The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  IV

  The sense that a single community of inhabitants of the harbours, coasts and islands of the Mediterranean existed is reinforced by the evidence for the use of a common tongue, the so-called lingua franca or ‘Frankish speech’.55 Languages that enabled people from the different shores to communicate go back to very ancient times, when Punic, Greek and eventually Low Latin were deployed across wide swathes of the Mediterranean.56 Many must have communicated in rough pidgins that owed as much to gesticulation as to sound. Among the Sephardic Jews, Judaeo-Spanish was spoken widely enough, from the Levant to Morocco, to enable easy communication between merchants, pilgrims and other travellers, and came to be adopted even by the Greek-speaking Romaniote Jews. While speakers of romance languages generally had no great difficulty communicating (as anyone who has been present at a meeting in Spain attended by Italian-speakers can testify), there were much higher barriers between Latin-based languages and the Arabic or Turkish of the Muslim lands. In the early modern period the Turks made use of a large nautical vocabulary derived from Italian and Greek, which says something about the sources from which they copied their ships and equipment.57 The need for sailors and merchants to communicate was matched by the wish of slave-owners to be able to give orders to their captives, and the bagni, or slave quarters, were also places where Turks or Europeans, as the case may be, barked commands in this strange mixture of tongues, the core of which was, however, generally a combination of Italian and Spanish. Tunisian lingua franca was closer to Italian, while the lingua franca of Algiers was closer to Spanish; both proximity and politics determined their different character.58 Of an eighteenth-century pasha of Algiers it was asserted that ‘he understood and spoke lingua franca, but he considered it beneath his dignity to use it with free Christians’. It was commonly used by renegade corsairs, who sometimes found it difficult to acquire fluent Turkish and Arabic. Words in lingua franca underwent etymological shifts, so that among the Turks the Italian-derived forti meant not ‘strongly’ but ‘gently’, and todo mangiado meant not just ‘all eaten’ but, more generally, ‘disappeared’.59 It would be a mistake to think of lingua franca as a language with formal rules and an agreed vocabulary; indeed, it was its fluidity and changeability that expressed most clearly the shifting identities of the people of the early modern Mediterranean.

  7

  Encouragement to Others,

  1650–1780

  I

  In the course of the seventeenth century the character of the relationship between the European states changed dramatically, with important repercussions in the Mediterranean. Until the end of the Thirty Years’ War in 1648, Catholic confronted Protestant, and confessional identity was an issue of surpassing significance for the competing powers in Europe. After 1648, a greater degree of political realism, or cynical calculation, began to intrude. Within a few years, it was possible for the English arch-Protestant Oliver Cromwell to cooperate with the Spanish king, while English suspicion of the Dutch led to conflict in the North Sea. The character of English involvement in the Mediterranean changed: royal fleets began to intervene and the English (after union with Scotland in 1707, the British) sought out permanent bases in the western Mediterranean: first Tangier, then Gibraltar, Minorca and, in 1800, Malta. The period from 1648 to the Napoleonic Wars was marked, therefore, by frequent about-turns as the English switched from Spanish to French alliances, and as the whole question of the Spanish royal succession divided Europe and opened up the prospect of spoils from a declining Spanish empire in the Mediterranean. While Spain’s difficulties were obvious, it was less clear that the Ottomans had passed their peak: the Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 was unsuccessful, but in the Mediterranean Turkish galleys still posed a serious threat, and their Barbary allies could be relied upon to give support when naval conflict broke out.

