The Shores of Tripoli
How best to confront an 800 pound gorilla?
Bring a bigger gorilla.
What is a barbarian?
Someone who’s social pyramid doesn’t provide competition for an 800 pound gorilla.
What is a Berber? A North African “barbarian” – many have light eyes, reddish hair and Caucasian features. They were associated with the derivation of the terms Barbary pirates and Barbary Wars, despite for the most part not being among the costal peoples involved in those affairs. If that seems confused, well, it is, but that’s just how prejudice works.
Hardly had the USA formed when it found need for external trade. The new government, such as it was, quickly became handmaiden to various gentlemen it saw capable of managing said trade (largely in non-essentials). But privateering in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, and also the eastern Atlantic, were a problem. The biggest problem was from rulers on the Maghreb ‘Barbary Coast’ profiting from a kind of protection racket. The US initiated a series of treaties, the Barbary Treaties, with Morocco (1786), Algiers (1795), Tripoli (1797) and Tunis (1797), all of them more than once. Joel Barlow, who’d been chaplain in the Revolutionary Army and knew George Washington and Alex Hamilton, was made consul-general to ‘the Barbary states’ (‘barbarian’ states) of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis. He dealt with the text of various treaties (including the famous or infamous, depending on how you stand on separation of church and state) Treaty of Tripoli. Commissioner Plenipotentiary (and Minister to the Kingdom of Spain in Madrid) of the US, David Humphreys, was to establish a treaty with Tripoli, and assigned Joel Barlow and Joseph Donaldson to broker it. It was Barlow who certified the signatures on the Arabic original (and the English copy). Captain Richard O’Brien, USN, brought the negotiated goods; Consul James Leander Cathcart delivered the final payment for that first treaty.
The ‘Barbary Wars’ were mostly undeclared wars. In two main armed conflicts, the US and Sweden fought the ‘Barbary’ states, nominally parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli) in the very late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Swedes began war with Tripoli in 1800, and were soon joined by the Americans, as the ‘Barbary pirates’ (a kind of home defense force) demanded tribute from American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. If they failed to pay, corsairs would attack ships, confiscate goods, and often enslave crew members while holding them for ransom. Maghrebi states would focus on a country’s shipping for a year, then while negotiating pay-off, move on to that of another country, until completing their roster and starting over. As well as Sweden, Denmark, Holland, the Italian states, Spain and Portugal suffered; payoffs and greater power kept British and French shipping safer. Between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans were captured and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. Prisoners were able to obtain wealth and property, along with achieving status beyond that of a slave. An example is James Leander Cathcart, who rose to the highest position a Christian slave could achieve in Algeria: , adviser to the Bey (Ottoman governor). English Captain John Ward claimed conversion to Islam and stayed a captain. Scottish Peter Leslie (aka Murad Rais) amd Dutchman Simon Danser are other examples. Most captives just did hard labor, sometimes under poor conditions that exposed them to vermin and disease. As word of their treatment reached home, through freed captives’ narratives and letters, citizens pushed for government action to stop the piracy.
In 1784 Congress appointed Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin as peace commissioners to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce with the principal states of Europe and the Mediterranean — including the ‘Barbary’ states. They quickly learned that Europeans made peace with the Maghreb powers through treaties and annual payments of tribute — often called annuities. The merchant vessels of any country without treaties were at the mercy of state-sponsored maritime marauders called corsairs, often mislabeled pirates. Typically pirates claim no national allegiance (although some English ones did).
In 1794, Congress appropriated $800,000 for the release of American prisoners and for a peace treaty with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. On September 5, 1795, negotiator Joseph Donaldson signed a peace treaty with the Dey of Algiers for the US, that included payment of $642,500 in silver coinage for release of American captives, and gifts for the Dey’s court and family. An additional, indefinite, yearly tribute of $21,600 in shipbuilding supplies and ammunition would be given. The treaty got 115 American sailors held captive by the Dey released.
Washington appointed Humphreys Commissioner Plenipotentiary on March 30, 1795; on February 10, 1796, Humphreys appointed Barlow and Joseph Donaldson as “Junior Agents” to forge a “Treaty of Peace and Friendship” with Tripoli. It was authored by Barlow, an ardent Jeffersonian republican, signed in Tripoli on November 4, 1796, then certified at Algiers (for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797, and ratified by the US Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, taking effect June 10, 1797, with the signature of President John Adams. It was the first treaty between the USA and Tripoli (now Libya), designed to secure commercial shipping rights and protect US ships in the Mediterranean from ‘privateers’ under Maghreb protection. A treaty was also concluded with Tunis, in 1797, and soon after, US consuls were appointed for each North African state.
The official treaty was in Arabic, and a translated version by Consul-General Barlow was ratified by the US on June 10, 1797. Article 11 of the treaty was said to have not been part of the original Arabic version of the treaty; in its place is a letter from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. However, it is the English text which was ratified by Congress. There is no clear reason to suppose that Barlow knew a word of Arabic before his appointment. The Treaty, often cited in discussions of the role of religion in US government, in Article 11 of the English language version states that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” That isn’t in the Arabic version.
Barlow, who had previously published his “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, may have inserted it for the benefit and edification of those back home, without feeling it to offer much of significance to Arabic speakers already well aware of the true extent of US Christianity. It may be significant that Barlow surely knew that the land he grew up on was procured with funds from corsair “privateering” – much as I do at over twice the remove. And that somehow within a decade of working on the treaty he’d mysteriously gone from being cash-shy to being a VERY wealthy man (with ten ships in his wife’s name).
The treaty was broken by Tripoli, resulting in the ‘First Barbary War’ – in which the US once bombarded Tripoli from beyond retaliatory range, with loss of only one man (to heat stroke). I see this as but another instance of the purportedly superior imposing on others in their own homes while simultaneously casting aspersions and accusations against them (with a result of later feeling need to bemoan sense of alienation and constant fear), acting out need to beat our chests and roar out like a big gorilla asserting dominance.
The US eventually defeated Tripoli with a combined naval and land assault by the Marine Corps, and a new, superseding treaty, the Treaty of Peace and Amity, signed in 1805, included ransom for American prisoners, but no provisions for tribute.
President Adams’ signing statement:
Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.
After Adams sent Barlow’s treaty to the Senate for ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for every Senator. A committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification. Twenty-three of the thirty-two sitting Senators were present for the June 7th vote which unanimously approved ratification.
Before anyone in the US saw the Treaty, its required payments, in the form of goods and money, had been made in part. Barlow explained: “The present writing done by our hand and delivered to the American Captain O'Brien makes known that he has delivered to us forty thousand Spanish dollars,-thirteen watches of gold, silver & pinsbach,-five rings, of which three of diamonds, one of saphire and one with a watch in it, One hundred & forty piques of cloth, and four caftans of brocade,-and these on account of the peace concluded with the Americans.” This was an incomplete listing according to the Pasha of Tripoli; also, an additional $18,000 was paid by the American Consul James Leander Cathcart on April 10, 1799.
It wasn’t until that was delivered that the Pasha of Tripoli accepted the treaty as official. In a letter to President Adams dated 15 April, 1799, the Pasha declared, “Whereby we have consummated the Peace which shall, on our side, be inviolate, provided You are Willing to treat us as You do other Regencies, without any difference being made between Us. Which is the whole of what We have, at present, to say to You, wishing you at the same time the most unlimited prosperity.” The Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary), authored by Joel Barlow, was witnessed at Algiers 4 November 1796, ratified by the United States Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, supposedly to take effect June 10, 1797, with the signature of President Adams. Although there were some clarity of communication issues, the treaty freed at least 83 American sailors (sometimes “over a hundred” is claimed).
When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he refused to pay tribute and sent a fleet to the Mediterranean which bombarded fortified cities in present-day Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. Promises and concessions were made, and some safe passage occurred, but normal policy was to attack shipping from a different country each year, usually giving about 7 to 12 years between pay-offs. James Madison, Jefferson’s successor, directed military forces for a second war in 1815, shortly after the conclusion of the War of 1812.
The Maghreb corsairs, privateers who operated from primarily from the ports of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, were ‘uncivilized’ Muslims with relatives who’d lived in a high state of civilization in Iberia for centuries… they hunted weaker ships primarily throughout the Mediterranean, but also south along West Africa’s Atlantic seaboard and even to the eastern coast of South America, and also as far as Iceland. They raided European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland. This is usually cited without reference to those ‘raided’ people having done plenty of raiding themselves, hardly all in the far past.
During the Crusades (1095-1295), Muslim pirates operating from bases in North Africa plundered ships carrying Crusaders on their way to plunder Muslims, and sold Christian invaders into slavery. By the 16th century, Hapsburg Spain and the Ottoman Turks were pitted against each other. Piracy, which for both Christians and Muslims was a normal part of conflict between opposing powers, lured adventurers from all over to Maghribi coastal towns and islands. Among them was Khair ad Din, called Barbarossa, who in 1510 seized Algiers on the pretext of defending it from the Spaniards. Barbarossa subsequently recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan over territory he controlled and was made the sultan’s regent in the Maghrib; thus some claim the term “Barbary” derives from Barbarossa (“red beard” – like a much earlier “Holy Roman Emperor’) and not from ‘barbarian’ (ancient Greeks thought non-Greek language sounded like “bar bar bar” - and that is the ACTUAL derivation of that term).
In May, 1801, Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli of Tripoli declared war on the US; the US didn’t bother to respond in kind except to blockade the city, but there was fear that other ‘Barbary’ powers would join against the US, so the US sent naval squadrons into the Mediterranean under the slogan of “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” A few bitterly contested gunboat actions resulted, but the US had the bigger guns, and prevailed.
