English Tangier was the period in Moroccan history in which the city of Tangier (also spelled Tangiers) was occupied by England as part of its colonial empire from 1661 to 1684. Tangier had been under Portuguese control before Charles II of England acquired the city as part of the dowry when he married the Portuguese Infanta Catherine of Braganza. The marriage treaty was an extensive renewal of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance. It was opposed by Spain, then at war with Portugal, but clandestinely supported by France.
The English garrisoned and fortified the city against hostile but disunited Moroccan forces. The exclave was expensive to defend and fortify and offered neither commercial nor military advantage to England. When Morocco was later united under the Alaouites, the cost of maintaining the garrison against Moroccan attack greatly increased, and Parliamentary refusal to provide funds for its upkeep, partly because of fears of 'Popery' and a Catholic succession under James II, forced Charles to give up possession. In 1684, the English blew up the city's harbour and defensive works that they had been constructing and evacuated the city, which was swiftly occupied and annexed by Moroccan forces.
History
Background Tangier has the best natural harbour on the western end of the Strait of Gibraltar, allowing its owner to control naval access to the Mediterranean. Since antiquity, it and Ceuta to its east were the major commercial centres on the north-western coast of Africa.
Portugal The Portuguese started their colonial empire by taking nearby Ceuta in 1415. Years of conflict between Portugal and the Moroccans under the Wattasid and Saadi dynasties followed. In 1471, the Portuguese stormed Asilah to the west and threw Tangier into such chaos that they were able to occupy it completely unopposed.
By 1657, the position had changed. The Saadi dynasty steadily lost control of the country to various warlords and finally came to an end with the death of Ahmad al-Abbas.. The main warlord around Tangier was Khadir Ghaïlan (known to the English of the time as "Guyland"). He and his family had taken control of much of the Gharb, the Rif, and the other coastal areas around Tangier. He appears to have considerably increased attacks on Portuguese Tangier.Stuart, p. 6.
Meanwhile, after the Dila'i interlude, the Alaouites came to the forefront. Mulai al-Rashid (known as "Tafileta" by the English) took Fes in 1666 and Marrakesh in 1669, essentially unifying all of Morocco except the ports occupied by Portugal, Spain, and England. He was supportive of restoring Muslim control over the ports, but he and the last of the Dila'ites (around Salé) still put their own pressures upon Ghaïlan.
The Treaty of the Pyrenees in November 1659 specifically pledged that Louis XIV of France would withdraw support from Portugal under the Braganzas and released Spanish troops and ships to pursue the continuing Portuguese Restoration War. Portugal, severely weakened and with little support in other countries, sought a renewal of its alliance with England to counterbalance the renewed Spanish threat to its independence.
The alliancewhich had originated in 1373had been adjusted and renewed in 1654 under Cromwelland was again renewed in 1660 after the English Restoration. Negotiations for the marriage of Charles to Catherine of Braganza (originally proposed by CharlesI) had started shortly after (perhaps even before). the Restoration, and the proposed marriage was mentioned by the Venetian envoys as early as June 1660.Venetian Papers, vol 32, p 150, entry date 2 June 1660 (N.S.). As part of the dowry, Portugal was to hand over the port of Tangier and the island of Bombay (now Mumbai) but it is unclear when those detailed terms were agreed upon or became publicly known. Some were widely rumoured early, certainly before the marriage treaty itself.
The Portuguese government was content to part with Tangier,Corbett, pp. 5–11. though many within the country had reservations.Fanshawe to Sandwich 6 November 1661 in Carte MSS, Shelfmark 73, fols 612-613. The anchorage was not particularly safe for shippingElbl, pp. 406-409. and, exposed to the Atlantic and to destructive winds from the east, it was expensive to maintain, requiring significant improvement. Khadir Ghaïlan had mounted a major attack on the city in 1657, forcing the governor and garrison to appeal to Lisbon for assistance.Leroux, p. 35. Portugal, hard pressed in its war of independence from Spain and struggling against Dutch aggression in the East Indies, could not hope to maintain all of its overseas possessions without English assistance and could not afford to commit troops to the defence of Tangier while fighting Spain in the Iberian peninsula. Indeed, Portugal had even offered Tangier to France in 1648 to try to solicit support against Spain.Bejjit, p. 18.
However, cession of Tangier to England was not popular with the general public and with many in the army. The governor of Tangier, Fernando de Meneses, refused to co-operate and had to be replaced in 1661 by the more compliant Luis de Almeida.Routh, p. 10.
Spain Spain had tolerated Portuguese occupation of Tangier as part of the Treaty of Tordesillas and had left its Portuguese administration largely undisturbed during the Iberian Union and even under the long-running Restoration War, lest a weakened position expose it to Moroccan reconquest. Nonetheless, Spain was strongly opposed to English possession of Tangier and insisted that the cession would be illegal. Indeed, the note presented by the Spanish ambassador in May 1661 openly threatened war..