  Even so, the Venetians managed to gain control of the Morea or Peloponnese for several years, and, interestingly, it was they who were the aggressors. Bolder than they had been for some time, the Venetians ambitiously aimed to crack Turkish power in the regions closest to their navigation routes. In 1685 and 1686 they captured and demolished a number of Turkish fortresses on either side of the Morea, culminating in the capture of Nafplion on 30 August 1686. This was only the prelude to an attempt to clean up the Dalmatian coast, starting with the Turkish base at Herceg Novi, which they captured in September 1687. The Ottomans came to terms in 1698, recognizing Venetian control of both Dalmatia and the Morea. This did not produce lasting peace, for Venice lost most of the Morea by July 1718, when its fleet confronted a large Turkish navy off western Greece, at Cape Matapan. Both sides suffered serious damage, but the Turks realized they could never gain the upper hand and withdrew. A new treaty ensured half a century of peace with the Ottomans, and this was something Venice needed, at a time when its power and influence were fading. The major issue for Venice was no longer the protection of the Levant trade, in which non-Mediterranean rivals now played so significant a role; rather, it was the protection of the republic’s dominions in Dalmatia. But the Serenissima Repubblica had shown it was not a spent force, while the Turks had to fight for every inch of land.1

  II

  During the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, events far to the west also had repercussions in the Mediterranean, setting off conflicts between the English and the Spaniards, and, later, between the British and the French. In 1655, the English capture of Jamaica, occupied by Spain in the aftermath of Columbus’s voyages, turned Spanish friendship towards the Lord Protector of the Commonwealth into Spanish fury at his support for an action that threatened the security of the treasure fleets. As the war clouds gathered, English ships sailed down to Cádiz to spy out King Philip IV’s navy. There were two worries: that the Spanish king would try to relieve Jamaica with a massive fleet, and that access to the Mediterranean for English merchant shipping would be cut off by Spanish aggression. If it could be established, an English base at the mouth of the Mediterranean would have any number of strategic advantages. Cromwell’s spy, Montague, reported that the obvious prize was Gibraltar, but it was very strongly fortified. Maybe, then, it made more sense to look at the Barbary coast instead. He opined that, with the help of ‘a dozen or 15 sail of nimble frigates’ and a fort, the Straits could be held open for English trade. Possible candidates for dispossession were Ceuta, which the Spaniards now controlled, and Tangier, which was a Portuguese command post. Cromwell remained fond of the idea of taking Gibraltar, and Samuel Pepys, later secretary of the navy, insisted that he send a ship to the Straits loaded with wheelbarrows and spades, the aim being to cut across the isthmus linking the rock of Gibraltar to the mainland; but the ship was captured.2

  Even after the monarchy was restored in England under Charles II, the idea of planting the English flag at the entrance to the Mediterranean was not forgotten. The perfect opportunity arose almost immediately, in 1661, with a renewal of the ancient alliance between England and Portugal, once again independent of Spain, which not merely brought Catherine of Braganza to England as Charles’s long-suffering queen, but, in her dowry, offered England Bombay and Tangier. A base was thus acquired without a shot being fired, though the Portuguese governor was peeved by the order to hand over Tangier, and believed that by doing so he would dishonour his distant ancestors, who had held the city since 1471.3 Foreign observers were also dismayed. King Louis XIV wrote to the French ambassador in London, complaining that the English were trying to gain control of the Straits of Gibraltar – they might attempt, he thought, to levy taxes on vessels passing through the Straits, just as the Danes did at the entrance to the Baltic.4

  For their part, the English were disappointed by the run-down appearance of the town, and were worried about securing an adequate water supply: ‘no water but Fountain Fort at this time, which the Moors if they knew and would, might prevent us of’, as Samuel Pepys reported.5 They had wrongly imagined that this would be a bright new jewel in Charles II’s crown. The town
was virtually empty of people and needed to be repopulated. One idea, used centuries earlier when the Portuguese captured nearby Ceuta, was to transport criminals there; another more bizarre idea was to dump one third of the population of Scotland there. It was assumed that its acquisition would foster trade with both Atlantic Morocco and the Barbary states within the Mediterranean.6 If this were to be achieved, it was vital to develop a good rapport with the ruler of the area beyond the city walls. This was Abdallah Ghaylan, whom the English called Gayland; his authority embraced four Arab tribes in the plains and eighteen Berber tribes in the hills. He is said to have been plump, sly, lustful, ‘careful and intemperate: a contradiction in nature’.7 He oscillated between friendship, or at least promises of friendship, and hostility; for instance, he rejected a request by the English to collect wood for fuel in the outskirts of Tangier. His pusillanimous attitude won him plenty of concessions from the English governor, who did not want to risk the safety of the new colony before it had even been properly established. Eventually his demands became too outrageous (he required fifty barrels of gunpowder and the use of English ships), and before long the Moroccan troops were engaged in cattle-rustling and in skirmishes with English soldiers: more than 600 English troops were killed in these engagements, including the governor, Lord Teviot, before the wind shifted and Ghaylan made friends with the English once again.8