Modern capitalism began 200 years before the friction between Maghreb and European mariners. For a century, Catholic Iberians had dominated world trade, starting simultaneously with their expulsion of Muslims (and Jews). The Dutch, pushed this way then that by the rival Iberian powers, found inclination to sever relations. Merchants pooled resources to form the Company of the Far East and cut out Portuguese middlemen. This quickly transformed into the Dutch East India Company and gave rise to the Amsterdam stock market, of tulip craze fame (1636-7), the first recorded speculative bubble. Despite the tulip speculation folly, the economy thrived. Merchants started using windmills to saw lumber into precisely measured boards for quick ship-building, and the Dutch ruled the waves and trade for centuries, only gradually ousted by the British East India Company (and others), after the success of British ‘privateers’ (pirates) in the Americas. By 1800 business was the tail wagging the dog; four decades later, as shown by the First Opium War, it was the dog’s owner.
Before Barlow’s appointment, the young USA was spending 20% of its national budget on ‘protection money’ in order that its rich could do business in the Mediterranean. Today a far, far higher percentage goes for protection of big business. Business is much better at absorbing and utilizing new information than government, but a bit less able to elicit faith in its altruism, despite the extreme gullibility that’s apparently part of our condition. Business trade cares little to nothing for the guest/host hospitality and gratitude obligations that form essential components central to ‘barbarian’ culture, and keep interactions respectful. So now, as is well known, we’ve got no respect.
The Barbary, or, better, Maghreb, states, de jure possessions of the Ottoman Empire, were de facto independent. Realizing in the 1780s that American vessels had lost the protection of the British navy, corsairs began seizing US ships in the Mediterranean. Having disbanded its Continental Navy and thus with no seagoing military force, the new government agreed in 1786 to pay tribute to stop the attacks. Congress voted to build six heavy frigates and establish the United States Navy, in order to stop those attacks and demands for money; by 1797, the US had paid out $1.25 million and by 1799 was $140,000 in arrears to Algiers and $150,000 to Tripoli.
This state-supported ‘piracy’ was hardly unusual. European states often commissioned privateers to attack enemy shipping. Great Britain and France paid tribute, and Maghrebi leaders didn’t challenge their navies. Prior to independence, American colonists had protection from the British Navy, but with independence, lost that, and in 1785, Dey Muhammad of Algiers declared war on the United States and captured several American ships. Congress was unable to raise enough funds to satisfy the Dey, but Portugal was at war with Algiers, and blocked Algerian ships at the Straits of Gibraltar, so US ships in the Atlantic remained safe.
Then in 1793 a brief Portuguese-Algerian truce exposed American merchant ships to capture, forcing the US, which had thus far only managed to conclude a treaty with Morocco, to engage in negotiations with the other powers. The capture of a US ship carrying protection money to the Dey of Algiers alerted Pasha Yusuf Karamanli to a new source for wealth, and soon he was promised $52,000 – but, warned by Europeans that this was too much, the US tried to back out.
The adoption of the Constitution in 1789 gave the US Government the power to levy taxes and to raise and maintain armed forces, powers which had been lacking. In 1794, in response to Algerian seizures of American ships, Congress authorized construction of the first 6 ships of the US Navy.
Barbary corsairs led attacks on US merchant shipping to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute to avoid further attacks, as they did with the various European states. Before the Treaty of Paris, which formalized the United States’ independence from Great Britain, US shipping was protected by France during the revolutionary years under the Treaty of Alliance (1778–83). Although the treaty doesn’t mention the Barbary States by name, it refers to common enemies between both the US and France. As such, piracy against US shipping only began to occur after the American Revolution, when the US government lost its protection under the Treaty of Alliance.
This lapse of protection by a European power led to the first American merchant ship being seized after the Treaty of Paris. On 11 October 1784, Moroccan pirates seized the brigantine Betsey. The Spanish government negotiated freedom for the captured ship and crew; however, Spain advised to offer tribute to prevent further attacks against merchant ships. US Minister to France Thomas Jefferson decided to send envoys to Morocco and Algeria to purchase treaties and the freedom of the captured sailors held by Algeria. Morocco was the first Barbary Coast State to sign a treaty with the US, in June 1786. This treaty formally ended Moroccan attacks against American shipping interests. Specifically, article six of the treaty states that if any Americans captured by Moroccans or other Barbary Coast States docked at a Moroccan city, they would be set free and come under the protection of the Moroccan State.
American diplomatic action with Algeria and the other Maghreb states was much less productive than with Morocco. Algeria captured the US schooner Maria on 25 July 1785, and Dauphin a week later. All four ‘Barbary Coast’ states demanded $660,000 each. However, envoys were given only an allocated budget of $40,000 to achieve peace. Diplomatic talks to reach a reasonable sum for tribute or for the ransom of the captured sailors struggled to make any headway, and the crews of Maria and Dauphin remained enslaved for over a decade, soon joined by crews of other ships.
Just before Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence - by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and vessels wherever you shall find them.” On Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (or Bashaw) of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 from the new administration (In 1800, federal revenues totaled a little over $10 million). Jefferson refused the demand. So, on 10 May 1801, the Pasha cut down the flagstaff in front of the US Consulate, which was taken as a declaration war.
Jefferson had inherited a national debt he wanted to eliminate, but the problem of Tripoli couldn’t be ignored. Which would cost less, tribute or war? The president argued in favor of the latter; but war was looking more difficult and costly than anticipated. “[T]hey know they cannot meet us with force any more than they could France, Spain or England,” he wrote from Monticello at the end of March. “[T]heir system is a war of little expence to them which must put the great nations to a greater expence than the presents which would buy it off.” He was against buying peace, but one had to be practical as well as principled. He asked his cabinet whether we should purchase peace with Tripoli, and it was agreed that buying peace should be an option. Secretary Madison wrote Cathcart: “… it is thought best that you should not be tied down to a refusal of presents whether to be included in the peace, or to be made from time to time during its continuance, especially as in the latter case the title to the presents will be a motive to its continuance.” He was given explicit dollar limits and reminded that any engagements should be kept smaller if possible.
Jefferson believed that America wanted, indeed needed, to be a trading nation, and “to carry as much as possible” of the luxury items trade depended on in its own vessels. “But,” he wrote James Monroe, "this will require a protecting force on the sea. Otherwise the smallest powers in Europe, every one which possesses a single ship of the line may dictate to us, and enforce their demands by captures on our commerce. Some naval force then is necessary if we mean to be commercial.” However, for the task then before him, he added, “if it be decided that their peace shall be bought it shall engage my most earnest endeavours.” And that would be the approach John Adams favored. He believed that paying tribute would be more economical and easier than convincing the citizenry to fund building a navy.
Congress decided peace could be bought, and authorized $80,000 for negotiations. Commissioners sent American consul Thomas Barclay to Morocco and Connecticut sea captain John Lamb to Algiers. In Morocco the draft treaty Barclay carried with him was accepted with only minor changes. Jefferson, Adams, and Congress were satisfied that the Morocco treaty made US vessels safe from Moroccan corsairs and there was no call for future tribute.
The offer of an equal treaty didn’t work elsewhere in the Maghreb. Algiers was much more dependent than Morocco on corsairing, and much less amenable to peace. US commissioners learned that two American ships had been captured by Algerian corsairs; John Lamb was told to negotiate ransom for the captives, as well as a peace treaty, which proved impossible within the limited budget approved. US vessels in the Mediterranean had to sail in convoy with European ships, often with Portuguese naval protection, and flew European flags illegally. In the Atlantic, the Morocco treaty provided protection from Moroccan corsairs and the Portuguese navy kept Maghreb corsairs in the Mediterranean, but that changed with an Algiers-Portugal treaty in 1793; in a very few months Algerian corsairs seized eleven US merchant vessels, 10 in the Atlantic, with over 100 crewmen and passengers.
By 1801 tensions with Tripoli ledinflammed Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli’s convinction that the US was treating him less well than they did other rulers. He was right, but Tunis and Algiers had negotiated better treaties. In October 1800, five months before Jefferson took office, US consul in Tripoli James Cathcart summarized the long, rambling messages he’d been sending the secretary of state and others for a year or more: in short, he said, the pasha’s message is “if you don't give me a present I will forge a pretext to capture your defenseless merchantmen; he likewise says that he expects an answer as soon as possible, and that any delay on our side will only serve to injure our own interests.”
A week after Cathcart’s letter was written in October 1800, a Tripoli corsair took another US ship. The pasha immediately ordered the ship and crew released and dismissed the corsair captain. His explained that “before he would take any measures whatsoever against the United States” he would wait for an answer to his letter of five months earlier (May 25, 1800). Later, however, in a meeting with Cathcart, Captain Carpenter of the Catharine, and local officials, the pasha declared that he wanted money from the US, that he’d wait six more months for an acceptable reply to his letter, and that he would declare war on the US if the answer didn’t arrive in that time, or was unsatisfactory. Reporting on that ultimatum, Cathcart explained to the secretary of state why the US owed nothing to the pasha and how the pasha was regularly at war with some country or other from which he would demand beneficial negotiations (the pasha was then at war with Sweden, which would soon agree to pay annual tribute and ransom for 131 captives; 14 Swedish merchantmen had been seized by Tripolitan corsairs since the angered pasha had broken an existing treaty and declared war a few months earlier).
Three months after Jefferson’s inauguration, a small squadron of three frigates and a schooner sailed for the Mediterranean under Commodore Richard Dale to protect American shipping, intimidate corsairs, “chastise their insolence — by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and Vessels wherever you shall find them”, and blockade the harbors of any who declared war on the US. Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli had already chopped down the flagpole at the US consulate in Tripoli – which was seen as a de facto declaration of war.
Before learning that Tripoli had thus declared war, Jefferson sent the three frigates and schooner, under the command of Commodore Richard Dale, with gifts and letters in attempt to maintain peace. However, in the event that war had been declared, Dale was instructed “to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression.” Jefferson “insisted that he was “unauthorized by the constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.” He told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the constitution to the legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.” Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, it authorized the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli “and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” The American squadron joined a Swedish flotilla under Rudolf Cederström in blockading Tripoli.
