Queene of England and her Realme is: for I neither like of him nor of
his religion, being so governed by the Inquisition that he can doe
nothing of himselfe.
Therefore when he commeth upon the licence which I have
granted, he shall well see how litle account I will make of him and
Spaine, and how greatly I will extoll you for the Queenes majestie of
England. (Hakluyt, 6 : 288 – 89 )We must take Hogan’s words, his emphasis on the Moor’s preference for the
English, with a grain of salt (or, dare I say, saltpeter), especially since Hogan
makes clear that, although he was getting better treatment than the Spanish
ambassador, Abdelmelech nonetheless intended to receive the Spanish. Still,
the account raises the possibility that the Moor was working the triangulation
to Morocco’s advantage, whether by actually antagonizing the Spanish or by
displaying a pretended antagonism in order to court the English. Ten years
after Alcazar, el-Mansur upped the ante on these tensions by proposing that
England join him in a joint attack against Spain—with England supplying
naval equipment and labor and Morocco financing the whole venture.^25
Matar notes that el-Mansur’s interest in reviving Morocco’s fallow relations
with the English followed immediately on England’s defeat of the Spanish ar-
mada and argues that it was, in fact, grounded on the hope of an alliance
against Spain.^26 Be that as may be, England’s historical record, in what it says
and silences, presents England’s interactions with Barbary and Barbary’s with
England as inevitably contingent on the contending presence of the Spanish
and the Portuguese.
It was during these decades that the crisis within the Moroccan dynasty
erupted, resulting in a successive change of leadership (from Mulai Mo-
hammed to Abd el-Malek to Ahmed el-Mansur)—though, because of Eliza-
beth’s willingness to deal with whoever was in power, notin an interruption
of England’s negotiations with Barbary. The battle of Alcazar marked the cli-
max of the local conflict, but the impact was strikingly global—drawing at-
tention to the complex political environment in which England was trying to
advance economically. As the Portuguese, the Spanish, and, even on the side-
lines, the Turks joined the fray to support one or the other Moorish faction,
they simultaneously fortified their own imperialist agendas. The Turks sent
aid to Abd el-Malek with the understanding (never fulfilled) that he would,
in turn, assist them against the Spanish.^27 The Portuguese king, Sebastian, al-
lied himself with Mulai Mohammed with the hope of furthering Portugal’s
Enter Barbary 27