“with such commodities as he should have need of, to furnish the necessities
and wants of his countrey in trade of marchandize, so as he required nothing
contrarie to her honour and law, and the breach of league with the Christian
princes her neighbours” ( 6 : 290 – 91 ). Renouncing “demaundes” that might
“breach” the “league,” Hogan’s Moor and queen seem to protest a bit too
much. In the years after Alcazar, the trade—and the evasions—continue. The
“letters patent” of 1585 establishing the Barbary Company explain only that
“divers Marchandize” from the region “are very necessary and convenient for
the use and defence of this our Realme of England” (Hakluyt, 6 : 420 ). And in
1587 , when Elizabeth writes to “the Emperour of Marocco,” Ahmed el-
Mansur, she speaks (without speaking) of “certaine things which you desire to
bee sent unto you from hence” ( 6 : 433 ).^23
Colonialist discourse analysis once taught us to read these kinds of nar-
rative gaps (with what Myra Jehlen has critiqued as “excessive certainty”) as
coded incriminations of the “other,” and I, for one, have done just that—
interpreting Hogan’s lapses as attempts to make the Moor look bad (uncoop-
erative, unreliable, erratic, crafty) and the English agents, good (tolerant,
patient, trustworthy, and so on).^24 In assuming that the only issue here is a
clandestine arms deal, we do not want to replace one kind of excessive
certainty with another. Still, the historical records do seem to bear out an
awareness on the part of the English that their dealings in Morocco could
compromise their relations with “Christian princes” in Europe, who were ev-
idently scrutinizing the exchange.
And with good reason. If the English were trying to avoid a direct con-
frontation with the Spanish and Portuguese in bargaining with the Moors, the
Moroccan rulers themselves seemed intent, from England’s side, on using the
alliance with England against Iberia. When Abd el-Malek came to power in
1576 , he pushed for a significant increase in the arms trade, insisting that the
English not sell the saltpeter they acquired in Morocco to Portugal or Spain.
Whatever his intentions, in Hogan Abdelmelech sets the English explicitly
against the Spanish, displaying his embrace of the one to register his antipa-
thy toward the other. As Hogan tells it, the Moorish leader
gave me to understand, that the king of Spaine had sent unto him for a
licence, that an Ambassadour of his might come into his countrey, and
had made great meanes that if the Queenes majesty of England sent any
unto him, that he would not give him any credit or intertainment,
albeit (said he) I know what the king of Spaine is, and what the26 chapter one