On 31 May 1801, Commodore Edward Preble traveled to Messina, Sicily, to the court of King Ferdinand IV of the Kingdom of Naples. Naples was at war with Napoleon, but Ferdinand supplied the Americans with manpower, craftsmen, supplies, gunboats, mortar boats, and the ports of Messina, Syracuse, and Palermo to be used as naval bases for launching operations against Tripoli, a walled fortress city protected by 150 pieces of heavy artillery manned by 25,000 soldiers and assisted by a fleet of 10 ten-gunned brigs, 2 eight-gun schooners, two large galleys, and 19 gunboats.
In 1802, in response to Jefferson’s request for authority to deal with the pirates, Congress passed “An act for the protection of commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers,” authorizing the President to “employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite... for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas.” The statute authorized US ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. The US deployed many of the navy's best ships to the region throughout 1802.
In October 1803, Tripoli’s fleet captured USS Philadelphia intact after the frigate ran aground on a reef while patrolling Tripoli harbor. Efforts by the Americans to float the ship while under fire from shore batteries and Tripolitan Naval units failed. The ship, her captain, William Bainbridge, and all 301 officers and crew were taken ashore and held as well-cared-for hostages. A prison warder abused a cabin boy, and was executed for it. ThePhiladelphia was turned against the Americans and anchored in the harbor as a gun battery. On the night of 16 February 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small detachment of US Marines aboard the captured Tripolitan ketch rechristened USS Intrepid, thus deceiving the guards on Philadelphia to float close enough to board her. Decatur’s men stormed the ship and overpowered the Tripolitan sailors. With fire support from the American warships, the Marines set fire to Philadelphia, denying her use by the enemy.
On arrival at Gibraltar on July 1, Commodore Dale learned of the “declaration” of war with Tripoli. During the next few months, squadron vessels blocked two Tripolitan corsairs in Gibraltar, delivered goods and messages in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, escorted American merchant ships, and briefly blockaded Tripoli harbor. In the only real action that year, the schooner Enterprize engaged and easily defeated the smaller, 14-gun ‘Tripoli’ off the coast of Malta on 1 August.
In his annual address to Congress at the end of the year, Jefferson reported on the demands of the pasha, concluded that “the style of the demand admitted but one answer,” and described the action taken to date. That action had been taken without any consultation with Congress, but the president now asked for formal and expanded power to deal with Barbary. Two months later Congress passed an act authorizing him to instruct naval commanders to seize Tripolitan goods and vessels, and to commission privateers to aid in the effort.
During the following three years the pasha maintained his demands. The US, rotating ships and crews, maintained its naval presence in the Mediterranean as well as its diplomatic. In 1802, Jefferson was reportedly of the view “that the time is come when negotiations may advantageously take place.” He was to be disappointed. Tripolitan corsairs evaded the blockade. US merchantmen were captured. Most escaped but one was carried into port. The five Americans on it were quickly ransomed. In Algiers, US Consul General Richard O’Brien sarcastically remarked without comment: “It is asserted that there are at sea, at present, six sail of Tripoline corsairs and it is asserted that the frigates of the United States & those of Sweden are blockading Tripoli.” The blockade didn’t stop Tripoli’s trade with neighbors, but did interfere with it, and the other rulers sided with the pasha. The possibility of Tunis and/or Morocco entering the war became a serious concern.
A new commodore for the Mediterranean squadron was named in 1803, Captain Edward Preble. He’d barely arrived when told that Morocco was at war with America and Moroccan corsairs were looking for American merchantmen. Commodore Preble first dealt with Morocco, which took a month. Preble attacked Tripoli on 14 July 1804, in a series of inconclusive battles, including an unsuccessful attack attempting to use Intrepid under Captain Richard Somers as a fire ship, packed with explosives and sent to enter Tripoli harbor, where she would destroy herself and the enemy fleet. The Intrepid was destroyed, possibly by enemy gunfire, before achieving her goal. Somers and his entire crew died. With four American navy warships in Tangier harbor the troublesome issues were resolved peaceably until the frigate Philadelphia ran aground near Tripoli in October. The pasha imprisoned the 307-man crew and refloated and repaired the stricken vessel. Before they could use it, though, on February 16, 1804, a US navy team of 74 volunteers under Lt. Stephen Decatur slipped into Tripoli harbor after dark and set fires on board that totally destroyed the Philadelphia. After disguising himself and his men as Maltese sailors, Decatur’s force sailed into Tripoli harbor and boarded the Philadelphia, guarded by Tripolitans quickly overpowered by the Americans. After setting fire to the frigate, Decatur and his men escaped without loss of life. Boatswain Mate Ruben James was seriously wounded during hand-to-hand combat; despite his wounds, or perhaps because of them, James put himself between an attacking pirate and the commander of the raid, Decatur, who remained uninjured thanks to James. The Philadelphia exploded when its gunpowder reserve was lit by spreading fire. Famed British Admiral Horatio Nelson hailed the exploit as the “most bold and daring act of the age,” and Decatur was promoted to captain. Ruben James recovered from his wounds and continued to serve for another 32 years.
The subsequent Battle of Derna was the first land battle of the United States on foreign soil, after the American Revolutionary War, and perhaps the first covert overseas action by the USA.
From Wikipedia:
A turning point in the war was the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, a former Army captain who used the title of “general”, and US Marine Corps 1st Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon led a force of eight US Marines and five hundred mercenaries—Greeks from Crete, Arabs, and Berbers—on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt, to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. This was the first time the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. The action is memorialized in a line of the Marines' Hymn—"the shores of Tripoli". The capturing of the city gave American negotiators leverage in securing the return of hostages and the end of the war.
Wearied of the blockade and raids, and now under threat of a continued advance on Tripoli proper and a scheme to restore his deposed older brother Hamet Karamanli as ruler, Yusuf Karamanli signed a treaty ending hostilities on 10 June 1805. Article 2 of the treaty reads: “The Bashaw of Tripoli shall deliver up to the American squadron now off Tripoli, all the Americans in his possession; and all the subjects of the Bashaw of Tripoli now in the power of the United States of America shall be delivered up to him; and as the number of Americans in possession of the Bashaw of Tripoli amounts to three hundred persons, more or less; and the number of Tripolino subjects in the power of the Americans to about, one hundred more or less; The Bashaw of Tripoli shall receive from the United States of America, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, as a payment for the difference between the prisoners herein mentioned.”
In agreeing to pay a ransom of $60,000 for the American prisoners, the Jefferson administration drew a distinction between paying tribute and paying ransom. At the time, some argued that buying sailors out of slavery was a fair exchange to end the war. William Eaton, however, remained bitter for the rest of his life about the treaty, feeling that his efforts had been squandered by the American emissary from the U.S. Department of State, diplomat Tobias Lear. Eaton and others felt that the capture of Derna should have been used as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of all American prisoners without having to pay ransom. Furthermore, Eaton believed the honor of the United States had been compromised when it abandoned Hamet Karamanli after promising to restore him as leader of Tripoli. Eaton's complaints generally went unheard, especially as attention turned to the strained international relations which would ultimately lead to the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from the area in 1807 and to the War of 1812.
The First Barbary War was beneficial to the reputation of the United States’ military command and war mechanism, which had been up to that time relatively untested. The First Barbary War showed that America could execute a war far from home, and that American forces had the cohesion to fight together as Americans rather than separately as Georgians, New Yorkers, etc. The United States Navy and Marines became a permanent part of the American government and American history, and Decatur returned to the U.S. as its first post-revolutionary war hero.
However, the more immediate problem of Barbary piracy was not fully settled. By 1807, Algiers had gone back to taking American ships and seamen hostage. Distracted by the preludes to the War of 1812, the U.S. was unable to respond to the provocation until 1815, with the Second Barbary War, in which naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the U.S.
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In 1805 Marines stormed Tripoli’s fortress at the town of Derna.
Eaton helped the ex-pasha Hamet Karamanli, hated brother of the current ruler of Tripoli, Yusuf Pasha, put together a collection of 400 armed Arab and Greek irregular mercenaries under a handful of disparate leaders. Eaton, Hamet, and several marines marched their “army” nearly 500 miles through the desert along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and, on April 27, 1805, they captured the town of Derne, some miles east of Benghazi. The Argus and two sister ships supplied them with provisions along their march and actively supported them in the taking of Derne (where Hamet had been governor three years before under his brother Yusuf). In the meantime, the American blockade of Tripoli had been maintained through the winter and spring.
The clandestinely recruited mercenaries, promised supplies and money when they reached the Derna, had proven problematic during the 50-day trek. Eaton quickly became worried over the strained relationship between the Greek Orthodox–Christian Greeks and the roughly 200 to 300 Muslim Arab and Turkish mercenaries. The expedition’s supplies were dwindling with Eaton reporting that soon, “Our only provisions [are] a handful of rice and two biscuits a day”. Some Arab recruits made a desperate raid on the supply wagon, but were beaten back by Marines and a few Greek artilleryman, who used the expedition’s lone cannon. Mutiny continued to threaten the the expedition: between March 10 and March 18, Arab camel drivers mutinied before reaching the sanctuary of the Massouah Castle. From March 22 to March 30, other Arabs under Sheik el Tahib staged mutinies. By April 8, when he crossed the border into Libya/Tripoli, Eaton had quelled these mutinies, and late in April they reached the port city of Bomba, some miles up the coast from Derna, where US Navy warships under Commodore Barron and Captain Hull were waiting. Eaton received fresh supplies and money to pay the mercenaries, who nevertheless proved hesitant under enemy musket fire. Eason realized a charge was the only way to regain the initiative. Leading it, he was seriously wounded in the wrist by a musket-ball. On the Argus, Captain Hull saw the Americans and mercenaries were “gaining ground very fast though a heavy fire of Musquetry [sic] was constantly kept upon them.” The ships ceased fire to allow the charge to continue. Eaton reported that O’Bannon with his Marines and Greeks “pass’d through a shower of Musketry from the Walls of houses, took possession of the Battery”. The defenders fled, leaving their cannons loaded and ready to fire. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the battery, and Eaton turned the captured guns on the city. Hamet’s force had seized the governor's palace and secured the western part of the city. Many of the defenders of the harbor fortress fled through the town and ran into Hamet’s force. By 4:00 p.m. the entire city had fallen, and for the first time in history, an American flag flew over fortifications in the Old World. Casualties during the fighting for the Americans were two killed and three wounded, while those among the Christian/Greek mercenaries were nine killed or wounded. Muslim Turkish/Arab mercenary casualties are unknown, as are those of the defenders. The mercenaries were quietly sent on off.
