Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689 Michèle Longino (bio) Nabil Matar, Britain and Barbary, 1589–1689. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2005. 241 pp. $59.95 (cloth). With this masterful volume, Nabil Matar concludes a brilliant trilogy focused on the English–Islamic connection in the second half of the sixteenth century continuing through the better part of the seventeenth century. The imbalance suggested above by the juxtaposition of the incommensurate terms 'English' and 'Islamic,' pitting nationhood against religion, flags a symptom of the tensions and debates that characterize relations and representations of the Muslim and the Briton in this period. Matar's two earlier equally admirable books, Islam in Britain: 1558–1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (Columbia University Press, 1999), lay the groundwork for this final one, and together the three volumes clearly establish Matar as the foremost authority on the subject. Britain and Barbary is organized in five chapters that weave together the representation of the Barbary states in British novels, writings, formal documents and on the stage, and provide a detailed and engaging picture of the context of these writings, the contact story. In addition, ever attentive to his sources, Matar includes three eloquent documents as appendices following the conclusion. The first chapter examines the representation of the Moor on the Elizabethan stage, with attention to Shakespeare's Othello and The Merchant of Venice, but also to Heywood's Fair Maid of the West Part I, and explaining the state of relations and degree of contact between England and Barbary that would explain interest for the topics of these plays. The second chapter analyzes the imperialist initiatives of the English in and around the Mediterranean basin following the defeat of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto [End Page 107] in 1571, resulting in the establishment of the East Levant / Turkey Trading Company and the Barbary Company, a greater British presence in these parts, and, as a consequence, an increasing frequency of pirate attacks and captive-taking. British knowledge of the region and its people increased as the captives (frequently enslaved and held for long spells when not for life) provided written accounts of daily life in North Africa. Unsuccessful demands on the King to provide ransom money exposed his reluctance to intervene and free his subjects. The consequent discontent of the seagoing British and their families played into the civil strife that was fomenting in those same years. An important outcome of the Barbary challenge would be the commitment to build up the British Navy in order to protect the merchants, and thus Britain would become an important maritime power, better equipped to protect the merchant fleets. Matar's brilliant third chapter convincingly demonstrates that British women acquired political agency as a consequence of their men's captivity and the women's need to fend for their families in the absence of male providers. They dared to assume public roles, petitioned and persisted, not simply at the parish level, but at the parliament level, and with letters to the King himself. Thus an important consequence of Moorish captivity was to destabilize domestic politics and the patriarchal order. In addition, class order was challenged by the experience of some British women who found themselves captives in Barbary, only to discover they were treated with more consideration there than at home. They rose in status, esteem, and wealth by virtue of their exotic Britishness. This too, if more paradoxically, led to a sense of greater agency for women, and to a questioning of the traditional ways of British society. In the meanwhile, the Britons were content to hand over their women passengers, indentured servants, and the like, when threatened, and to trust that their women would pave the way for smoother trading relations with the Barbary people. Certainly not all British women who found themselves captive would end up sultanas, but there remains little written trace of those more common and certainly more painful experiences. Matar concludes that Barbary–British relations had an important effect on British women's lives, at home and abroad, and transformed their way of seeing themselves and the world. Matar's fourth chapter discusses...