I
The natureFootnote 1 of European expansion and the relationships it created with other areas of the world remains a subject of intense debate.Footnote 2 Less controversial is the idea that, whatever its results, this process was determined not simply by European actions, but by local conditions and responses, and the mutual adaptations that developed. Willis has labelled this the ‘interactive emergence of European domination’, a concept equally applicable to other fields as to his own of maritime Asia.Footnote 3 It is often difficult, however, to put flesh on these theoretical bones due to the relative lack of non-European sources, compared to the large numbers of travel accounts and well-catalogued bureaucratic records that detail the European perspective on these encounters. This lack should not be exaggerated, of course: in the case of Morocco, for example, there are a number of accounts of journeys to Europe. As Matar has also argued, a greater sensitivity to different types of sources can be productive.Footnote 4
Nevertheless, any new sources that illuminate these encounters are welcome. This article therefore presents an account of the 1706–8 embassy of the Moroccan merchant and diplomat Aḥmad Qardanash, in the context of Anglo-Moroccan relations during the reign of Sultan Mawlāy Ismāʿīl (r. 1672–1727). It is thirty years since the absence of any study analysing the ‘complex web of issues, schemes and personalities’ related to this topic was first noted, and despite important work on some aspects, much remains to untangle.Footnote 5 The Moroccans involved in this embassy saw co-operation with the English as a potentially beneficial strategy, and were prepared to invest considerable political capital in it. The English, however, failed to appreciate the position of their potential allies within Morocco's political system, consequently disappointing the Moroccans' hopes, and damaging their own cause. This prevented them overcoming the obstacles in Morocco, which, in comparison to other states of North Africa, made it relatively resistant to European influence.
This article is based on two main sources, the first from State Papers Foreign at the National Archives in London.Footnote 6 Although these archives have long been recognized as an important source for Moroccan history, to my knowledge only two works have made brief use of this particular file.Footnote 7 The second is documents related to the embassy distributed between five volumes of the Blenheim papers at the British Library, records of the ministry of Charles Spencer, third earl of Sunderland, (c. 1674–1722) as secretary of state for the Southern Department, at that time responsible for relations with Morocco. These were evidently kept with Sunderland's personal papers, and hence not deposited at the National Archives. They have not to my knowledge been used before as a source for Moroccan history at all.Footnote 8
The particular value of these sources is that they include numerous letters from the Moroccans concerned with the embassy, both between themselves and to various Englishmen. They therefore give an insight into the internal Moroccan situation understandably absent from contemporary European accounts. Although Qardanash's mission is mentioned in passing by some Moroccan chronicles, details of it have hitherto been lacking.Footnote 9 Some of the letters are originals in Arabic or Spanish, although the majority survive only in English translations by the Arabist Jezreel Jones (d. 1731), who visited Morocco several times.Footnote 10 Jones made occasional obvious errors, indicating the limits of his understanding of Arabic and Moroccan culture. He mistakenly located the tomb of the saint ʿAbd al-Salām b. Mashīsh in Fez, for example, and mistranslated salām ʿala man ittabaʿa al-hudā (‘peace upon him who follows [divine] guidance’ – a common rubric used to open letters to non-Muslims) as ‘peace be upon the followers of Judah’.Footnote 11 In the one case where we can compare his translation to an original, it is in parts hazy but in general accurate.Footnote 12 Combined with the Moroccans' testimony as to his facility in Arabic, and his repeated employment as an interpreter in Morocco and England, this suggests we can rely on Jones's transmission at least in those points on which the sources place repeated emphasis.Footnote 13 The two manuscript sources for this article have been supplemented by the later volumes by the continuers of de Castries's monumental catalogue of European archives relating to Morocco.Footnote 14
II
During the Commonwealth and Restoration periods, English naval power increased significantly in order to protect English commercial shipping, which was likewise increasing.Footnote 15 The acquisition of Jamaica, Bombay, and Tangier between 1655 and 1661 – the first by conquest, the others as part of Catherine of Braganza's dowry at her marriage to Charles II – marked a turning point in the development of England's nascent empire. Each port signified the country's establishment in a different sphere of influence. Tangier is historically the least important, remaining in English hands little more than twenty years. At the time, however, the Moroccan port was much more significant since – despite the later reorientation of British trade to its colonies in the Americas and Asia – the Mediterranean was still vitally important for English commerce. An indication of this is the fact that parliament tried to force Charles II to exclude his Catholic brother James from the succession – the defining political issue of the day – by refusing to authorize funds for the Tangier garrison until the king agreed.Footnote 16
The security of shipping through the Straits of Gibraltar, as well as their strategic military significance, were of paramount importance, and when Tangier proved a disappointing means to these ends, they motivated the 1704 seizure of Gibraltar. Although the periods of peace in Europe during the reign of Charles II are often considered times of decline for the English navy, it was in fact during these very periods that the convoy and squadron systems in the Mediterranean were developed that crucially bolstered English influence there. During every one of these periods of ‘peace’, squadrons were sent to the Mediterranean to suppress attacks on English shipping by the corsairs of Morocco and the North African regencies. This ‘early form of gunboat diplomacy’ was directed also against Spain and Portugal as England sought to entrench her military and commercial position.Footnote 17 Significant successes in this respect were the treaties signed with Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, who found the costs of attacking English shipping increasingly prohibitive. This was the foundation of England's increasing dominance in the Mediterranean carrying trade, since the commerce of more vulnerable states increasingly switched to English ships.Footnote 18
By the early years of the eighteenth century, therefore, England had three related aims regarding Morocco. The first was further to improve the security of English trade by confronting the threat of Moroccan corsairing, particularly from Salé.Footnote 19 This they attempted by the combination of visible naval force and permanent treaty that had already proved successful in the case of the North African regencies.Footnote 20 Alongside the security of trade was its increased prosperity, for which England desired freer access to Moroccan markets, for example by the lowering of customs' duties.Footnote 21 The final aim was to secure supplies for English forces in the Mediterranean region, in particular for the now near-permanent naval squadrons there, to which were added the new garrison at Gibraltar and other land forces like those sent to the Iberian Peninsula during the War of the Spanish Succession. This coincided with a more receptive attitude toward the English in Morocco. However, although with hindsight this coincidence seems like it should have been an excellent opportunity for the consolidation of Anglo-Moroccan relations, at the time it was obscured by the complexity of England's strategic position during its world war with a united France and Spain. Morocco slipped down the agenda in London just when England had risen in Tetuan and Meknes.