Tripoli still had 24 warships and got $60,000 for US the US hostages. It also now had an alliance with Britain, which had recently expelled the French from Egypt and taken control of Malta; Britain bought salt beef from Tripoli to supply its navy. The 1798 Battle of the Nile had destroyed most of the French navy. US/Britain sibling rivalry meant the US had to start developing more manufacture at home, but how was the rest of the ‘civilized’ world to display its distinction from barbarism without beaver-skin top-hats, whalebone corsets and tobacco? Besides, “It’s glorious to be rich,” as the great egalitarian Ding Shopping put it much later. The US had plenty of trees, ship-builders and young men, and little choice to be its own 800 pound gorilla if its gentlefolk were to enjoy luxury.
When news of the Philadelphia's loss reached America, Jefferson and his colleagues began looking for a way to send at least two more frigates to the Mediterranean. Congress rallied behind the president and the navy, approving a new tax and new expenditures for the war. After initial political and public criticism of the president due to the devastating loss, widespread public support was stimulated by Stephen Decatur’s successful stealth mission under Tripoli’s guns.
Lear sailed from Syracuse for Tripoli on May 24. Negotiations began shortly after his arrival, preliminary articles were agreed June 3, and the American captives from the Philadelphia were embarked on US vessels June 4. The final document was signed on the tenth. It involved neither payment for peace nor annual tribute. Based on the difference between the numbers of captives held on the two sides, ransom of $60,000 was agreed, well below the limit given Lear. Far to the east, the Americans, Hamet, and his close associates left Derne on board American naval vessels June 12. The Senate ratified the treaty April 12, 1806.
The conclusion of the war in 1805 set off a wave of national pride among Americans, inspiring artwork and patriotic songs. But the circumstances under which peace was achieved gave President Jefferson’s political opponents ammunition to criticize his decisions. The Federalists championed the cause of William Eaton, who complained that the American navy had abandoned Hamet Qaramanli and Eaton's plan to reinstall him as pasha. Eaton felt that if his plan had been carried through, the United States would have won a more glorious victory.
Jefferson formally addressed questions about his treatment of Hamet in a letter to the Senate. There, he reiterated and amplified the reasoning of Madison’s 1802 letters to Eaton and Cathcart: “we considered that concerted operations by those who have a common enemy were entirely justifiable, and might produce effects favorable to both, without binding either to guarantee the objects of the other,” explaining that “co-operation only was intended, and by no means an union of our object with the fortune of the Ex-bashaw.” Jefferson explained that the US government had never planned a full-scale land attack to place Hamet back in power, noting that Hamet himself had acknowledged that he was to carry out the land operations, while the U.S. undertook those by sea. The experience reaching and taking Derne made it clear that Hamet had little local backing and access to few resources. When, at the same time, an opportunity for peace presented itself, Tobias Lear seized it. Jefferson exonerated himself from playing any part in building up the expectations of Hamet, and he defended any unauthorized verbal commitments Eaton may have made, stating that, “In operations at such a distance, it becomes necessary to leave much to the discretion of the agents employed: but events may still turn up beyond the limits of that discretion. unable in such a case to consult his government, a zealous citizen will act, as he believes that would direct him, were it apprised of the circumstances, and will take on himself the responsibility. in all these cases, the purity & patriotism of the motives should shield the agent from blame, and even secure a sanction, where the error is not too injurious.”
The US attempted to provide some concessions for Hamet Qaramanli; Tobias Lear convinced the pasha to accept a clause that would require him to restore Hamet’s wife and family. Roughly a year after the US Senate had ratified the treaty, it was learned that Lear had added a secret clause that allowed the pasha to wait four years to return the family. That fact might well have prevented ratification of the treaty had the legislature been aware of it. Victory was tainted by questionable actions on the part of Lear and Eaton, as both had technically gone beyond the bounds of their instructions, but the reputation of Jefferson and his administration suffered minimal damage.
The Second Barbary War (1815), also known as the Algerine or Algerian War, was the second of two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Empire’s North African regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria known collectively as the Barbary states. The war between the Barbary States and the U.S. ended in 1815; the international dispute would effectively be ended the following year by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The war brought an end to the American practice of paying tribute to the pirate states and helped mark the beginning of the end of piracy in that region, which had been rampant in the days of Ottoman domination (16th-18thcenturies). Within decades, European powers built ever more sophisticated and expensive ships which the Barbary pirates could not match in numbers or technology.
In 1812, the new Dey of Algiers, Hajji Ali, rejected the American tribute negotiated in the 1795 treaty as insufficient and declared war; Algerian corsairs captured an American ship several weeks later. In accordance with an agreement between the Dey and British diplomats, the Algerian declaration was timed to coincide with the start of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. The war with Britain prevented the US Government from either confronting Algerian forces or ransoming US captives in Algiers. Once the Treaty of Ghent ended war with Britain, President Madison was able to request that Congress declare war on Algiers, which it did on March 3, 1815. The US Navy, greatly increased in size after the War of 1812, was able send an entire squadron, led by Commodore Stephen Decatur, to the Mediterranean.
When the US naval expedition arrived in Algiers, a new ruler, Dey Omar, was in power. Omar wished to restore order after several years of political instability and was acutely aware that he could no longer count on British support against the Americans. Decatur had already defeated two Algerian warships and captured hundreds of prisoners of war, and was in a favorable position for negotiation. Dey Omar reluctantly accepted the treaty proposed by Decatur that called for exchanging US and Algerian prisoners and ending the practices of tribute and ransom. Having defeated the most powerful Barbary State, Decatur got similar treaties from Tunis and Tripoli. In Tripoli, Decatur also secured from Pasha Qaramanli the release of all European captives. The US Senate ratified Decatur's Algerian treaty on December 5, 1815. Dey Omar repudiated the treaty, but another US squadron arrived after a combined Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers. A new treaty was offered which offered essentially the same provisions as the old one. The Barbary States, didn’t capture any more US ships, but resumed raids, which, despite punitive British bombardments, didn’t end until French conquest of Algeria in 1830.
Following the War of 1812 two naval squadrons under Commodores Decatur and Bainbridge returned to the Mediterranean. Diplomacy backed by resolute force soon brought the rulers of Barbary to terms and gained wide spread respect for the new American nation. Decatur obtained treaties which eliminated the United States paying tribute. In the years immediately after the Napoleonic wars, which ended in 1815, European powers forced an end to piracy and payment of tribute in the Mediterranean. Algiers and Tunis became colonies of France in 1830 and 1881 respectively; Tripoli returned to the control of the Ottoman Empire in 1835. In 1911, taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the fading Ottoman Empire, Italy assumed control of Tripoli. Europeans held control of eastern North Africa until the mid-20th century, and “Western” warships still ensure European dominance of the Mediterranean.
From “A Traveller’s History of North Africa” by Barnaby Rogerson:
“Pierre Deval, the French consul in Algiers, had been responsible for a serious breach of Algerian sovereignity by fortifying the French trading fondouks at Bone and La Calle. He had also arrogantly refused even to discuss the debts of France (stretching back to 1798) whose armies had been supplied with Algerian wheat. At an audience on 29 April 1827, Dey Hussein III (1818-30) flicked the face of this arrogant consul with his fly-whisk.
This breach of protocol was fanned into a national insult by a French government desperate to find a foreign scapegoat for troubles at home. The French prime minister, Polignac, having failed with a naval blockade, decided on invasion, ostensibly as part of Britain and France’s joint anti-corsair campaign. On 14 June 1830 a French army of 37,0000 landed and advanced on the city of Algiers. The dey had formally surrendered on 5 July and the city was looted profitably, more than covering the cost of the whole venture.”
An 800 pound canon may be far more powerful than a fly-whisk, but in retrospect, it’s hard to accept colonialization as a “Mission to Civilize” – as the French had the audacity to call it.
Bring a bigger gorilla.
What is a barbarian?
Someone who’s social pyramid doesn’t provide competition for an 800 pound gorilla.
What is a Berber? A North African “barbarian” – many have light eyes, reddish hair and Caucasian features. They were associated with the derivation of the terms Barbary pirates and Barbary Wars, despite for the most part not being among the costal peoples involved in those affairs. If that seems confused, well, it is, but that’s just how prejudice works.
Hardly had the USA formed when it found need for external trade. The new government, such as it was, quickly became handmaiden to various gentlemen it saw capable of managing said trade (largely in non-essentials). But privateering in the Caribbean and Mediterranean Seas, and also the eastern Atlantic, were a problem. The biggest problem was from rulers on the Maghreb ‘Barbary Coast’ profiting from a kind of protection racket. The US initiated a series of treaties, the Barbary Treaties, with Morocco (1786), Algiers (1795), Tripoli (1797) and Tunis (1797), all of them more than once. Joel Barlow, who’d been chaplain in the Revolutionary Army and knew George Washington and Alex Hamilton, was made consul-general to ‘the Barbary states’ (‘barbarian’ states) of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis. He dealt with the text of various treaties (including the famous or infamous, depending on how you stand on separation of church and state) Treaty of Tripoli. Commissioner Plenipotentiary (and Minister to the Kingdom of Spain in Madrid) of the US, David Humphreys, was to establish a treaty with Tripoli, and assigned Joel Barlow and Joseph Donaldson to broker it. It was Barlow who certified the signatures on the Arabic original (and the English copy). Captain Richard O’Brien, USN, brought the negotiated goods; Consul James Leander Cathcart delivered the final payment for that first treaty.
