ABSTRACT
Braudel’s statement, which is still at least in part true for the seventeenth century is equally or even more valid as an observation on the eighteenth. Within the narrower compass of the theme of the present gathering, a close-up view of Anglo-Algerine relations takes as its starting point a reexamination of the activities of Robert Cole, one of the most significant amongst a number of notable English consuls in Algiers during the time of the later Stuarts. Robert Cole’s family history largely remains to be determined. The few historians who have concerned themselves even in passing with Cole’s lengthy and multifaceted career in Algiers and with his valuable and informative despatches have come to widely differing views on the man and his character. Algerine contacts through Gibraltar or Minorca with the British forces active in the western Mediterranean during the War of the Spanish Succession have so far remained largely unstudied.