III
Morocco at this time was well accustomed to dealing with the growing powers of northern Europe, with whom trade and diplomatic relations had been established since the late sixteenth century, adding to earlier links with various Iberian and Italian states.Footnote 22 Trade with Europe brought important revenue but also gunpowder weapons and ammunition from the fifteenth century onwards, although at first they were probably imported via Muslim Granada.Footnote 23 However, the impact of these developments on the Moroccan state was limited by the country's landward orientation. The Saʿadī dynasty established its capital at Marrakesh, their successors the ʿAlawīs at Fez and then Meknes, all far inland. European merchants trading first at Agadir (Santa Cruz) and then other ports were kept at arm's length by rulers for whom control of the interior and overland trade routes to sub-Saharan Africa remained prime concerns. During times of central weakness, however, regional powers in Morocco used their control over maritime trade to strengthen their independence. This was particularly evident during the unstable decades attending the decline of the Saʿadī dynasty after the death of Aḥmad al-Mansūr (r. 1578–1603).Footnote 24 Independent groups like the Dilā'iyya zāwiya (religious brotherhood) in central and northern Morocco or the ‘Morisco republic’ at Rabat-Salé under Muḥammad al-ʿAyyāshī conducted their own relationships with European powers.Footnote 25 Competing factions in the civil wars of this period exploited the rivalries between European powers, just as their own divisions were exploited to facilitate the entrenchment of European political and commercial influence.
The most important example of this for the purposes of this article is the development of English influence in Tetuan and the Gharb (north-west) region. The al-Naqsīs family, allies of the Dilā'iyya and quasi-independent governors of Tetuan for most of the seventeenth century, were in contact from 1618 onwards with the English, who perceived rightly that they might make useful allies against the Spanish. They granted the English the use of Tetuan as a base during the siege of Cadiz in 1656, and the following year agreed the appointment of a permanent English consul there. A treaty was agreed the same year between the English and ʿAbd al-Karīm al-Naqsīs and the Dilā'iyya, and apparently renewed four years later.Footnote 26 After the English occupation of Tangier, they developed a similar relationship with al-Khiḍr Ghaylān, an independent warlord who established himself in the Gharb in the 1660s. Although he alternated his allegiance between England and Spain, it was in an English ship that he fled to Algiers to escape the growing power of Mawlāy al-Rashīd (r. 1666–72), the first ʿAlawī sultan. He returned in 1673 with Ottoman help, renewed his treaty with the English, and allied himself with the al-Naqsīs in a final attempt to defend his power and the autonomy of the north, but was killed the same year.Footnote 27
There had developed during the seventeenth century, therefore, an important relationship between the English and the elite of the Gharb region. In the long term, the relationship was intensified by the English presence at Gibraltar, but during the last two decades of the century it was attenuated by the re-establishment of central control in the Gharb by the ʿAlawī state. In addition to the decline of the regional powers with whom they had developed relationships, the English at Tangier were the object of revived hostility to foreign occupation. Jihād (holy war) against the European enclaves in Morocco was an important part of the legitimizing strategy of the new dynasty, as it had been for their predecessors, the Saʿadīs.Footnote 28 Although England agreed a treaty with Morocco in 1682, Mawlāy al-Rashīd's brother and successor, Mawlāy Ismāʿīl, refused to ratify it. During the first half of his reign, Mawlāy Ismāʿīl instead tended towards the French, with whom he did sign a treaty of peace that year, partly due to the shared enmity of Spain, occupier of the enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla.Footnote 29 Moroccan trade with France increased in the 1680s and 1690s, but embassies exchanged in order to resolve disputes over the existing peace and to agree a commercial treaty were unsuccessful, despite Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's well-known proposition of marriage to Louis XIV's natural daughter, the princesse de Conti.Footnote 30 The disappointment attending these failures was compounded by the Bourbon succession in Spain in 1700, which made France a less likely ally for Morocco against it. These factors pushed Morocco towards improving relations with England, which had given up Tangier in 1684 but still maintained such a visible naval presence in the region.