The ‘Barbary Wars’ were mostly undeclared wars. In two main armed conflicts, the US and Sweden fought the ‘Barbary’ states, nominally parts of the Ottoman Empire, including Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli) in the very late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Swedes began war with Tripoli in 1800, and were soon joined by the Americans, as the ‘Barbary pirates’ (a kind of home defense force) demanded tribute from American merchant vessels in the Mediterranean. If they failed to pay, corsairs would attack ships, confiscate goods, and often enslave crew members while holding them for ransom. Maghrebi states would focus on a country’s shipping for a year, then while negotiating pay-off, move on to that of another country, until completing their roster and starting over. As well as Sweden, Denmark, Holland, the Italian states, Spain and Portugal suffered; payoffs and greater power kept British and French shipping safer. Between 1 and 1.25 million Europeans were captured and sold as slaves between the 16th and 19th centuries. Prisoners were able to obtain wealth and property, along with achieving status beyond that of a slave. An example is James Leander Cathcart, who rose to the highest position a Christian slave could achieve in Algeria: , adviser to the Bey (Ottoman governor). English Captain John Ward claimed conversion to Islam and stayed a captain. Scottish Peter Leslie (aka Murad Rais) amd Dutchman Simon Danser are other examples. Most captives just did hard labor, sometimes under poor conditions that exposed them to vermin and disease. As word of their treatment reached home, through freed captives’ narratives and letters, citizens pushed for government action to stop the piracy.
In 1784 Congress appointed Jefferson, John Adams, and Benjamin Franklin as peace commissioners to negotiate treaties of amity and commerce with the principal states of Europe and the Mediterranean — including the ‘Barbary’ states. They quickly learned that Europeans made peace with the Maghreb powers through treaties and annual payments of tribute — often called annuities. The merchant vessels of any country without treaties were at the mercy of state-sponsored maritime marauders called corsairs, often mislabeled pirates. Typically pirates claim no national allegiance (although some English ones did).
In 1794, Congress appropriated $800,000 for the release of American prisoners and for a peace treaty with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. On September 5, 1795, negotiator Joseph Donaldson signed a peace treaty with the Dey of Algiers for the US, that included payment of $642,500 in silver coinage for release of American captives, and gifts for the Dey’s court and family. An additional, indefinite, yearly tribute of $21,600 in shipbuilding supplies and ammunition would be given. The treaty got 115 American sailors held captive by the Dey released.
Washington appointed Humphreys Commissioner Plenipotentiary on March 30, 1795; on February 10, 1796, Humphreys appointed Barlow and Joseph Donaldson as “Junior Agents” to forge a “Treaty of Peace and Friendship” with Tripoli. It was authored by Barlow, an ardent Jeffersonian republican, signed in Tripoli on November 4, 1796, then certified at Algiers (for a third-party witness) on January 3, 1797, and ratified by the US Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, taking effect June 10, 1797, with the signature of President John Adams. It was the first treaty between the USA and Tripoli (now Libya), designed to secure commercial shipping rights and protect US ships in the Mediterranean from ‘privateers’ under Maghreb protection. A treaty was also concluded with Tunis, in 1797, and soon after, US consuls were appointed for each North African state.
The official treaty was in Arabic, and a translated version by Consul-General Barlow was ratified by the US on June 10, 1797. Article 11 of the treaty was said to have not been part of the original Arabic version of the treaty; in its place is a letter from the Dey of Algiers to the Pasha of Tripoli. However, it is the English text which was ratified by Congress. There is no clear reason to suppose that Barlow knew a word of Arabic before his appointment. The Treaty, often cited in discussions of the role of religion in US government, in Article 11 of the English language version states that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” That isn’t in the Arabic version.
Barlow, who had previously published his “Advice to the Privileged Orders”, may have inserted it for the benefit and edification of those back home, without feeling it to offer much of significance to Arabic speakers already well aware of the true extent of US Christianity. It may be significant that Barlow surely knew that the land he grew up on was procured with funds from corsair “privateering” – much as I do at over twice the remove. And that somehow within a decade of working on the treaty he’d mysteriously gone from being cash-shy to being a VERY wealthy man (with ten ships in his wife’s name).
The treaty was broken by Tripoli, resulting in the ‘First Barbary War’ – in which the US once bombarded Tripoli from beyond retaliatory range, with loss of only one man (to heat stroke). I see this as but another instance of the purportedly superior imposing on others in their own homes while simultaneously casting aspersions and accusations against them (with a result of later feeling need to bemoan sense of alienation and constant fear), acting out need to beat our chests and roar out like a big gorilla asserting dominance.
The US eventually defeated Tripoli with a combined naval and land assault by the Marine Corps, and a new, superseding treaty, the Treaty of Peace and Amity, signed in 1805, included ransom for American prisoners, but no provisions for tribute.
President Adams’ signing statement:
Now be it known, That I John Adams, President of the United States of America, having seen and considered the said Treaty do, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, accept, ratify, and confirm the same, and every clause and article thereof. And to the End that the said Treaty may be observed, and performed with good Faith on the part of the United States, I have ordered the premises to be made public; And I do hereby enjoin and require all persons bearing office civil or military within the United States, and all other citizens or inhabitants thereof, faithfully to observe and fulfill the said Treaty and every clause and article thereof.
After Adams sent Barlow’s treaty to the Senate for ratification in May 1797, the entire treaty was read aloud on the Senate floor, and copies were printed for every Senator. A committee considered the treaty and recommended ratification. Twenty-three of the thirty-two sitting Senators were present for the June 7th vote which unanimously approved ratification.
Before anyone in the US saw the Treaty, its required payments, in the form of goods and money, had been made in part. Barlow explained: “The present writing done by our hand and delivered to the American Captain O'Brien makes known that he has delivered to us forty thousand Spanish dollars,-thirteen watches of gold, silver & pinsbach,-five rings, of which three of diamonds, one of saphire and one with a watch in it, One hundred & forty piques of cloth, and four caftans of brocade,-and these on account of the peace concluded with the Americans.” This was an incomplete listing according to the Pasha of Tripoli; also, an additional $18,000 was paid by the American Consul James Leander Cathcart on April 10, 1799.
It wasn’t until that was delivered that the Pasha of Tripoli accepted the treaty as official. In a letter to President Adams dated 15 April, 1799, the Pasha declared, “Whereby we have consummated the Peace which shall, on our side, be inviolate, provided You are Willing to treat us as You do other Regencies, without any difference being made between Us. Which is the whole of what We have, at present, to say to You, wishing you at the same time the most unlimited prosperity.” The Treaty of Tripoli (Treaty of Peace and Friendship between the United States of America and the Bey and Subjects of Tripoli of Barbary), authored by Joel Barlow, was witnessed at Algiers 4 November 1796, ratified by the United States Senate unanimously without debate on June 7, 1797, supposedly to take effect June 10, 1797, with the signature of President Adams. Although there were some clarity of communication issues, the treaty freed at least 83 American sailors (sometimes “over a hundred” is claimed).
When Thomas Jefferson became President in 1801, he refused to pay tribute and sent a fleet to the Mediterranean which bombarded fortified cities in present-day Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. Promises and concessions were made, and some safe passage occurred, but normal policy was to attack shipping from a different country each year, usually giving about 7 to 12 years between pay-offs. James Madison, Jefferson’s successor, directed military forces for a second war in 1815, shortly after the conclusion of the War of 1812.
The Maghreb corsairs, privateers who operated from primarily from the ports of Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, were ‘uncivilized’ Muslims with relatives who’d lived in a high state of civilization in Iberia for centuries… they hunted weaker ships primarily throughout the Mediterranean, but also south along West Africa’s Atlantic seaboard and even to the eastern coast of South America, and also as far as Iceland. They raided European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Iceland. This is usually cited without reference to those ‘raided’ people having done plenty of raiding themselves, hardly all in the far past.
During the Crusades (1095-1295), Muslim pirates operating from bases in North Africa plundered ships carrying Crusaders on their way to plunder Muslims, and sold Christian invaders into slavery. By the 16th century, Hapsburg Spain and the Ottoman Turks were pitted against each other. Piracy, which for both Christians and Muslims was a normal part of conflict between opposing powers, lured adventurers from all over to Maghribi coastal towns and islands. Among them was Khair ad Din, called Barbarossa, who in 1510 seized Algiers on the pretext of defending it from the Spaniards. Barbarossa subsequently recognized the suzerainty of the Ottoman sultan over territory he controlled and was made the sultan’s regent in the Maghrib; thus some claim the term “Barbary” derives from Barbarossa (“red beard” – like a much earlier “Holy Roman Emperor’) and not from ‘barbarian’ (ancient Greeks thought non-Greek language sounded like “bar bar bar” - and that is the ACTUAL derivation of that term).
In May, 1801, Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli of Tripoli declared war on the US; the US didn’t bother to respond in kind except to blockade the city, but there was fear that other ‘Barbary’ powers would join against the US, so the US sent naval squadrons into the Mediterranean under the slogan of “Millions for defense, but not one cent for tribute!” A few bitterly contested gunboat actions resulted, but the US had the bigger guns, and prevailed.
Modern capitalism began 200 years before the friction between Maghreb and European mariners. For a century, Catholic Iberians had dominated world trade, starting simultaneously with their expulsion of Muslims (and Jews). The Dutch, pushed this way then that by the rival Iberian powers, found inclination to sever relations. Merchants pooled resources to form the Company of the Far East and cut out Portuguese middlemen. This quickly transformed into the Dutch East India Company and gave rise to the Amsterdam stock market, of tulip craze fame (1636-7), the first recorded speculative bubble. Despite the tulip speculation folly, the economy thrived. Merchants started using windmills to saw lumber into precisely measured boards for quick ship-building, and the Dutch ruled the waves and trade for centuries, only gradually ousted by the British East India Company (and others), after the success of British ‘privateers’ (pirates) in the Americas. By 1800 business was the tail wagging the dog; four decades later, as shown by the First Opium War, it was the dog’s owner.