A strongly established English naval presence at the Straits of Gibraltar posed a threat to its ports on both the Atlantic and Mediterranean and to communication between them. It also threatened communication not just with Spain's colonial empire but with the maritime links between Spain and the Habsburgs' Italian possessions in Sicily and Naples. English fleet activities in the Mediterranean under Robert Blake and Edward Montagu between 1650 and 1659 had shown just how vulnerable Spain's shipping lanes had become. With its emphasis on its transatlantic possessions, Spain had no Mediterranean fleet and could not protect its shipping there: the presence of a hostile naval force at Tangier would make the transfer of Spanish troops from Italy to Spain for the intended war against Portugal much more difficult.
By a proclamation of 7 September 1660 (announced in Spain on 22 September), Charles had declared peace with Spain,Venetian papers, vol 32, p 197, entry date 22 September 1660 (N.S.). but in the same month the Commons passed a bill annexing Dunkirk and Jamaica. Both had been taken under Cromwell and both had been demanded back by Spain upon the ascension of CharlesII.Davenport, F.G., p. 57, note 4. There was a fear in England that the Portuguese commander at Tangier would hand the port over to Spain rather than "heretic" England or that Spain would otherwise attempt physically to prevent the handover, even if its actions fell short of war.Venetian papers, vol 33, entry dates 21 and 30 September 1661. There were further fears that Spain had enlisted Ghaïlan's assistance to attack by land while Spain attacked by sea.Corbett, p. 28.
Dutch Republic The Dutch had suffered intensely during the First Anglo-Dutch War. Although they were at peace for the moment, they were still competing intensely for trade and had no wish to see the English navy further establish the Mediterranean power it had developed under Cromwell.Harris, vol 1, p. 196. They were at war with the Portuguese and did not want to see the Anglo-Portuguese alliance renewed. The Dutch hoped to seize more of Portugal's overseas possessions and had equipped a fleet for that purpose in 1660.Davenport, p. 58.Pepys 28 February 1661. They tried, unsuccessfully, to strengthen relations with KingCharlesII by the Dutch Gift in July of the same year.
The States General also sought in negotiations from July 1660 until September 1662 to secure a treaty or pact of friendship with England, but refused to extend such a treaty to any colonies outside Europe with the sole exception of the island of Pulo Run.Davenport, p. 83, Art 15. While that negotiation went on, Charles offered to mediate between the United Provinces and Portugal. (The Anglo-Portuguese treaty, a very short time later, required this.) His intervention resulted in the Treaty of The Hague on 6 August 1661, although it was ignored by the Dutch East India Company. The Company seized Cranganore, Cochin, Nagapattinam, and Cannanore from Portugal in 1662 and 1663.
At the same time, King Charles sought the advancement of his nephew William (later WilliamIII) as Stadtholder. Johan De Witt, the "Grand Pensionary", was a confirmed Republican and had excluded William through the 'secret' (but widely leaked) Act of Seclusion annex to the Treaty of Westminster with Cromwell. The States General was unable or unwilling to rein in the Dutch East India Company's aggressively anti-English and anti-Portuguese activities; the Republic hence had no significant influence in Restoration England, and De Witt's diplomatic failures in 1660–1661 marked the beginning of the end of the Dutch Golden Age. Although De Ruyter's presence in the Mediterranean necessitated caution, the English acquisition of Tangier could not be meaningfully opposed by the Dutch.
France In France, Cardinal Mazarin was at the height of his powers following the formation of the League of the Rhine in 1658; the defeatwith the help of Cromwell's army and navyof the Prince of Condé and Spain at the Battle of the Dunes the same year; and the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees on 7 November 1659. Spain (then allied with English Royalists) and France (allied with Commonwealth England) made peace, and by the treaty Louis XIV was betrothed to Maria Theresa of Spain. The treaty also required France to cease direct or indirect support for Portugal.Treaty of the Pyrenees, Article 60 and 'Secret' Article 3. In May 1660, six months after the treaty was signed, CharlesII was restored. Mazarin realized that an alliance between Restoration England and Spain, with its extensive lands in Italy and the Netherlands, would almost surround France and leave both more powerful than he wished; he worked quickly to restore relations with Charles's court. By August, he had proposed the marriage of Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, to Charles's sister Henrietta Anne. It is likely that he encouraged the Braganza marriage, but he died on 9 March 1661 and Louis took personal control of his government. In July 1661, Louis sent the Comte d'Estrades as his ambassador to London, and it is clear from the instructions and correspondence between them that the treaty between England and Portugal was welcomed by France.d'Estrades, pp. 109, 128. At the time, France had no significant Mediterranean or East Indies naval presence, and English possession of Tangier and Bombay posed no apparent threat. In 1656, Louis or Mazarin had proposed the cession of Tangier to France, but no agreement had been reached and the peace with Spain probably precluded any further similar proposal.
England