North Africa

Nation, State, and Region

George Joffé

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317304500
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

North Africa differs from the Middle East in several significant ways. It was subject to a uniform colonial experience as part of the French empire; its populations are far more culturally homogeneous than those of the Middle East; and, since the Reconquista, it has always been far more susceptible to European influences than has the Middle East. It has thus had a far better basis for regional integration and for effective state formation than has the Middle East itself.

In the post-Cold War world, North Africa took on a new significance for Europe as issues of migration and regional trade began to dominate the European agenda. This book, first published in 1993, endeavours to investigate the background to the political developments of modern North Africa. It not only looks at the pre-colonial past but also investigates the effect of the colonial period itself on the regional dimension in view of the creation of the UMA, a confederal regional organisation, in early 1989. The contributors to this volume are all people with long experience of the North African political and historical scene.

Part I

The pre-colonial period

1 Corsairing in the economy and politics of North Africa

Jerome Bookin-Weiner

Corsair raiding by the so-called ‘Barbary pirates’ in the early modern period has long been the subject of romantic tales, popular fiction, and popular history. Blood-curdling tales of rape, pillage and slavery by the ‘Mussulmans’ of North Africa were standard fare in Europe and North America from the sixteenth century right up to our own day. In the late nineteenth century first-hand and fictionalised tales of woe gave way to popular histories, and even today one finds accounts of the ‘Barbary pirates’ on remainder lists. The overall impression created by this body of literature has created the popular view that North African history from the sixteenth century through the Napoleonic era is primarily, if not exclusively, that of the corsairs. Moreover, the popular histories lead their readers to the conclusion that the corsairs dominated the politics and economic life in North Africa during that period.

In this chapter we shall examine these issues with special reference to the situation in Morocco, particularly during the period of greatest corsair activity there; the middle years of the seventeenth century. Relations between the corsairs and the economic and political life of the hinterland will be considered, as will comparative examples from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.

Corsair raiding from Moroccan ports, specifically out of Rabat-Salé, was a product of a conjuncture of circumstances in the second quarter of the seventeenth century. The meeting of Mediterranean corsairs, European pirates, and a group of people expelled from their homeland and unable to gain acceptance from their new neighbours, combined with increasing naval traffic in the Atlantic to favour the corsairs and their activities. Yet, the decisive factors governing the scope and intensity of corsair activity were the corsairs’ relationship to other political forces in Morocco, the interrelationship of the various groups inhabiting Rabat-Salé, and the type and efficacy of European diplomacy and countermeasures. The corsairs’ periods of greatest activity coincided with the periods of their greatest independence from outside political forces and least internal strife in Rabat-Salé. Periods of decreased activity generally coincided with strong domination or discord in Rabat-Salé or followed forceful English, Dutch, or French diplomacy and countermeasures.

In this chapter we shall examine the relationship of Rabat-Salé with the Sa῾ādī dynasty and the regional and political-religious factions which affected developments there. The relations between the three groups inhabiting Rabat-Salé will be examined further, with special reference to their effect on corsair activity and Rabat-Salé’s relations with the Moroccan polity in general. Similarly, we shall look at the European interventions and their effect on internal relations in Rabat-Salé, the corsairs, and Rabat-Salé’s position in Morocco generally.

UNDER THE SA῾ADIS (TO 1626)

Under Mulay ῾Abd al-Malik and Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur a small corsair fleet existed in Rabat-Salé. European sources speak of seven or eight ships operating in that period. Presumably this official corsair fleet engaged in jihād against the Spanish. Financed and outfitted by the makhzan, they probably paid the sultan his Qur᾿ānic due of 20 per cent of the booty and slaves.¹

With the accession of England’s King James I in 1603, and his outlawing of piracy from English ports, the European freebooters of all nationalities who had sheltered on the English and Irish coasts collected along the Moroccan coast. Their activities flourished without interference because of Sa῾ādī preoccupation with the succession struggle following al-Mansur’s death. These pirates, animated by a hatred for Spain, knew no life other than privateering and harassing Spanish naval activity.²³ Unwilling to abandon the fight against Spain or to renounce piracy, they continued to capture Spanish ships and sell their cargoes in Moroccan ports. The pirates’ acts frequently prejudiced their governments’ relations with the Sa῾ādī’s makhzan and led to repeated requests to curb their activities.² In March 1606, Mulay Abu Faris warned the Dutch ambassador to Marrakesh that he must stop the Dutch from committing ‘acts of insolence in the harbours of the Moroccan coast which cause complaints from other nations,’³ presumably Spain, whom the Moroccans did not wish to offend. The Spanish meanwhile, apparently carried out raids – either privateering or on land – against Morocco. The galley rowers on a Spanish ship seized by the Dutch in 1604 were Moroccans whom the Dutch returned to the Sa῾ādīs when they sent an ambassador to Marrakesh in 1605.⁴