However, despite England's relative gains, it was now more difficult for any European power to develop its influence in Morocco than it had been during the previous decades of instability. Unlike the North African regencies – or indeed the proto-states of the Moriscos or the al-Naqsīs – a unified Morocco was much less vulnerable to European naval power and commercial expansion. As Mawlāy Ismāʿīl wrote to Louis XIV, criticizing the threats of the French officials attempting to enforce a new treaty on Morocco: ‘Do they imagine or believe they can treat us like the people of Tunis or Tripoli or Algierṣ We, thank God, have nothing that interests us on the coast or for the sake of which we will negotiate a treaty with them.’Footnote 31 Not only were these coastal states much more reliant on the sea, through trade or piracy, but their rulers were ordinarily more accessible to European consuls and merchants.Footnote 32 As Hunter has argued, the treaties imposed on the regencies in the late seventeenth century and their subsequent economic reorientation toward Europe mark the beginning of the processes of colonization normally described as phenomena of the nineteenth century. Morocco, significantly, falls outside his analysis, precisely because these processes were not advanced to the same degree there.Footnote 33
As a result of this physical and political distance between the sultan and the Europeans in his ports, relations between the two were generally delegated to regional officials. Instead of being a source of independent power for certain groups with access to the ports most important for foreign trade and diplomacy, these relations with Europe were now brought more clearly within the control of the Moroccan state. Among the most influential of these officials under Mawlāy Ismāʿīl was ʿAlī b. ʿAbd Allāh a-Ḥamāmī (d. 1713), viceroy (khalīfa) of the Gharb and governor (qā'id) of Tangier, Tetuan and al-Qaṣr al-Kabīr. He was responsible for diplomatic negotiations with foreign representatives, although the sultan retained ultimate control over any agreements or treaties. He played a leading part in the exchanges between France and Morocco, and was well placed to profit by the recovery of trade with Europe in the later decades of the seventeenth century.Footnote 34 His political and geographical position gave him more regular contact with Europe and a more immediate view of its growing power.
However, although ‘in one sense [he] faced northwards, and was a cosmopolitan Mediterranean merchant prince’, al-Ḥamāmī's position simultaneously imposed upon him important obligations to the central government at Meknes. Although he enjoyed considerable authority, he had been appointed by Mawlāy Ismāʿīl specifically to curb the historical independence of Tetuan and the Gharb.Footnote 35 Like other Moroccan officials, he had to send a yearly tribute (hadīya) to the sultan as the price of his position. Merchants from Europe and the gifts brought by envoys were important sources of valuable goods to contribute to this.Footnote 36 In addition, he was generally responsible for collecting and remitting the price agreed for redeemed European captives. As well as allowing al-Ḥamāmī a significant degree of latitude, therefore, this system of delegation also built into Moroccan foreign policy a certain instability, because the ratification of his agreements depended on his continued influence at court. Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's administrative system generally lacked a fixed hierarchy, and there was often factional competition for his favour, success in which depended in al-Ḥamāmī's case to a large extent on the results of his dealings with the foreigners.Footnote 37 The sultan's historical reputation as a despot has, as Mercer has demonstrated, inflated the reputation of the power of his government, which was in fact ‘a palace and tribute state’ much more administratively diffuse than the contemporary empires of the Ottomans or the Safavids.Footnote 38 Paradoxically, this ‘weakness’ of the Moroccan state insulated it from the effects of European influence, diffusing it among a loose network of centres of power rather than facilitating it through a strong central government.
IV
An opportunity for the English to address these limitations presented itself in December 1698, when Captain George Delaval arrived at Tangier to redeem a group of nearly 200 English captives and agreed a six-month truce with al-Ḥamāmī as a step to a permanent treaty.Footnote 39 This marked the beginning of the governor's attempts to develop a stronger relationship with the English, a policy he believed would strengthen his own position as well as his master's. When Paul Methuen, son of the English ambassador at Lisbon, was sent to Morocco to continue the negotiations begun by Delaval, he found the governor convinced of the merits of an alliance with the English over the French, particularly because of the prospect of an expansionist Bourbon Spain. He concluded that al-Ḥamāmī ‘as the Moores in generall are inclined to the Interest of England more than any other European Nation’.Footnote 40
This impression was due to more than simply tactful diplomacy on the Moroccans' part. The governor described his reasons for cultivating friendship with the English in a letter to Qardanash, one of his leading officers and a prominent Tetuani merchant.Footnote 41 On the one hand, the sultan himself was inclining to the English, although, true to his long-term strategy of playing the different European powers off against each other, Mawlāy Ismāʿīl maintained the possibility of improved relations with the French, for example by granting privileges to their merchants.Footnote 42 In addition, ʿAbd al-Salām Lūkas and Muḥammad ‘Gennun’, also prominent citizens of Tetuan and advisers to the governor, had convinced al-Ḥamāmī that a good relationship with the English would bring prestige and material benefits.Footnote 43 Lūkas and Qardanash together handled many of the negotiations with visiting English officials.Footnote 44 The governor was apparently induced to accede to their encouragement partly by the example of Aḥmad b. Haddū al-ʿAṭṭar, ambassador to England in 1681–2, and his secretary, Muḥammad Lūkas, father of ʿAbd al-Salām, whom he believed to have secured great credit to themselves by their dealings with the English.Footnote 45 This Muḥammad had previously converted to Christianity for a time and served the English at Tangier.Footnote 46 Despite the new context of renewed central control, attitudes in the Gharb were naturally still influenced by the region's earlier experiences with the English.
