ABSTRACT
To speak merely of Anglo-Saxon relations with Algiers in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries is something of a misnomer. It is difficult to gauge whether English opposition or the North African corso was the greater or the more hostile obstacle to Scottish trade, but the obstacles were there. The details of Campbell’s activities are also to be found in the papers of the Earl of Sunderland, secretary of state for the southern department from 1706 to 1710. In fact, Cole had happened to be at the harbour mole of Algiers on 6 March when the Isabella was brought in. Henry Oswald’s brief account of the voyage of the Isabella and of the circumstances in which she was taken, which latter was to differ materially from that given by her captor, can be recounted in some detail from his own post-capture correspondence.