In the spring of 1607, the States General of the United Provinces of The Netherlands sent a fleet to chase the pirates from the Moroccan coast. They met no great success with the English pirates, and the States General complained to the English king in 1607 and sent another squadron to the Moroccan coast the following summer.⁵ The English themselves also tried to act against the English pirates. In June 1610, Samuel Cade was imprisoned at Southwark for piracy after he seized and looted the Suzan of Bristol in Safi harbour.⁶ Englishmen and Dutchmen constituted a majority of the European pirates along the Moroccan coast in the first decade and a half of the seventeenth century. The case of Samuel Cade, who seized an English ship, would appear to be a rare exception to the rule that the pirates spared the ships of their own nations. The Dutch pirates concentrated on Spanish and English ships and the English on Spanish and Dutch, while both also took French prizes.⁷ The English pirates headquartered at al-Ma῾mūra on the mouth of the Wadi Sabu. In 1610, John Harrison reported that twenty-two pirate ships arrived there at one time along with their prizes. The following year, Sir Ferdinando Gorges reported more than forty pirate ships with over 2,000 men. At the time Spain seized al-Ma῾mūra in 1614, the pirates’ leader was Henry Maynwaringe, who began his naval career in 1611 cruising against the pirates in the Bristol Channel under commission from the Lord Admiral. Two years later he became a pirate himself, operating out of al-Ma῾mūra for two years. His stated intention was to ‘carry on an indiscriminate warfare against the Spaniards’. Maynwaringe remained true to his native land, restricting his attacks to the ships of other nations. He even went so far as to restore booty proved to be taken from the English.⁸

On 8 August 1614, the Spanish seized al-Ma῾mūra while Maynwaringe and his cohorts were on a cruise which took them to Newfoundland.⁹ The Sa῾ādī makhzan was by now so weakened by more than a decade of succession struggle and so engrossed in its own struggle for survival that it was powerless to oppose either the pirates who sheltered at al-Ma῾mūra or Spain’s seizure of the port in 1614. Mulay Zaydan could only attempt to counter Spain’s designs by encouraging the Dutch to move in before the Spanish. Spain, in fact, seized al-Ma῾mūra only a few weeks before a projected joint Dutch-Moroccan action.¹⁰ At this point the Sa῾ādī makhzan had no navy of its own. One of Mulay Zaydan’s objectives in promoting friendly relations with the Dutch in 1610 was to secure the construction of several ships in The Netherlands and create a navy.¹¹ Although the States General permitted three ships to be built for Zaydan, the Spanish destroyed them before he could use them.¹² When Mulay Zaydan fled from Abu Mahalli to the coast in the spring of 1612 he still had no ships of his own and had to charter French and Dutch ships to carry his entourage and possessions to Agadir.

Thus, during the first decade and a half of the seventeenth century, the naval raiding conducted from Moroccan shores had no direct relation to the makhzan or any other internal Moroccan political faction. They also played no role in Moroccan economic life other than to provide a rather minor source of foreign goods. In this period the raiders were European pirates, many of them former privateers. They continued to practise the only vocation they knew: naval raiding. They sheltered and sold their prizes to European and Moroccan Jewish merchants in ports along the Moroccan coast, but had no connection with Morocco.