Al-Ḥamāmī's efforts initially met with success. The price in weapons, ammunition, and money agreed with Delaval for the redemption was considered by the French consul at Salé so favourable to the Moroccans as to be ‘almost unbelievable’.Footnote 47 Convinced of the merits of his policy, the governor continued to cultivate his relationship with the English. Two of al-Ḥamāmī's men were sent with Delaval on his return home in early 1700 with letters for William III (r. 1689–1702) and orders to purchase goods there with part of the ransom. Later that year, Mawlāy Ismāʿīl wrote to William affirming his agreement to the truce, which was periodically renewed throughout the following years.Footnote 48 Letters from al-Ḥamāmī followed to the new queen, Anne (r. 1702–14), and the earl of Nottingham, then secretary of state for the Southern Department. He wrote to Nottingham again in January 1703, requesting an ambassador be sent to negotiate the treaty and also the possibility of joint action against Ceuta.Footnote 49 To this proposal was privately added the incentive that the English would be allowed to hold the town and enough land around it for 10,000 cattle if they would help the Moroccans expel the Spanish from it.Footnote 50 To facilitate the provisioning of the English navy, al-Ḥamāmī also offered to build a storehouse outside Tangier where they could keep supplies.Footnote 51 When the English took Gibraltar, the garrison was quickly supplied with fresh food and building supplies from Tangier and Tetuan.Footnote 52 Al-Ḥamāmī also requested on different occasions that a permanent English consul be sent to reside at Tangier or Tetuan.Footnote 53
The English, however, were slow to respond to these overtures. Their rebuffs began when Delaval refused to go ashore at the end of 1701 to continue at Meknes the talks he had begun at Tetuan.Footnote 54 Almost a year later, the Moroccans were still anticipating Delaval's return. When they tried to revive negotiations in September 1702 with Admiral Sir George Rooke, whose fleet al-Ḥamāmī had agreed to supply, they were disappointed by his inability to do more than reassure them another ambassador would soon arrive. They nevertheless presented the thirty remaining captives from the group Delaval had redeemed in exchange for some gunpowder and Rooke's word on the outstanding payment due for them.Footnote 55 It was more than a year after further requests for another ambassador that Sir Andrew Leake was sent in early 1704, but his mission failed dismally, apparently undermined by his instructions not to go ashore to conduct the negotiations himself.Footnote 56 Methuen arrived the following year, but left sooner than the Moroccans hoped because of his other duties.Footnote 57 Despite the disappointment of the great efforts the Moroccans believed they had expended on hosting Methuen, al-Ḥamāmī later urged him to return to conclude the treaty, also without success.Footnote 58 Seeing the delays and inconsistency that characterized his government's attitude to negotiations with Morocco, the interpreter Jones urged his superiors to remedy them, complaining that he had been obliged to assuage al-Ḥamāmī's disappointment by blaming the death of William III.Footnote 59
These delays were more than just frustrating for al-Ḥamāmī. He was staking a great deal of his political capital on securing a productive relationship with the English. Their delays put him in a difficult position, since he could not present to the sultan what he had not yet himself received. The total amount of gunpowder, gunlocks, and Moroccan captives Delaval had originally agreed in exchange for the English captives had still not been sent more than three years after the last of them had been sent off with Rooke, despite the fact the Moroccans were claiming less than they were owed according to the English accounts. Nor had the Moroccans received what had been undertaken for a group of French Protestants under English protection.Footnote 60 Al-Ḥamāmī's goodwill gesture of allowing the ransomed Englishmen off before receiving full payment had not paid off: as Methuen recognized, this made him reluctant to allow more to be redeemed on a promise.Footnote 61 In desperation, the governor seized the goods of English traders in Tetuan as compensation in late 1705, as one of them, Gawen Nash, reported: ‘neither would nor could [al-Ḥamāmī] any longer putt the King his Master off with these delayes but would now come upon us for payment’.Footnote 62
By early 1706, therefore, al-Ḥamāmī was finding affairs with the English increasingly difficult, despite his efforts to impress on them his goodwill. His credibility at court was strained, to the point that his rival ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAisha, admiral of Salé, was expected to lead the next embassy to England.Footnote 63 The governor managed in the end to retain responsibility for the embassy, and appointed Qardanash to lead it. His position was weakened, however, by the sultan's order that the ambassador take the French Protestants with him, making twelve of them a gift, thereby undermining al-Ḥamāmī's hopes of forcing the English to deliver what they had promised for their redemption as well as what was still owed for the previous captives.Footnote 64
V
Qardanash and his thirteen-strong party left Tangier in early March 1706 and arrived at Portsmouth a month later.Footnote 65 The country was not new to him since he had been amongst those sent in 1700.Footnote 66 He was empowered to negotiate the proposed treaty, the joint attack on Ceuta, and the continued provisioning of Gibraltar.Footnote 67 He was also ordered to make appropriate purchases for al-Ḥamāmī's next visit to the sultan. Four months after Qardanash's departure, his patron wrote to him anxiously for news, specifying the purchase of 150 pieces of ordinary cloth and as much fine cloth as possible for the sultan's gift. These he ordered to be sent straight away rather than waiting for the ambassador himself to return.Footnote 68 His urgency was prompted by further pressure to produce the arms he had been promised by the English, demands that prompted him to imprison Nash and force him to write to England and Gibraltar for the settling of the debt:
