Tangier, 1684. A motley group of soldiers scrambles over the ruins of a town, burying beneath the rubble newly minted coins that bear the image of Charles II. This least remembered of the outposts of the fledgling British Empire is nearing its end. For more than a decade it had been a thriving commercial port, in which Charles, who had acquired it in 1661 when he married Catherine of Braganza, his Portuguese wife, had invested heavily - a considerably larger sum, as its last governor remarked, than he had spent on all his other overseas possessions put together. Along with Bombay, also part of the unhappy Catherine's dowry, it marked the furthest limit of what Charles had conceived to be his imperium, the latest, and soon to be greatest, mercantile power in the world.

LRB 14 November 2002 | PDF Download