As a result of their expulsion from Spain, a large influx of Morisco refugees arrived in Morocco during the years 1609–14. The exact sequence of events which brought a large number of them to Rabat-Salé is unclear, but in 1619 Moriscos guided corsairs in their raids along the Spanish coasts.¹³ When Zaydan regained Marrakesh from Abu Mahalli in 1614, the people of Salé immediately sought his assistance against the Spanish in al-Ma῾mūra. According to the Chronique anonyme de la dynastie Sa’dienne, the Slawis soon despaired of getting meaningful aid, despite Zaydan’s promises, and turned to Sidi Mahammad al-Ayyāshī instead.¹⁴ So it seems likely that the Moriscos were installed in Rabat before 1614, because al-Ifrani mentions that Zaydan tried to use them to capture al-Ayyāshī after he evaded capture at Azammur and assumed leadership of the jihad against al-Ma῾mūra. Zaydan’s qā᾿id in Rabat’s qaṣba, Abd al-Aziz az-Za῾rūrī warned the Morisco sheikhs who forewarned and protected al-Ayyāshī. Zaydan levied 400 troops from among the Moriscos at Rabat and sent them to the Dra῾a valley, probably during Abu Mahalli’s rebellion, but perhaps as late as 1617. When that campaign dragged on, the majority of the Moriscos deserted Zaydan, returned to Rabat, and, according to al-Ifrani, developed a dislike for az-Za῾rūrī and Mulay Zaydan. We know that the final break between Zaydan and the Moriscos in Rabat, which al-Ifrani ascribes to another levy of troops for a new Dra῾a campaign, took place in the period 1626–7.¹⁵

In the intervening years, the corsairs of Rabat-Salé established themselves and made their initial impact on naval traffic in the Atlantic. Although Rabat-Salé pledged allegiance to Mulay Zaydan, it is evident that he did not exercise effective control there. On 8 August 1617, when corsair raiding from Rabat-Salé, under the joint leadership of European renegades and Moriscos, was just beginning, the Dutchman, Abbé Willemzoon noted that ‘not placing any value on the King’s authority, they will take possession of everything they can seize’.¹⁶ When another Dutch captain, Albert Ruyl, visited Rabat-Salé a little more than five years later he found that people there bluntly told him they did not hold the sultan in high regard.¹⁷ Zaydan himself credited the Moriscos and Andalusians he had installed in the qaṣba – 1,500 of them according to Ruyl¹⁸ – with preserving Rabat–Salé as part of his territory.¹⁹ Yet Zaydan did not meet his obligations to pay them, and they, in turn, kept all the revenue from their corsair raiding. Occasionally they sent him a few slaves. The Qur᾿ānic twenty per cent of the booty due to the sultan went to his qā᾿id az-Za῾rūrī, who also collected taxes on merchandise sold in Rabat-Salé and harvests in the neighbouring fields. Renegade corsairs in Rabat-Salé told Ruyl that the large share of the booty collected by the qā᾿id and his secretary meant that they would encourage increased corsair activity.²⁰ Later, in 1623, Ruyl learned in Marrakesh that when Mulay Zaydan asked az-Za῾rūrī to send him some Christian slaves the qā᾿id responded, ‘if his majesty wants to have slaves he must first send some money’.²¹

In August 1624, Mulay Zaydan lost whatever residual control he may have had over the corsairs when he named Dutch renegade Morat Rais qabṭān of the fleet. That this act should have cost him any control is not as strange as it seems, because Morat demanded and received a letter patent from Zaydan granting him complete freedom of action.²² Almost immediately Rabat-Salé became a more active corsair centre. Morat used his far-reaching powers to protect his Dutch countrymen from the corsairs. As a result, Dutch sources do not reflect the increase in the extent and intensity of corsair activity. The French, on the other hand, noted that a large portion of the damage done by the corsairs, in terms of ships and men captured and trade disrupted, affected them. The English records detail the severe disruption caused in the Newfoundland fishing fleet in 1625 and 1626. Spain must also have suffered greatly from the increase in corsair activity.²³

In addition to the corsairs who set out from Rabat-Salé in the years 1625–7, Algerine corsairs and European pirates also brought their prizes and captives there. They came and went freely without any obligations other than payment of the established taxes on the prizes they sold.²⁴ During the period of Sa῾ādī control, the corsairs and pirates operating from Morocco’s Atlantic ports had no direct connection with the events going on around them. Sa῾ādī weakness prevented the makhzan from taking any concerted action against the European pirates in the first two decades of the century. By the early 1620s, the makhzan’s representatives in Rabat-Salé nominally controlled the corsairs and their activities, but the control was more form than substance. The makhzan could not impose its will on the corsairs. They accepted Sa῾ādī suzerainty passively and did not actively participate in the tribal and factional alliance system which formed the basis of the Moroccan political system. Consequently the corsairs could act entirely on their own, without reference to the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The pre-colonial period
• Part II The colonial period
• Part III Independent states
• Part IV The region today
• Index