  English Tangier developed into a lively port city. The empty spaces found by its first governor were soon filled with people of the most varied origins: alongside the garrison of 1,200 to 2,000 men, there were about 600 civilian inhabitants, including at various times Dutch merchants, Portuguese friars, Muslim slaves, and European and North African Jews. The Jews were suspect because of their contact with the Muslims, with whom they traded actively. Samuel Pepys recorded the story of ‘a poor Jew and his wife that came out of Spain to avoid the Inquisition’; the commander-in-chief of the English garrison showed no sympathy, ‘swearing, “God damn him, he should be burned!”, and they were carried into the Inquisition and burned’.9 Other visitors were made more welcome. Pepys described the arrival of Turkish or Armenian merchants from as far away as Smyrna, who laid their goods on the sand ‘to be by them carried into Fez for sale’.10 Merchants in search of a safe haven could take encouragement from the impressive new fortifications that surrounded the city; the mole was also impressive, though Christopher Wren had refused an invitation to design it.11

  Opinions in England about the usefulness of Tangier varied, but when Lord Belasyse arrived as Teviot’s successor in 1665 he insisted on the town’s virtues:

  His Majesty would have a greater esteeme off it than any other off his dominions weare he heare to see the prospects off the Streights upon Spaine, the shipps that pass, the frutefull mountaynes off Affrique, the fragrent perfumes off flowers, rare frutes and salads, excellent ayre, meates and wines which this place most seemingly affords, or shall doe.12

  This was optimistic. War with the Dutch loomed; the Dutch were trying to put together a Mediterranean fleet, and the English riposted by strengthening their political and commercial bonds with Tunis and Tripoli. Then the Dutch destroyed the flotilla bringing desperately needed supplies to Tangier, and a few months later, in early 1666, Louis XIV decided to support Calvinist Holland against the English. His chief minister, Colbert, who was working hard to promote French trade and manufacture, sent ships against the English in the Mediterranean. But English ‘Tangerine’ pirates proved remarkably successful against the French and the Dutch, and brought the ships they captured and their cargoes to Tangier, where they were put up for sale.13 The colony showed itself to be quite resilient. In many respects, its most serious problem lay in London, not around the Straits of Gibraltar. The cost of the Tangier enterprise was a source of constant worry to a court engaged in conflicts on several fronts. So long as Tangier contributed to the war with the Dutch, the English presence there made sense. It was also apparent that Tangier was an effective base for cooperation with the Barbary rulers, notably in Algiers, or for operations against Barbary corsairs who did not respect treaties with England. But not everyone was convinced that England required a base at the gates of the Mediterranean, especially when Ghaylan was such an unpredictable neighbour, forcing the Tangier garrison to consume resources in armaments and manpower that England needed to employ elsewhere.

  It was these considerations that led Charles II to rethink his policy in 1683. By now he was financially dependent on his erstwhile enemy Louis XIV, who had long been hostile to the English colony, and he simply could not afford further campaigns against the Moroccans. Charles II decided to pay for the Tangier garrison out of his own resources, costing him up to £70,000 each year, and £1,600,000 in all, but he knew he could not maintain this indefinitely.14 Ideas were mooted of returning the town to the Portuguese (who, along with many English merchants, insisted on its value in the struggle against piracy) or of handing it over to Charles’s new French allies (whose fleet was growing dangerously large – 276 ships in 1683). But in the end the last governor, Lord Dartmouth, was sent out in 1683 with explicit instructions to level the town and destroy the mole. So, in 1684, the English finally evacuated Tangier, leaving behind a pile of ruins.15 What survived was the aspiration to hold the Straits of Gibraltar. Charles II had abandoned Tangier with real regret, and only twenty years passed before England acquired the Mediterranean town over which the British flag still flies.

