Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662-1712: Merchants, Consuls, and Cultural Exchange

From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook their businesses, from trading to captivity redemption to international politics. Moving beyond official diplomatic records and printed texts, this book delves into thousands of personal letters and financial records, where we find friendship, conflict, adoration, derision, manipulation, and scandal across cultures and countries.In so doing, it offers new ways of thinking about British-Maghrebi relations in a transitional age for global trade and military-naval power, moving beyond plaintive consular complaints, gunboat diplomacy, and brutal captivity to accommodate positive cooperation and mutual benefit.These expatriates became embedded mediators, hybridised European and Ottoman cultural forms, a