Before Barlow’s appointment, the young USA was spending 20% of its national budget on ‘protection money’ in order that its rich could do business in the Mediterranean. Today a far, far higher percentage goes for protection of big business. Business is much better at absorbing and utilizing new information than government, but a bit less able to elicit faith in its altruism, despite the extreme gullibility that’s apparently part of our condition. Business trade cares little to nothing for the guest/host hospitality and gratitude obligations that form essential components central to ‘barbarian’ culture, and keep interactions respectful. So now, as is well known, we’ve got no respect.
The Barbary, or, better, Maghreb, states, de jure possessions of the Ottoman Empire, were de facto independent. Realizing in the 1780s that American vessels had lost the protection of the British navy, corsairs began seizing US ships in the Mediterranean. Having disbanded its Continental Navy and thus with no seagoing military force, the new government agreed in 1786 to pay tribute to stop the attacks. Congress voted to build six heavy frigates and establish the United States Navy, in order to stop those attacks and demands for money; by 1797, the US had paid out $1.25 million and by 1799 was $140,000 in arrears to Algiers and $150,000 to Tripoli.
This state-supported ‘piracy’ was hardly unusual. European states often commissioned privateers to attack enemy shipping. Great Britain and France paid tribute, and Maghrebi leaders didn’t challenge their navies. Prior to independence, American colonists had protection from the British Navy, but with independence, lost that, and in 1785, Dey Muhammad of Algiers declared war on the United States and captured several American ships. Congress was unable to raise enough funds to satisfy the Dey, but Portugal was at war with Algiers, and blocked Algerian ships at the Straits of Gibraltar, so US ships in the Atlantic remained safe.
Then in 1793 a brief Portuguese-Algerian truce exposed American merchant ships to capture, forcing the US, which had thus far only managed to conclude a treaty with Morocco, to engage in negotiations with the other powers. The capture of a US ship carrying protection money to the Dey of Algiers alerted Pasha Yusuf Karamanli to a new source for wealth, and soon he was promised $52,000 – but, warned by Europeans that this was too much, the US tried to back out.
The adoption of the Constitution in 1789 gave the US Government the power to levy taxes and to raise and maintain armed forces, powers which had been lacking. In 1794, in response to Algerian seizures of American ships, Congress authorized construction of the first 6 ships of the US Navy.
Barbary corsairs led attacks on US merchant shipping to extort ransom for the lives of captured sailors, and ultimately tribute to avoid further attacks, as they did with the various European states. Before the Treaty of Paris, which formalized the United States’ independence from Great Britain, US shipping was protected by France during the revolutionary years under the Treaty of Alliance (1778–83). Although the treaty doesn’t mention the Barbary States by name, it refers to common enemies between both the US and France. As such, piracy against US shipping only began to occur after the American Revolution, when the US government lost its protection under the Treaty of Alliance.
This lapse of protection by a European power led to the first American merchant ship being seized after the Treaty of Paris. On 11 October 1784, Moroccan pirates seized the brigantine Betsey. The Spanish government negotiated freedom for the captured ship and crew; however, Spain advised to offer tribute to prevent further attacks against merchant ships. US Minister to France Thomas Jefferson decided to send envoys to Morocco and Algeria to purchase treaties and the freedom of the captured sailors held by Algeria. Morocco was the first Barbary Coast State to sign a treaty with the US, in June 1786. This treaty formally ended Moroccan attacks against American shipping interests. Specifically, article six of the treaty states that if any Americans captured by Moroccans or other Barbary Coast States docked at a Moroccan city, they would be set free and come under the protection of the Moroccan State.
American diplomatic action with Algeria and the other Maghreb states was much less productive than with Morocco. Algeria captured the US schooner Maria on 25 July 1785, and Dauphin a week later. All four ‘Barbary Coast’ states demanded $660,000 each. However, envoys were given only an allocated budget of $40,000 to achieve peace. Diplomatic talks to reach a reasonable sum for tribute or for the ransom of the captured sailors struggled to make any headway, and the crews of Maria and Dauphin remained enslaved for over a decade, soon joined by crews of other ships.
Just before Jefferson’s inauguration in 1801, Congress passed naval legislation that, among other things, provided for six frigates that “shall be officered and manned as the President of the United States may direct.” In the event of a declaration of war on the United States by the Barbary powers, these ships were to “protect our commerce and chastise their insolence - by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and vessels wherever you shall find them.” On Jefferson’s inauguration as president in 1801, Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha (or Bashaw) of Tripoli, demanded $225,000 from the new administration (In 1800, federal revenues totaled a little over $10 million). Jefferson refused the demand. So, on 10 May 1801, the Pasha cut down the flagstaff in front of the US Consulate, which was taken as a declaration war.
Jefferson had inherited a national debt he wanted to eliminate, but the problem of Tripoli couldn’t be ignored. Which would cost less, tribute or war? The president argued in favor of the latter; but war was looking more difficult and costly than anticipated. “[T]hey know they cannot meet us with force any more than they could France, Spain or England,” he wrote from Monticello at the end of March. “[T]heir system is a war of little expence to them which must put the great nations to a greater expence than the presents which would buy it off.” He was against buying peace, but one had to be practical as well as principled. He asked his cabinet whether we should purchase peace with Tripoli, and it was agreed that buying peace should be an option. Secretary Madison wrote Cathcart: “… it is thought best that you should not be tied down to a refusal of presents whether to be included in the peace, or to be made from time to time during its continuance, especially as in the latter case the title to the presents will be a motive to its continuance.” He was given explicit dollar limits and reminded that any engagements should be kept smaller if possible.
Jefferson believed that America wanted, indeed needed, to be a trading nation, and “to carry as much as possible” of the luxury items trade depended on in its own vessels. “But,” he wrote James Monroe, "this will require a protecting force on the sea. Otherwise the smallest powers in Europe, every one which possesses a single ship of the line may dictate to us, and enforce their demands by captures on our commerce. Some naval force then is necessary if we mean to be commercial.” However, for the task then before him, he added, “if it be decided that their peace shall be bought it shall engage my most earnest endeavours.” And that would be the approach John Adams favored. He believed that paying tribute would be more economical and easier than convincing the citizenry to fund building a navy.
Congress decided peace could be bought, and authorized $80,000 for negotiations. Commissioners sent American consul Thomas Barclay to Morocco and Connecticut sea captain John Lamb to Algiers. In Morocco the draft treaty Barclay carried with him was accepted with only minor changes. Jefferson, Adams, and Congress were satisfied that the Morocco treaty made US vessels safe from Moroccan corsairs and there was no call for future tribute.
The offer of an equal treaty didn’t work elsewhere in the Maghreb. Algiers was much more dependent than Morocco on corsairing, and much less amenable to peace. US commissioners learned that two American ships had been captured by Algerian corsairs; John Lamb was told to negotiate ransom for the captives, as well as a peace treaty, which proved impossible within the limited budget approved. US vessels in the Mediterranean had to sail in convoy with European ships, often with Portuguese naval protection, and flew European flags illegally. In the Atlantic, the Morocco treaty provided protection from Moroccan corsairs and the Portuguese navy kept Maghreb corsairs in the Mediterranean, but that changed with an Algiers-Portugal treaty in 1793; in a very few months Algerian corsairs seized eleven US merchant vessels, 10 in the Atlantic, with over 100 crewmen and passengers.
By 1801 tensions with Tripoli ledinflammed Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli’s convinction that the US was treating him less well than they did other rulers. He was right, but Tunis and Algiers had negotiated better treaties. In October 1800, five months before Jefferson took office, US consul in Tripoli James Cathcart summarized the long, rambling messages he’d been sending the secretary of state and others for a year or more: in short, he said, the pasha’s message is “if you don't give me a present I will forge a pretext to capture your defenseless merchantmen; he likewise says that he expects an answer as soon as possible, and that any delay on our side will only serve to injure our own interests.”
A week after Cathcart’s letter was written in October 1800, a Tripoli corsair took another US ship. The pasha immediately ordered the ship and crew released and dismissed the corsair captain. His explained that “before he would take any measures whatsoever against the United States” he would wait for an answer to his letter of five months earlier (May 25, 1800). Later, however, in a meeting with Cathcart, Captain Carpenter of the Catharine, and local officials, the pasha declared that he wanted money from the US, that he’d wait six more months for an acceptable reply to his letter, and that he would declare war on the US if the answer didn’t arrive in that time, or was unsatisfactory. Reporting on that ultimatum, Cathcart explained to the secretary of state why the US owed nothing to the pasha and how the pasha was regularly at war with some country or other from which he would demand beneficial negotiations (the pasha was then at war with Sweden, which would soon agree to pay annual tribute and ransom for 131 captives; 14 Swedish merchantmen had been seized by Tripolitan corsairs since the angered pasha had broken an existing treaty and declared war a few months earlier).
Three months after Jefferson’s inauguration, a small squadron of three frigates and a schooner sailed for the Mediterranean under Commodore Richard Dale to protect American shipping, intimidate corsairs, “chastise their insolence — by sinking, burning or destroying their ships and Vessels wherever you shall find them”, and blockade the harbors of any who declared war on the US. Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli had already chopped down the flagpole at the US consulate in Tripoli – which was seen as a de facto declaration of war.
Before learning that Tripoli had thus declared war, Jefferson sent the three frigates and schooner, under the command of Commodore Richard Dale, with gifts and letters in attempt to maintain peace. However, in the event that war had been declared, Dale was instructed “to protect American ships and citizens against potential aggression.” Jefferson “insisted that he was “unauthorized by the constitution, without the sanction of Congress, to go beyond the line of defense.” He told Congress: “I communicate [to you] all material information on this subject, that in the exercise of this important function confided by the constitution to the legislature exclusively their judgment may form itself on a knowledge and consideration of every circumstance of weight.” Although Congress never voted on a formal declaration of war, it authorized the President to instruct the commanders of armed American vessels to seize all vessels and goods of the Pasha of Tripoli “and also to cause to be done all such other acts of precaution or hostility as the state of war will justify.” The American squadron joined a Swedish flotilla under Rudolf Cederström in blockading Tripoli.