[The governor] being so extreamly prest by Muley Ismael for the locks due on account the French Protestants that he cant now putt him off with more excuses seeing they dont come nor can imagine when they will so to mitigate his Masters wrath and his own passion he now comes on me for the procureing of them … I dont so much blame the alcayd (although I shall never forgive him) as the Strange management of the affaire at home for its now more than 4 months since the whole redemption has been in Gibraltar & as yet nothing thereof is yet come hither.Footnote 69
Despite the Moroccan's urgency, however, Qardanash had yet even to be formally presented to the queen by late June.Footnote 70 It would not be until November that the government responded on the issue of Ceuta, or offered any assurances about the payment of the debts for redeemed captives.Footnote 71
In the meantime, news arrived in England that was to hamper Qardanash's mission still further, revealing more clearly also the dynamics of the rivalries in Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's government. In mid-June, Moroccan corsairs had captured two English ships in violation of the truce, taking the ships as prizes and sending the fifty-five sailors to the sultan at Meknes as slaves.Footnote 72 The implications for his negotiations were immediately apparent to Qardanash when told the news the next month: ‘he was mute, as one thunder-struck clapping his hand to his head’.Footnote 73 In Morocco, al-Ḥamāmī hurriedly intervened for the men's release and took them into his protection.Footnote 74 It was soon revealed that the corsairs responsible were from Salé, and hence under the authority of Bin ʿAisha, the man originally intended to lead the embassy to England.Footnote 75 The obvious explanation was that he was trying to undermine al-Ḥamāmī's negotiations, a conclusion Qardanash made even before being informed of it by the flurry of letters dispatched by the governor explaining what had happened.Footnote 76
By this attempt to damage al-Ḥamāmī's negotiations, Bin ʿAisha may have wanted to discredit his rival and take control of the potentially profitable relationship with the English. The French consul at Salé reported in 1697 that Bin ʿAisha was a great supporter of the English, due to the three years he spent as a slave in England and his eventual release without ransom by the duke of York, the future James II.Footnote 77 The admiral's collusion in this consul's expulsion the following year apparently confirmed he was no friend of the French.Footnote 78 Bin ʿAisha had returned to England as ambassador upon James's accession to the throne in 1685, and the two men had an apparently emotional reunion during the Moroccan's embassy to Louis XIV in 1698–9, by which time James was exiled in France.Footnote 79 However, Bin ʿAisha's feelings towards the English seem to have changed after this visit, suggesting that his actual aim was to derail the Anglo-Moroccan relationship altogether and restore France as Morocco's favoured European ally. He maintained a friendly correspondence with some he had met in France, despite the fact that, although he spoke English and Spanish, he spoke no French.Footnote 80 It is certain that by 1709 his earlier position regarding the rival European powers had been completely reversed. In that year, he wrote secretly to the comte de Pontchartrain, the French minister for naval affairs, insisting that he preferred the French to the English, whom he had disliked ever since his time as a slave. He reported that the influence of the English was waning and that the sultan would trust his advice to sign a treaty with France. He even enticed Pontchartrain with the prospect of a French-occupied Gibraltar, held with Moroccan assistance. Signed jointly with the governor of Salé, Muḥammad Ma'nīnu al-Slāwī, the letter indicates the existence of a pro-French lobby based around that town in competition with the pro-English group around al-Ḥamāmī in Tangier and Tetuan.Footnote 81 Whether this was sufficiently developed to explain the seizure of the English ships in the summer of 1706 is, however, uncertain.
It is certain that by the autumn al-Ḥamāmī faced a dual crisis of credibility. At home, he faced accusations of mismanagement from his rivals at court. Critics of his policy were strengthened by reports that English merchants at Agadir had aided fleeing rebels after the defeat of Mawlay Muḥammad b. Ismāʿīl, the sultan's son who had revolted against him.Footnote 82 The sultan's growing frustration with the English by 1706 was evident in a letter to parliament and the Admiralty, reproaching them for negotiating with the Spanish at Ceuta: what was the benefit, he enquired pointedly, of an ally who supported one's enemieṣFootnote 83 Al-Ḥamāmī was also under a heavy cloud of English suspicion, with even less prospect of securing from them the arms, money, cloth, or treaty necessary to restore his position. He attempted to alleviate these suspicions by writing to Anne, Methuen, and Sir Cloudesley Shovell, admiral of the English fleet then in the Mediterranean. All his letters drew attention to his previous efforts in favour of the English, emphasizing his most recent service by rescuing the enslaved seamen, and lamenting Bin ʿAisha's ‘premeditated revenge and Mallicious designe … so perfidiously that he might destroy the good correspondence betwixt us.’Footnote 84 At the same time, he urged strongly that Qardanash be quickly returned to Morocco in time for the feast of ʿĪd al-Kabīr (in 1118 ah=15 March 1707), when the sultan's tribute was normally delivered. He could not, al-Ḥamāmī explained, go to court to resolve the agitations against him except with the ambassador and the goods he was supposed to bring.Footnote 85
