Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712

From the mid-seventeenth to early eighteenth century, a wide network of English-speaking men, women, and children took up residence in the Ottoman Maghrebi regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. There they formed expatriate communities, engaged with the societies around them, and undertook their businesses, from trading to captivity redemption to international politics.

Moving beyond official diplomatic records and printed texts, Britain and the Ottoman Maghreb, 1662–1712: Merchants, Consuls, and Cultural Exchange (Oxford University Press, 2026) by Dr. Nat Cutter delves into thousands of personal letters and financial records, where we find friendship, conflict, adoration, derision, manipulation, and scandal across cultures and countries. In so doing, it offers new ways of thinking about British-Maghrebi relations in a transitional age for global trade and military-naval power, moving beyond plaintive consular complaints, gunboat diplomacy, and brutal captivity to accommodate positive cooperation and mutual benefit.

These expatriates became embedded mediators, hybridised European and Ottoman cultural forms, and experienced distanciation from both homeland and hostland to enjoy and manipulate both. For them, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli were not solely sites for danger or exploitation but, as peace was progressively established with each regency, increasingly places for pragmatic cooperation, personal and professional advancement, commercial success, and enjoyment.

Expansive networks of correspondence and cooperation around the Maghreb, Mediterranean, and Britain embedded the expatriates in a cross-cultural trade in material goods and information and allowed them to manipulate the course of trade and diplomacy between Britain and the Maghreb. The expatriates were less marginal, miserable, and misbehaving Britons and more embedded, canny, Mediterranean actors.

Nat Cutter, Mary Lugton Postdoctoral Fellow and Assistant Lecturer in History, University of Melbourne

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. You can find Miranda’s interviews on New Books with Miranda Melcher, wherever you get your podcasts.