“[glory] in the taking of all Christendome” ( 6 : 107 – 8 ). While this emphasis on
the Levant frames the materials on Africa most immediately, they are also pre-
ceded by accounts of the East Indies, including a provocative inventory of all
the commodities to be had there and a useful calendar of “monsons” to be
avoided, and succeeded by extensive “reports of the province of China.”^41
It is not only this framing and organization of materials, however, which
eclipses Africa’s importance to the evolution of a global economy but the
African narratives themselves—even those that trace England’s attempts to ac-
cess the promising Barbary trade. In the letter that documents the inaugura-
tion of that trade, James Alday at once excuses his absence from the first
Barbary venture (claiming an attack of “the great sweate”) and expresses his
eager commitment to “the olde intermitted discoverie for Catia [Cathay]”
( 6 : 136 – 37 ), the East’s “unspeakably rich” paradise ( 2 : 481 ). And if in the Navi-
gationsthe East beckons on the other side of Barbary’s borders, the Portuguese
loom within them, complicating if not determining England’s actions, much
more, in some cases, than do the Moors. Interestingly, the very first record on
Barbary which Hakluyt chooses to include points to Portugal’s conquest of
Ceuta—of “the Moores in the dominion of the king of Barbary”—in 1415 ,
emphasizing the fact that “John the first king of Portugall” was “principally
assisted” in this endeavor “by the helpe of the English Marchants, and Al-
maines” ( 6 : 121 ). The second (from a Portuguese chronicle), which describes
the efforts of John II to keep the English out of Guinea in 1481 , exposes the
tenuousness of the Anglo-Portuguese alliance.^42 As the Navigationsthen
jumps forward to England’s contemporary negotiations with Barbary, the vex-
ing presence of the Portuguese surfaces as their biggest impediment. The ac-
count of the second Barbary voyage ( 1552 ), for example, represents the trade
between the English and the Moors with a notable nonchalance. The first
port of call (“Zafia, or Asafi”) appears as a reliable anchoring spot: there the
English “put on land” the “marchandise” which was “to be conveied,” and was
conveyed, “by land to the citie of Marocco” ( 6 : 138 ). After “refresh[ing]
[them]selves with victuals and water,” they moved on to Santa Cruz, where
they “discharged the rest of [their] goods” with equal aplomb, their “linnen
and woollen cloth, corall, amber, Jet, and divers other things” all “well ac-
cepted by the Moores” (6: 138 ). From what we see (and this is really all we see),
the commercial traffic proceeded smoothly; and it stands in striking contrast
to the sailing, which did not. On the way out, the English scuffled briefly with
the French (who did not know that England and France were no longer at
war); on the way back, they engaged in a more serious conflict with the Span-
54 chapter two