. The community empowered Gregorio Cosme Osorio, one of their own, to be their apoderado or legal representative in the royal court in Madrid, a rare liaison position for a colonial racialized man and another extraordinary aspect of the case. The chapter then turns trans-local as it traces Cosme’s journey and the networks he created from El Cobre to Madrid to litigate collective freedom. The chapter also examines the financial, administrative, political, and social challenges that these colonial litigants faced in accessing the judicial arena, particularly at the imperial level.

The Roman conquests in the western Mediterranean saw the arrival of Roman coins, but in the east the local coinages at first remained and were manipulated.

The first part of this chapter focuses on the shift in Anglo-Spanish relations brought on by the death of the British ambassador in Madrid. It delves into the critical role that individuals can play during diplomatic negotiations and the subsequent effects they can have on issues relating to neutrality and sea power. Keene’s relationship with William Pitt and with Ricardo Wall largely kept Anglo-Spanish relations afloat and working toward an eventuality where Spain would remain neutral and willing to compromise on neutral rights. Keene actively worked to persuade Wall to accept the Court of Prize Appeal as the best mechanism to safeguard Spanish neutrality but failed to achieve his goal before he died. Keene’s successor, Lord Bristol, proved much less effective and relations between the two governments deteriorated further. It was under these trying political circumstances that the San Juan Baptista came before the Court of Prize Appeal. Lord Hardwicke’s intent appeared to be to ensure that the first Spanish appellate case be decided in favour of the Spanish in order to win Spanish government support for the Court of Prize Appeal as a fair and viable mechanism to safeguard neutral rights.

This chapter begins Part III of the book which focuses on Anglo-Spanish relations during the Seven Years’ War and focuses particularly on the first two Spanish cases to come before the Court of Prize Appeal. This serves as a contextual chapter for Anglo- Spanish affairs and introduces the specific people and dynamics within the Spanish Court that were critical to negotiations over neutrality. It also introduces the cases of the San Juan Baptista and the Jesús, Maria, y José. The chapter highlights that the political and diplomatic contexts of Anglo-Spanish relations were markedly different from those of Anglo-Dutch relations and that preserving Spanish neutrality was, in many ways, much more fraught and complicated. This was due largely to internal Spanish political events (such as the death of King Ferdinand VI and the death of the British ambassador to Spain) and Anglo-Spanish maritime grievances that went beyond questions of prize-taking but spoke to the core of Spanish fears that British maritime hegemony would drastically alter the power of balance in the Americas and adversely affect neutral nations.

The Conclusion delves into the strategic and legal legacies of the Seven Years’ War. It ties the Seven Years’ War and the unresolved tensions around maritime neutrality to the outbreak of Anglo-Dutch and Anglo-Spanish hostilities during the American War of Independence. It does so by examining the peace treaty of 1763 wherein no new significant arrangements were made about neutral rights between the Spanish and the British. The argument is made that the ambiguity of existing treaties left both governments room to continue negotiations whilst the Rule of the War of 1756 would provide an understanding of how British prize courts would treat neutral ships in future conflicts. The chapter examines the legacy of the Court of Prize Appeal and the thinking behind the rule. It discusses how the court and the rule were used in subsequent conflicts through the Napoleonic Wars and the role that individual judges took in making the rule a critical or underplayed element of British maritime strategic thinking. The rule loomed large in British maritime law for many wars after Hardwicke created it and it is, perhaps, one of the best illustrations of the link between law, sea power, and strategic thinking.

As the cases of the Jesús, Maria, y José and the San Juan Baptista made their way through the High Court of Admiralty, the arguments that would eventually be laid before the Court of Prize Appeal took shape. This chapter examines the arguments made in each case and how they affected Anglo-Spanish negotiations over neutrality. The chapter also focuses on the debates between British and Spanish ministers about the meaning and interpretation of the Anglo-Spanish Treaty of 1667 which governed Spanish neutral rights. It introduces two key people in Anglo-Spanish negotiations, Felix D’Abreu (Spanish representative in London) and Sir Benjamin Keene (British ambassador to Spain). Both men would be instrumental in shaping the debates on Spanish neutral rights and whether those rights could be protected through decisions handed down by the Court of Prize Appeal.

The Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers on 27 August 1816 indicated how, after the Congress of Vienna, a new order based on collective security was taking shape, not just on the continent, but also in the Mediterranean Sea. This chapter suggests that 1816 was a moment of departure from past traditions and signified the creation of a new Mediterranean order. Defining features of that order – such as modes of cooperation, the linkage to the Congress System, the use of security as a legitimizing discourse and the important roles of smaller and non-European powers – all came into play during the Anglo–Dutch bombardment. Additionally, this Anglo–Dutch cooperation shows how various states took the lead in the fight against piracy, dependent upon the situation. There was not a single naval hegemon who executed the repressive effort. At this early stage, smaller powers initially drove the repression of ‘Barbary piracy’, later to be followed by Great Britain, Russia and France. The effort became a truly pan-European reorganisation of security in the Mediterranean.

The discovery of a consignment of books of Protestant propaganda in Seville in the autumn of 1557 convinced the Spanish inquisitors of the existence of clandestine circles that promoted doctrines that contradicted Catholic orthodoxy as redefined between 1547 and 1552 during the first sessions of the Council of Trent. The discovery of a second community of religious dissidents in Valladolid a few weeks later, followed by the arrest on suspicion of Lutheranism of Bartolomé de Carranza y Miranda, archbishop of Toledo, on 22 August 1559 created the impression in the royal court of Philip II that Spain had escaped an odious heretical conspiracy hatched by foreigners and supported by members of its own nobility and senior clergy. Some of the outstanding figures among the Seville and Valladolid dissidents cannot, contrary to what historiography has long maintained, be characterised simply as Erasmists; many of them subscribed to the doctrinal core of Protestantism. There were several networks of Lutherans in Spain, as well as among the communities of exiled Spaniards throughout Europe. The Reformation made a greater impression in Iberia than has long been assumed.