  III

  The acquisition of Gibraltar was not, however, a carefully planned attempt to make real the idea of an English base at the entrance to the Mediterranean. It was an acquisition made ‘in a fit of absence of mind’, to cite again Sir John Seeley’s famous phrase. By the 1690s it was obvious that a succession crisis would tear Spain apart. The last of the Spanish Habsburgs, Charles II (who died in 1700), had no heir and was regarded as an idiot; inbreeding among the Habsburgs had done their health no good over the last two centuries. His will nominated Philip de Bourbon, duke of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV, as his heir; not surprisingly, France’s neighbours considered that the inheritance by a French prince of the vast Spanish empire in Europe, the Mediterranean and the Americas would have disastrous consequences, turning France into a world power even greater than Spain had been at the height of its influence. The alternative appeared to be the preservation of the Habsburg line in Spain, by placing a member of the Austrian branch on the Spanish throne. Since the English king was now a Dutchman, William of Orange, Dutch and English interests converged, though the English insisted, as the Dutch might equally have done, that they ‘were moved by no other interest than that of their commerce and navigation’; were a French prince to become Spanish king ‘the Mediterranean trade would be absolutely lost whenever a French king might think proper, since he would be master of the Straits and of all the countries and ports of the sea, assisted or supported by France’.16 King William went further, arguing:

  With regard to the Mediterranean trade, it will be requisite to have the ports on the coast of Barbary; for example Ceuta or Oran, as well as some ports on the coast of Spain, as Mahón, in the island of Minorca which is said to be a very good port; perhaps we ought to have the whole island to be more sure of the port.

  But Louis XIV was adamant that Spanish territories such as Ceuta, Oran and Minorca must not be occupied by England, which had no claims upon the Spanish inheritance. Minorca was not, to be sure, part of the Iberian peninsula, but ‘it would render them masters of all the commerce of the Mediterranean and would absolutely exclude all other nations’ apart from Holland. English or Dutch possession of Mahón would undermine the standing of Toulon as command base of the French navy, which was all the more serious an issue since Colbert was now dead and the French navy was less energetically managed.17

  The English saw the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14), between the Bourbon Philip of Anjou and the Austrian Habsburg Charles III, as an opportunity to take advantage of the crisis in Spain: there were Caribbean isl
ands open to conquest and treasure ships ripe for capture. The English wondered whether to attack Cádiz or Gibraltar, but the motive was interference with Spain’s Atlantic communications no less than the much vaunted protection of English trade in the Mediterranean. Cádiz was a bigger and wealthier town; Gibraltar was a very small one but its strategic position was more tempting.18 In July 1704, a War Council held aboard the flagship of the English admiral Rooke decided that an army under the command of Prince George of Darmstadt-Hesse should assault Gibraltar. The aim was ‘to reduce it to the king of Spaines obedience’, not to conquer Gibraltar for England.19 Of course, only one king of Spain was meant, the Austrian claimant. The inhabitants of Gibraltar were invited in a grandiose royal letter to accept Charles III as their king, but they very politely but equally obstinately insisted that they were the ‘faithful and loyal subjects of King Philip V’, the French claimant, before wishing George of Hesse long life. Gibraltar was splendidly defended by its lines of walls and by good-quality guns, but what the defenders lacked, and the invaders possessed, was manpower. After the attackers trapped the women and children of the town at their point of refuge, the shrine of Our Lady of Europa on the southern tip of the rock, the city council and the military governor concurred that it was ‘more pleasing to His Majesty that they should seek such terms and surrender than that they should hold out to no purpose, and occasion severe loss to the city and his vassals’.20 By ‘His Majesty’ they meant, once again, Philip and not Charles. So Gibraltar surrendered, and was offered guarantees: the conquerors would not impose Protestantism – after all, they had seized it on behalf of a Catholic king. The local population decamped to San Roque a little way inland, a town that still regards itself as the home of the original Gibraltarians.21