Al-Ḥamāmī's frustrations are clearest in his letters to Qardanash himself, especially a long, somewhat rambling letter dated 22 Jumādā II 1118 (=30 September 1706):
[W]hat dangers and hazards have I undergone and my whole family for to mentain a good Correspondency with the Queen and for the Interest of England against those that are their and our Ennemies as well Forreign as domestic … Our own cause hath been neglected either through your negligence or want of skill in which I now suffer in not haveing wherwithall to make my face shine before my Master and to blind the eyes of my Ennemies who I cannot choose but praise for haveing acted so well their part by makeing all my reports as Frivolous and of no effect so that I begin to think them in the right and me in the wrong … [We] sent for the Locks [i.e. gunlocks] to Gibraltar but could not hear of them, nor find the least sign of their being there nor where they were, upon which we became Lyars to our Master, of which His Majesty had never known us guilty before … [S]o my repute may be retrieved with my great Lord under God, it will behove that great Nation and the Glory of the Great Queen of it, to rectifie what is amiss, and establish us; for we tooke all the faults on ourselves, not letting him know where the neglects lay, which if not remedied will render us uncapable of doeing good to my Master, them or any man.Footnote 86
Here, unconstrained by diplomatic niceties, we can see the full extent of al-Ḥamāmī's frustration and even desperation. It seems not much of an exaggeration to have said, as did one of al-Hamāmī's secretaries in another letter to Qardanash, that ‘the Alcaids being in so great streights for want of Necessarys was (in a manner) turnd aside from reason’.Footnote 87
Al-Ḥamāmī's attempts to retrieve the situation were partially successfully. With the reluctant assistance of Shovell – initially unconvinced by the governor's protestations of innocence in the seizure of the English ships – Jacob Cansino, a Jewish Tetuani merchant, and two of the governor's secretaries were allowed to buy some fine cloth at Lisbon for the sultan's present. By promising the immediate delivery of the English captives rescued from Meknes, al-Ḥamāmī also induced Shovell to order the dispatch from Gibraltar of some of the gunlocks.Footnote 88 These two measures secured a good reception from the sultan at Meknes, and reaffirmed al-Ḥamāmī's influence against the renewed attacks of Bin ʿAisha's faction.Footnote 89 The governor remained, however, an anxious man, unwilling to reveal to the sultan the reality of the problems plaguing his dealings with the English, particularly the fact that some of the weapons and ammunition promised were yet to be received.Footnote 90 He blamed the delay on the poor sailing conditions of the season: ‘tis not convenient for me to tell [the sultan] otherwise, not to give our Enemys cause of rejoicing, I say our Enemys because they are as much to the English Nation as mine’.Footnote 91 Although his visit to court had solved matters temporarily, the long absence of Qardanash was itself now fuel to the fire of the governor's enemies' insinuations of mismanagement or even collusion with the English. Rumours began to circulate that Qardanash had married in England, even that he had ‘turned Christian’. Others said the English detained him because of the ships taken by Bin ʿAisha, or that he had fallen into heavy debt.Footnote 92
With the benefit of hindsight, the delays and frustrations that attended Qardanash's embassy and al-Ḥamāmī's efforts in general seem a considerable misjudgement by the English. Just when they had seized one of the keys to the Mediterranean in Gibraltar, they risked losing the most obvious means of securely supplying it. The importance of supplies from Tetuan and Tangier was demonstrated almost immediately during the first Franco-Spanish siege of the town.Footnote 93 Consequently the garrison was in no small measure dependent on what one officer called ‘the capricious humour of the Alcaide’, whom the government in London were alienating so rapidly.Footnote 94 Besides the economic benefits of securing a permanent peace with the last North African state whose corsairs still posed any realistic threat to the rise of their shipping in the Mediterranean, the English were also being offered the opportunity to consolidate the erosion of French influence in Morocco. This fitted exactly with England's general strategy during the War of Spanish Succession, which was to encircle France and deny it the aid or resources of any other country.Footnote 95
However, from a contemporary point of view, the actions of the English are more understandable, if no less frustrating for the Moroccans. It was precisely the demands of England's international strategy that probably blinded the ministry in London to the potential of their negotiations with al-Ḥamāmī. The construction of the Grand Alliance involved the country in an extensive and complex web of diplomatic interests that was becoming increasingly difficult to sustain as the war against the Bourbons went on. As Hattendorf argued, England ‘like others saw herself as the center of things, and she showed difficulty in fully appreciating the viewpoint, the needs, the ambitions, and the threats which her allies felt’.Footnote 96 In this, Morocco was little different from any of the other states the English were trying to cajole into supporting their massive war effort, except to the extent that it was probably less important in the overall scheme of things than many. The effort the English were prepared to expend on keeping Gibraltar was also still unclear so soon after its capture. Despite the town's obvious strategic advantages and its later importance, its value remained an open question for some time.Footnote 97 The complexity of these factors was compounded by the disruption of the appointment of a new secretary of state for the Southern Department in December 1705, the earl of Sunderland, only a few months before Qardanash's arrival.
