On a very superficial level the Mediterranean region during the first half of the sixteenth century could be described as comprising two opposing parts: to the north and west, Christian Europe; to the east and south, Muslim Africa–Asia. However, the Mediterranean cannot be defined in this over-simplified way. In the West, the Moriscos in Spain were a unique cultural community and managed to conduct their business activities despite being severely persecuted. As Braudel notes, ‘how could a hard-working people avoid becoming rich in a country flooded with precious metals and populated by an abundance of hidalgos for whom any work was dishonourable?’

Elsewhere, Jews and Arab-Muslims, uprooted and expelled from their native land by the Spanish rulers, established themselves in North Africa and engaged in corsairing activities against the Spanish coasts and shipping. In the Eastern Mediterranean there were Christian communities composed of Genoese colonies in Chios, Lesbos, Phokaea and Pera, and Venetian colonies in Cyprus, Crete and other neighbouring islands. These competed with Greeks, Copts, Armenians, Jews and other non-Muslim subjects of the Ottoman sultan in trade and commerce. As Molly Greene states, ‘from the time of the Fourth Crusade in 1204 onward, the eastern Mediterranean was the point of intersection for not two, but three, enduring civilizations – namely, Latin Christianity, Eastern Orthodoxy, and Islam’.

The Ottoman central government in Istanbul was supposed to hold a balancing control over its vast territories. However, this proved too difficult to accomplish, especially for far-away domains. As Suraiya Faroqhi explains, ‘when we look more closely at day-to-day events in the borderlands it soon becomes clear that central regulation was only part of the story’. The Barbary Regencies had more autonomy than other provinces of the Ottoman empire and during the sixteenth century Ottoman authority was delegated to provincial pashas who were, in Peter Earle's words, ‘often the conquerors themselves, ambitious and powerful men, not likely to trouble themselves too much about the wishes of a superior so many miles away at the other end of the Mediterranean’.

By the middle of the sixteenth century European officials and merchants enjoyed good relations with the Ottoman administration and were even allowed to travel to and live in the capital or provincial trading centres.