Why Did Everything Go Wrong? Some Notes on Hispano-Algerian Diplomatic Misunderstanding from a Study of a Letter of Beylerbeyi Hasan Pasha (1545-51)

Abstract

The Spanish Monarchy became used to negotiating with Algerians in the final decades of the fifteenth centuries, when the Catholic Monarchs began reaching commercial and political agreements with many North African harbours. However, once the Ghazi corsairs from the Levant —Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa— conquered Algiers in the late 1510s, Spanish relationships with this harbour completely changed. From that moment on, Algiers tuned into an Ottoman possession subordinated to the House of Osman, posing a real threat to the Spanish Habsburgs’ Mediterranean estates. Although the Spanish Monarchy sent several military expeditions to recover Algiers, none of these attempts was successful. At the same time, Spaniards also considered diplomacy as a useful means of maintaining a channel of communication with Algerians open. Hence, this article focuses on the first half of the sixteenth century and aims to explore the evolution of Spanish diplomacy with Ottoman Algiers to find out why these inter-policy contacts did not achieve the purposes hoped for by the government of the Spanish Monarchy. For that reason, after defining the diplomatic model deployed to negotiate with the Algerians and its goals, I shall explore how the Spanish Monarchy regarded the Ottoman governors of Algiers by studying a letter that beylerbeyi Hasan Pasha sent to the Genoese Admiral Andrea Doria in the summer of 1548. This letter, which is conserved in the Archivo General de Simancas, presents us with a great opportunity to note that the socio-political consideration granted by the Spaniards to their North African interlocutors had considerable influence on the results of diplomatic missions conducted in Algiers.