The delays were also caused by the nature of diplomacy in the early eighteenth century. Although Morocco, and the North African states in general, shared a language of diplomatic norms with Europe to a greater extent than many other extra-European states, there remained obstacles.Footnote 98 The most obvious is the relatively limited and uncertain methods of communication between an ambassador and his masters. Qardanash's efforts were certainly hampered, for example, by the fact that two messengers sent separately from Morocco with instructions and money were captured at sea and imprisoned by the French.Footnote 99 Thus ambassadors were often instructed, or themselves preferred, not in fact to negotiate but only to present the terms desired by their own government, before then agreeing to convey his hosts' response home. This could make the diplomatic process at times inflexible. Before leaving Morocco, for example, Methuen gave al-Ḥamāmī the terms of the proposed treaty in writing and told him that another ambassador would be sent whenever he signalled his agreement to them. Methuen then reported to the secretary of state that ‘the Treaty may easily be concluded whensoever they shall think it fitting to comply with Her Majesties just demands’.Footnote 100 The absence of reliable, timely communications exacerbated the lack of clarity often attending an ambassador's authority to make agreements. At a time when few permanent ambassadors were maintained at all, and none by a Muslim country in Europe or vice versa, a diplomat's credibility rested as much on his perceived social standing as on political considerations, although such a perception did not necessarily reflect his actual authority. The English apparently regarded Qardanash as unlikely to secure ratification of any agreement, although in reality he had the strong backing of one of the most powerful men in Morocco.Footnote 101 Conversely, Aḥmad b. Haddū had cut quite a dash at court in 1682, but the treaty he agreed was never ratified.Footnote 102 To a certain extent, cultivating a good impression depended on the money to present oneself creditably, but ambassadors' ad hoc status also made this difficult, particularly when they were sometimes dependent on the hospitality of a foreign power. Both English and Moroccan diplomats suffered in this regard. Jones, for example, was forced to make repeated requests for the expenses of his trips to Morocco and of arranging the accommodation of Moroccan envoys. These payments were delayed in some cases by more than four years, and the interpreter was forced to go into hiding from his creditors at one point, leaving his wife in desperation to appeal to Sunderland for payment.Footnote 103 Qardanash's funds were reduced by the high cost of storing the goods he had brought to sell and the low price he could get for them.Footnote 104 He subsequently spent a lot of effort managing his domestic affairs and trying to secure enough money from the English for his party's living expenses during their unexpectedly long stay.Footnote 105
The result of all these factors in combination was further delays to Qardanash's mission. His requests for help to recover the money and goods lost upon the capture of the second messenger sent to him were unsuccessful. Although his property was known to be at Amsterdam, no one was sent to recover it before his departure more than a year later.Footnote 106 Nor did the English exert any particular effort to help the captured messenger, who subsequently served as a French galley slave for two years, despite the fact he was known to have facilitated the transport of provisions to Gibraltar during the siege of 1704–5.Footnote 107 It was fifteen months after al-Ḥamāmī's explicit request for Qardanash's return that the ambassador finally embarked, despite his own many requests in the meantime.Footnote 108 Although these frustrations were not an intentional slight, they amounted to a serious misreading by the English of the Moroccans' position and temperament.
The immediate victim of this misjudgement was Delaval, dispatched to Morocco again in May 1707.Footnote 109 Qardanash, expecting to leave shortly himself, arranged a rendezvous at Gibraltar. Jones, at least, was aware that arriving without the long-awaited ambassador might not be wise, but Delaval was more sanguine.Footnote 110 Not finding Qardanash at Gibraltar on his arrival in September, he went straight on to Tetuan, thinking he ‘had a good occasion to wait on my (as I then thought) old freind Alkayd Aly Ben Abdillah’.Footnote 111 He was shocked, therefore, to find his blithe optimism quite unmerited, and his reception far from warm. Al-Ḥamāmī demanded to know where Qardanash was, refusing to allow Delaval to leave until he returned. The governor, Delaval reported, ‘has been under great deficultys with the Emperor on this score … [He] is quite out of Patience and told me plainly I must stay til they knew sum Sertainty of him.’Footnote 112 When Qardanash finally reached Gibraltar in May 1708, the English refused to let him proceed until Delaval was released. Relations between the two sides reached a new low in a stand off of more than two months before the ambassadors were exchanged.Footnote 113
Delaval's experience shows how, despite some shared cultural assumptions about diplomatic exchange, and even allowing for the other factors inhibiting smooth communication, the English and Moroccans failed to comprehend the reality of the other's expectations and capacities. With the exceptions of Nash and – to some extent – Jones, the English consistently misjudged events and the Moroccans' actions. Delaval, for example, exhibited a strange mixture of self-pity and complacency when he complained that his detention was:
the more greivous to me because I am not conscious to my self to have ever done the least thing to deserve it … and on the weakest pretence could ever be imagined, viz that because the Ambassador stay'd longer in Britain than they expected or desired, where the Great Honors Her Majesty had shewn him, and the most noble allowance She had been pleas'd so generously to bestow upon him had inclin'd him to continue.Footnote 114
He showed no grasp of the dynamics of the Moroccans' position, or of his own role in several years of frustrations that had driven al-Ḥamāmī to take more desperate measures. Most of Delaval's countrymen similarly interpreted Moroccan actions not within the context of Morocco's own political system and of an ongoing relationship for which the English themselves had some responsibility, but rather as signs of the Moroccans' greed, malice, ignorance of the outside world, fanaticism, treachery, and so on. Thus, al-Ḥamāmī's desire for the goods to make up his present for the sultan was seen merely as personal greed, rather than a duty integral to his position within the Moroccan political system.Footnote 115 For his part, al-Ḥamāmī had staked too much on English friendship without realizing the complexity of their situation and the limits of their potential relationship.