On 31 May 1801, Commodore Edward Preble traveled to Messina, Sicily, to the court of King Ferdinand IV of the Kingdom of Naples. Naples was at war with Napoleon, but Ferdinand supplied the Americans with manpower, craftsmen, supplies, gunboats, mortar boats, and the ports of Messina, Syracuse, and Palermo to be used as naval bases for launching operations against Tripoli, a walled fortress city protected by 150 pieces of heavy artillery manned by 25,000 soldiers and assisted by a fleet of 10 ten-gunned brigs, 2 eight-gun schooners, two large galleys, and 19 gunboats.
In 1802, in response to Jefferson’s request for authority to deal with the pirates, Congress passed “An act for the protection of commerce and seamen of the United States against the Tripolitan cruisers,” authorizing the President to “employ such of the armed vessels of the United States as may be judged requisite... for protecting effectually the commerce and seamen thereof on the Atlantic Ocean, the Mediterranean and adjoining seas.” The statute authorized US ships to seize vessels belonging to the Bey of Tripoli, with the captured property distributed to those who brought the vessels into port. The US deployed many of the navy's best ships to the region throughout 1802.
In October 1803, Tripoli’s fleet captured USS Philadelphia intact after the frigate ran aground on a reef while patrolling Tripoli harbor. Efforts by the Americans to float the ship while under fire from shore batteries and Tripolitan Naval units failed. The ship, her captain, William Bainbridge, and all 301 officers and crew were taken ashore and held as well-cared-for hostages. A prison warder abused a cabin boy, and was executed for it. ThePhiladelphia was turned against the Americans and anchored in the harbor as a gun battery. On the night of 16 February 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small detachment of US Marines aboard the captured Tripolitan ketch rechristened USS Intrepid, thus deceiving the guards on Philadelphia to float close enough to board her. Decatur’s men stormed the ship and overpowered the Tripolitan sailors. With fire support from the American warships, the Marines set fire to Philadelphia, denying her use by the enemy.
On arrival at Gibraltar on July 1, Commodore Dale learned of the “declaration” of war with Tripoli. During the next few months, squadron vessels blocked two Tripolitan corsairs in Gibraltar, delivered goods and messages in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, escorted American merchant ships, and briefly blockaded Tripoli harbor. In the only real action that year, the schooner Enterprize engaged and easily defeated the smaller, 14-gun ‘Tripoli’ off the coast of Malta on 1 August.
In his annual address to Congress at the end of the year, Jefferson reported on the demands of the pasha, concluded that “the style of the demand admitted but one answer,” and described the action taken to date. That action had been taken without any consultation with Congress, but the president now asked for formal and expanded power to deal with Barbary. Two months later Congress passed an act authorizing him to instruct naval commanders to seize Tripolitan goods and vessels, and to commission privateers to aid in the effort.
During the following three years the pasha maintained his demands. The US, rotating ships and crews, maintained its naval presence in the Mediterranean as well as its diplomatic. In 1802, Jefferson was reportedly of the view “that the time is come when negotiations may advantageously take place.” He was to be disappointed. Tripolitan corsairs evaded the blockade. US merchantmen were captured. Most escaped but one was carried into port. The five Americans on it were quickly ransomed. In Algiers, US Consul General Richard O’Brien sarcastically remarked without comment: “It is asserted that there are at sea, at present, six sail of Tripoline corsairs and it is asserted that the frigates of the United States & those of Sweden are blockading Tripoli.” The blockade didn’t stop Tripoli’s trade with neighbors, but did interfere with it, and the other rulers sided with the pasha. The possibility of Tunis and/or Morocco entering the war became a serious concern.
A new commodore for the Mediterranean squadron was named in 1803, Captain Edward Preble. He’d barely arrived when told that Morocco was at war with America and Moroccan corsairs were looking for American merchantmen. Commodore Preble first dealt with Morocco, which took a month. Preble attacked Tripoli on 14 July 1804, in a series of inconclusive battles, including an unsuccessful attack attempting to use Intrepid under Captain Richard Somers as a fire ship, packed with explosives and sent to enter Tripoli harbor, where she would destroy herself and the enemy fleet. The Intrepid was destroyed, possibly by enemy gunfire, before achieving her goal. Somers and his entire crew died. With four American navy warships in Tangier harbor the troublesome issues were resolved peaceably until the frigate Philadelphia ran aground near Tripoli in October. The pasha imprisoned the 307-man crew and refloated and repaired the stricken vessel. Before they could use it, though, on February 16, 1804, a US navy team of 74 volunteers under Lt. Stephen Decatur slipped into Tripoli harbor after dark and set fires on board that totally destroyed the Philadelphia. After disguising himself and his men as Maltese sailors, Decatur’s force sailed into Tripoli harbor and boarded the Philadelphia, guarded by Tripolitans quickly overpowered by the Americans. After setting fire to the frigate, Decatur and his men escaped without loss of life. Boatswain Mate Ruben James was seriously wounded during hand-to-hand combat; despite his wounds, or perhaps because of them, James put himself between an attacking pirate and the commander of the raid, Decatur, who remained uninjured thanks to James. The Philadelphia exploded when its gunpowder reserve was lit by spreading fire. Famed British Admiral Horatio Nelson hailed the exploit as the “most bold and daring act of the age,” and Decatur was promoted to captain. Ruben James recovered from his wounds and continued to serve for another 32 years.
The subsequent Battle of Derna was the first land battle of the United States on foreign soil, after the American Revolutionary War, and perhaps the first covert overseas action by the USA.
From Wikipedia:
A turning point in the war was the Battle of Derna (April–May 1805). Ex-consul William Eaton, a former Army captain who used the title of “general”, and US Marine Corps 1st Lieutenant Presley O’Bannon led a force of eight US Marines and five hundred mercenaries—Greeks from Crete, Arabs, and Berbers—on a march across the desert from Alexandria, Egypt, to capture the Tripolitan city of Derna. This was the first time the United States flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. The action is memorialized in a line of the Marines' Hymn—"the shores of Tripoli". The capturing of the city gave American negotiators leverage in securing the return of hostages and the end of the war.
Wearied of the blockade and raids, and now under threat of a continued advance on Tripoli proper and a scheme to restore his deposed older brother Hamet Karamanli as ruler, Yusuf Karamanli signed a treaty ending hostilities on 10 June 1805. Article 2 of the treaty reads: “The Bashaw of Tripoli shall deliver up to the American squadron now off Tripoli, all the Americans in his possession; and all the subjects of the Bashaw of Tripoli now in the power of the United States of America shall be delivered up to him; and as the number of Americans in possession of the Bashaw of Tripoli amounts to three hundred persons, more or less; and the number of Tripolino subjects in the power of the Americans to about, one hundred more or less; The Bashaw of Tripoli shall receive from the United States of America, the sum of sixty thousand dollars, as a payment for the difference between the prisoners herein mentioned.”
In agreeing to pay a ransom of $60,000 for the American prisoners, the Jefferson administration drew a distinction between paying tribute and paying ransom. At the time, some argued that buying sailors out of slavery was a fair exchange to end the war. William Eaton, however, remained bitter for the rest of his life about the treaty, feeling that his efforts had been squandered by the American emissary from the U.S. Department of State, diplomat Tobias Lear. Eaton and others felt that the capture of Derna should have been used as a bargaining chip to obtain the release of all American prisoners without having to pay ransom. Furthermore, Eaton believed the honor of the United States had been compromised when it abandoned Hamet Karamanli after promising to restore him as leader of Tripoli. Eaton's complaints generally went unheard, especially as attention turned to the strained international relations which would ultimately lead to the withdrawal of the U.S. Navy from the area in 1807 and to the War of 1812.
The First Barbary War was beneficial to the reputation of the United States’ military command and war mechanism, which had been up to that time relatively untested. The First Barbary War showed that America could execute a war far from home, and that American forces had the cohesion to fight together as Americans rather than separately as Georgians, New Yorkers, etc. The United States Navy and Marines became a permanent part of the American government and American history, and Decatur returned to the U.S. as its first post-revolutionary war hero.
However, the more immediate problem of Barbary piracy was not fully settled. By 1807, Algiers had gone back to taking American ships and seamen hostage. Distracted by the preludes to the War of 1812, the U.S. was unable to respond to the provocation until 1815, with the Second Barbary War, in which naval victories by Commodores William Bainbridge and Stephen Decatur led to treaties ending all tribute payments by the U.S.
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In 1805 Marines stormed Tripoli’s fortress at the town of Derna.
Eaton helped the ex-pasha Hamet Karamanli, hated brother of the current ruler of Tripoli, Yusuf Pasha, put together a collection of 400 armed Arab and Greek irregular mercenaries under a handful of disparate leaders. Eaton, Hamet, and several marines marched their “army” nearly 500 miles through the desert along the southern shore of the Mediterranean and, on April 27, 1805, they captured the town of Derne, some miles east of Benghazi. The Argus and two sister ships supplied them with provisions along their march and actively supported them in the taking of Derne (where Hamet had been governor three years before under his brother Yusuf). In the meantime, the American blockade of Tripoli had been maintained through the winter and spring.
The clandestinely recruited mercenaries, promised supplies and money when they reached the Derna, had proven problematic during the 50-day trek. Eaton quickly became worried over the strained relationship between the Greek Orthodox–Christian Greeks and the roughly 200 to 300 Muslim Arab and Turkish mercenaries. The expedition’s supplies were dwindling with Eaton reporting that soon, “Our only provisions [are] a handful of rice and two biscuits a day”. Some Arab recruits made a desperate raid on the supply wagon, but were beaten back by Marines and a few Greek artilleryman, who used the expedition’s lone cannon. Mutiny continued to threaten the the expedition: between March 10 and March 18, Arab camel drivers mutinied before reaching the sanctuary of the Massouah Castle. From March 22 to March 30, other Arabs under Sheik el Tahib staged mutinies. By April 8, when he crossed the border into Libya/Tripoli, Eaton had quelled these mutinies, and late in April they reached the port city of Bomba, some miles up the coast from Derna, where US Navy warships under Commodore Barron and Captain Hull were waiting. Eaton received fresh supplies and money to pay the mercenaries, who nevertheless proved hesitant under enemy musket fire. Eason realized a charge was the only way to regain the initiative. Leading it, he was seriously wounded in the wrist by a musket-ball. On the Argus, Captain Hull saw the Americans and mercenaries were “gaining ground very fast though a heavy fire of Musquetry [sic] was constantly kept upon them.” The ships ceased fire to allow the charge to continue. Eaton reported that O’Bannon with his Marines and Greeks “pass’d through a shower of Musketry from the Walls of houses, took possession of the Battery”. The defenders fled, leaving their cannons loaded and ready to fire. O’Bannon raised the US flag over the battery, and Eaton turned the captured guns on the city. Hamet’s force had seized the governor's palace and secured the western part of the city. Many of the defenders of the harbor fortress fled through the town and ran into Hamet’s force. By 4:00 p.m. the entire city had fallen, and for the first time in history, an American flag flew over fortifications in the Old World. Casualties during the fighting for the Americans were two killed and three wounded, while those among the Christian/Greek mercenaries were nine killed or wounded. Muslim Turkish/Arab mercenary casualties are unknown, as are those of the defenders. The mercenaries were quietly sent on off.
Tripoli still had 24 warships and got $60,000 for US the US hostages. It also now had an alliance with Britain, which had recently expelled the French from Egypt and taken control of Malta; Britain bought salt beef from Tripoli to supply its navy. The 1798 Battle of the Nile had destroyed most of the French navy. US/Britain sibling rivalry meant the US had to start developing more manufacture at home, but how was the rest of the ‘civilized’ world to display its distinction from barbarism without beaver-skin top-hats, whalebone corsets and tobacco? Besides, “It’s glorious to be rich,” as the great egalitarian Ding Shopping put it much later. The US had plenty of trees, ship-builders and young men, and little choice to be its own 800 pound gorilla if its gentlefolk were to enjoy luxury.
When news of the Philadelphia's loss reached America, Jefferson and his colleagues began looking for a way to send at least two more frigates to the Mediterranean. Congress rallied behind the president and the navy, approving a new tax and new expenditures for the war. After initial political and public criticism of the president due to the devastating loss, widespread public support was stimulated by Stephen Decatur’s successful stealth mission under Tripoli’s guns.
Lear sailed from Syracuse for Tripoli on May 24. Negotiations began shortly after his arrival, preliminary articles were agreed June 3, and the American captives from the Philadelphia were embarked on US vessels June 4. The final document was signed on the tenth. It involved neither payment for peace nor annual tribute. Based on the difference between the numbers of captives held on the two sides, ransom of $60,000 was agreed, well below the limit given Lear. Far to the east, the Americans, Hamet, and his close associates left Derne on board American naval vessels June 12. The Senate ratified the treaty April 12, 1806.
The conclusion of the war in 1805 set off a wave of national pride among Americans, inspiring artwork and patriotic songs. But the circumstances under which peace was achieved gave President Jefferson’s political opponents ammunition to criticize his decisions. The Federalists championed the cause of William Eaton, who complained that the American navy had abandoned Hamet Qaramanli and Eaton's plan to reinstall him as pasha. Eaton felt that if his plan had been carried through, the United States would have won a more glorious victory.
Jefferson formally addressed questions about his treatment of Hamet in a letter to the Senate. There, he reiterated and amplified the reasoning of Madison’s 1802 letters to Eaton and Cathcart: “we considered that concerted operations by those who have a common enemy were entirely justifiable, and might produce effects favorable to both, without binding either to guarantee the objects of the other,” explaining that “co-operation only was intended, and by no means an union of our object with the fortune of the Ex-bashaw.” Jefferson explained that the US government had never planned a full-scale land attack to place Hamet back in power, noting that Hamet himself had acknowledged that he was to carry out the land operations, while the U.S. undertook those by sea. The experience reaching and taking Derne made it clear that Hamet had little local backing and access to few resources. When, at the same time, an opportunity for peace presented itself, Tobias Lear seized it. Jefferson exonerated himself from playing any part in building up the expectations of Hamet, and he defended any unauthorized verbal commitments Eaton may have made, stating that, “In operations at such a distance, it becomes necessary to leave much to the discretion of the agents employed: but events may still turn up beyond the limits of that discretion. unable in such a case to consult his government, a zealous citizen will act, as he believes that would direct him, were it apprised of the circumstances, and will take on himself the responsibility. in all these cases, the purity & patriotism of the motives should shield the agent from blame, and even secure a sanction, where the error is not too injurious.”
The US attempted to provide some concessions for Hamet Qaramanli; Tobias Lear convinced the pasha to accept a clause that would require him to restore Hamet’s wife and family. Roughly a year after the US Senate had ratified the treaty, it was learned that Lear had added a secret clause that allowed the pasha to wait four years to return the family. That fact might well have prevented ratification of the treaty had the legislature been aware of it. Victory was tainted by questionable actions on the part of Lear and Eaton, as both had technically gone beyond the bounds of their instructions, but the reputation of Jefferson and his administration suffered minimal damage.
The Second Barbary War (1815), also known as the Algerine or Algerian War, was the second of two wars fought between the United States and the Ottoman Empire’s North African regencies of Tripoli, Tunis, and Algeria known collectively as the Barbary states. The war between the Barbary States and the U.S. ended in 1815; the international dispute would effectively be ended the following year by the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. The war brought an end to the American practice of paying tribute to the pirate states and helped mark the beginning of the end of piracy in that region, which had been rampant in the days of Ottoman domination (16th-18thcenturies). Within decades, European powers built ever more sophisticated and expensive ships which the Barbary pirates could not match in numbers or technology.
In 1812, the new Dey of Algiers, Hajji Ali, rejected the American tribute negotiated in the 1795 treaty as insufficient and declared war; Algerian corsairs captured an American ship several weeks later. In accordance with an agreement between the Dey and British diplomats, the Algerian declaration was timed to coincide with the start of the War of 1812 between Britain and the United States. The war with Britain prevented the US Government from either confronting Algerian forces or ransoming US captives in Algiers. Once the Treaty of Ghent ended war with Britain, President Madison was able to request that Congress declare war on Algiers, which it did on March 3, 1815. The US Navy, greatly increased in size after the War of 1812, was able send an entire squadron, led by Commodore Stephen Decatur, to the Mediterranean.
When the US naval expedition arrived in Algiers, a new ruler, Dey Omar, was in power. Omar wished to restore order after several years of political instability and was acutely aware that he could no longer count on British support against the Americans. Decatur had already defeated two Algerian warships and captured hundreds of prisoners of war, and was in a favorable position for negotiation. Dey Omar reluctantly accepted the treaty proposed by Decatur that called for exchanging US and Algerian prisoners and ending the practices of tribute and ransom. Having defeated the most powerful Barbary State, Decatur got similar treaties from Tunis and Tripoli. In Tripoli, Decatur also secured from Pasha Qaramanli the release of all European captives. The US Senate ratified Decatur's Algerian treaty on December 5, 1815. Dey Omar repudiated the treaty, but another US squadron arrived after a combined Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers. A new treaty was offered which offered essentially the same provisions as the old one. The Barbary States, didn’t capture any more US ships, but resumed raids, which, despite punitive British bombardments, didn’t end until French conquest of Algeria in 1830.
Following the War of 1812 two naval squadrons under Commodores Decatur and Bainbridge returned to the Mediterranean. Diplomacy backed by resolute force soon brought the rulers of Barbary to terms and gained wide spread respect for the new American nation. Decatur obtained treaties which eliminated the United States paying tribute. In the years immediately after the Napoleonic wars, which ended in 1815, European powers forced an end to piracy and payment of tribute in the Mediterranean. Algiers and Tunis became colonies of France in 1830 and 1881 respectively; Tripoli returned to the control of the Ottoman Empire in 1835. In 1911, taking advantage of the power vacuum left by the fading Ottoman Empire, Italy assumed control of Tripoli. Europeans held control of eastern North Africa until the mid-20th century, and “Western” warships still ensure European dominance of the Mediterranean.
From “A Traveller’s History of North Africa” by Barnaby Rogerson:
“Pierre Deval, the French consul in Algiers, had been responsible for a serious breach of Algerian sovereignity by fortifying the French trading fondouks at Bone and La Calle. He had also arrogantly refused even to discuss the debts of France (stretching back to 1798) whose armies had been supplied with Algerian wheat. At an audience on 29 April 1827, Dey Hussein III (1818-30) flicked the face of this arrogant consul with his fly-whisk.
This breach of protocol was fanned into a national insult by a French government desperate to find a foreign scapegoat for troubles at home. The French prime minister, Polignac, having failed with a naval blockade, decided on invasion, ostensibly as part of Britain and France’s joint anti-corsair campaign. On 14 June 1830 a French army of 37,0000 landed and advanced on the city of Algiers. The dey had formally surrendered on 5 July and the city was looted profitably, more than covering the cost of the whole venture.”
An 800 pound canon may be far more powerful than a fly-whisk, but in retrospect, it’s hard to accept colonialization as a “Mission to Civilize” – as the French had the audacity to call it.
Labels: Algerian War, barbarians, Barbary Coast, Barbary Wars, Berber, corsairs, Dutch windmills, Joel Barlow, pirates, privateers, Thomas Jefferson, Tripoli
posted by Mythorelics | 3:11 AM
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