VI
Qardanash came under a cloud of suspicion on his return. A Turkish merchant, who had also been in London, denounced him to the sultan for embezzling money owed to him there, and for committing ‘unnatural crimes’. Qardanash soon found himself in prison, beyond the protection of his patron al-Ḥamāmī, who had to write to England requesting letters to refute the claims.Footnote 116 Like Moroccans before and after him, Qardanash faced the suspicions created by Europe's ambivalent position in his countrymen's perceptions.Footnote 117 Luckily, he escaped further punishment, although how is unclear, and later resumed his position as a go-between with the English.Footnote 118
As for al-Ḥamāmī himself, his credibility was damaged by his perceived failures. Although strong enough to withstand it domestically, his influence as the de facto foreign minister of the country was eroded. Informed of the displeasure of the English about Delaval's detention, the sultan disassociated himself from his governor's actions in the whole affair.Footnote 119 He shifted responsibility away from al-Ḥamāmī by relying more on Etienne Pillet, a French Protestant resident at Salé, to manage affairs with the Europeans.Footnote 120
In the following years, relations between the two countries continued to drift inconclusively. More Moroccan ambassadors were sent to England – now by the sultan directly – and spent similarly long, unproductive periods there, which was a continued source of irritation and bemusement to Mawlāy Ismāʿīl and his officials.Footnote 121 As Jones complained to the secretary of state in 1710:
If no consideration of a present or future benefit may be made by keeping a good Correspondence (so frequently declared in Her Majestys Letters to Muly Ismael that she will cultivate) in the Name of God, give them an answer, and tell them plainly you will have nothing to do with them, or else use them as creatures you would either make Freinds or ennemys.Footnote 122
A treaty was agreed in 1714, but this quickly broke down when each side accused the other of failing to fulfil their obligations.
However, changing circumstances on both sides gradually encouraged the resolution of these disagreements. France had withdrawn its consuls from Tetuan and Salé in 1710 and 1712, and by 1718 both France and Spain had severed formal relations with Morocco, leaving Britain as Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's only realistic European ally.Footnote 123 With the end of the War of Spanish Succession and the treaty of Utrecht in 1713, Britain could devote more attention to the question of consolidating its new ascendancy in the western Mediterranean. The problem of supplying Gibraltar, now confirmed as a British possession, and also of maintaining the position of the country's shipping, became higher priorities. Jones estimated, for example, that war with Morocco risked £100,000 lost trade a year, and a rise in Moroccan corsair activity in 1715–16 concentrated the government's mind on this problem.Footnote 124 The British tried to enforce a settlement on Morocco as they had on the North African regencies, imposing a naval blockade on Morocco in 1716–18, expelling Moroccan merchants from Gibraltar and threatening to sell Moroccan captives in the garrison as slaves.Footnote 125 Mawlāy Ismāʿīl, however, evidently remained as confident of his ability to ignore British pressure on his coasts as he had that of the French. Necessity forced the British to swallow their pride. Admiral Byng in the Mediterranean was ordered in 1718 to renew negotiations, but ‘rather to make no mention of the injuries we have received, than to hazard the success of the Treaty which you are principally to regard’. A series of large gifts in money and arms subsequently smoothed the path to an eventual treaty in 1721, more than two decades after talks on the subject began.Footnote 126
For more than half a century afterwards, Britain enjoyed almost unrivalled influence in Morocco.Footnote 127 However, the fundamental dynamics of Morocco's relations with Britain, as with Europe generally, had not changed. The maintenance of British influence during this period depended to no small extent on the weakness of the Moroccan state, which fell into three decades of civil war after Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's death in 1727. This promoted relationships between rivals for power in Morocco and external powers similar to those that had developed in the early and middle seventeenth century. Aḥmad b. ʿAlī al-Ḥamāmī, the governor's son and successor, for example, had partially retrieved the position of his family and office after his father's death, jointly negotiating the 1721 treaty at Tetuan with Mūsā b. Aṭṭar, the sultan's Jewish minister, whose presence was a reminder of royal control.Footnote 128 After Mawlāy Ismāʿīl's death, Aḥmad extended his power, ruling the Gharb practically independently in the 1730s and early 1740s, cultivating links with the British at Gibraltar for the sake of trade and weapons.
However, when Sultan Sīdī Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh (r. 1757–90) restored stability, he was able to control foreign trade more closely in part by restricting it to the new port of Essouira (Mogador). This institutionalized in a new form Morocco's traditional advantage in resisting European influence, which was the ability to marginalize its effect on the main power structures of the country. Trade with Europe and access to European weapons remained important, but a strong Moroccan state could control the nature of European influence in the country to a much greater extent than, for example, the North African regencies. In 1787, one Moroccan official could still echo the earlier confidence of Mawlāy Ismāʿīl when he assured the British consul that
you can't do without our Provisions for Gibraltar and in a War with Moors have something to loose and nothing to gain; we have no places of Islands for you to take, and no Commerce to molest, and if we keep two Gallies in the Harbour, you must be at the Expense of a Fleet on the Coast to watch them.Footnote 129
Whether the ‘good correspondence’ offered by al-Ḥamāmī would have allowed the British to bypass these limits is a moot point. It was not until the Anglo-Moroccan treaty of 1856 that the country's insulation was really overcome, by which time Britain's global power was something the Moroccans could neither ignore nor control.
