On the bedside reading table: "The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, The First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805". It looks like a good read, and it's a bit of history that recently has become timely again: America's first foray into global politics, U.S. Marines fighting in the desert in an early skirmish in a clash of civilizations.
But it looks like it's going to be told largely from the American point of view. That's fine, of course. But in terms of contemporary issues, the Britain of that time, newly confirmed as the world's great superpower by virtue of its naval might, offers the more interesting parallel to modern America.
The Barbary Coast ran 1,500 miles from the African side of the Straits of Gibraltar to the Gulf of Sirte in Libya. The rulers of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli nominally paid allegiance to the Ottoman sultan, but they were practically independent. Safe in their well-fortified port cities, with fundamentalist Islam as their guide and pretext, they sallied out into the sea and kidnapped Christians from Italy, Malta, Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica, as well as anyone they could take from any ship they could catch in the Mediterranean, including northern Europeans and Americans.
At one time, Algiers alone held as many as 25,000 white Christians as slaves. Wealthy captives usually could be ransomed. Others were enslaved, or held in chains, or tortured till they converted to Islam. Women who could not raise a ransom sometimes were raped and usually were married off to locals or sent to harems as concubines, after being fattened up.
The British Navy was incensed. In part, this was personal -- seamen were frequent victims of the corsairs. But in part it was awareness of the role a superpower ought to play in the world. The British military men knew they had the ability to destroy these impudent slave-states, but their government lacked the will.
Who held power in this government? Liberal evangelicals -- the two words were as firmly linked in that time and place as "conservative" and "fundamentalist" are in this. The mix of liberalism and Christianity was a potent force that accomplished much good in the world. Gertrude Himmelfarb's "Roads to Modernity" is an indispensible book that tells this story.
But the liberal evangelicals exhibited an early example -- perhaps the earliest I've seen -- of a quality that has weakened their successors on so many occasions: I call it the altruistic double standard.
Though William Wilberforce and the other liberal evangelical MPs campaigned ceaselessly to abolish the slave trade, they meant by that only the enslavement of blacks by whites. They exhibited a sort of inverted Darwinism -- doubly perverse -- and took no interest in Christian slavery that had for its targets people most like themselves.
Some British citizens pleaded with the government to stamp out the Barbary Coast pirates. Admiral Nelson wrote in 1799: "My blood boils that I cannot chastise these pirates. They could not show themselves in the Mediterranean did not our country permit. Never let us talk about the cruelty of the African slave-trade while we permit such a horrid war." But the government took no interest.
That's where the Americans came in. The young country was not yet powerful enough to tackle the problem on its own, but its aggressive approach aroused the British government by shame and example. America consistently refused to ransome captives with money and munitions, as the Europeans often did. This is the source of Jefferson's oft-quoted line, "Millions for defense, not one cent for tribute." After 1803, Washington and the Barbary states were at war, in effect. U.S. forces usually won the direct battles and forced the Muslim rulers to sign treaties which they promptly broke as soon as the American ships sailed out of sight.
In 1815, after making peace with Britain, America began sending expeditions to the Barbary Coast again, forcing the rulers to hand over American slaves (and Europeans sometimes) and pay fines.
The British finally were roused to action. On an August afternoon in 1816, the British Navy broke the power of Algiers, sank almost its entire fleet, killed up to 8,000 soldiers and civilians, and damaged or destroyed every building in the city. The punishment didn't entirely end the depredations, however. Only the French invasion and colonization of Algeria a generation later did that.
Devout Muslims are not required to honor agreements with non-Muslims.
On an August afternoon in 1816, the British Navy broke the power of Algiers ...
It shows that our modern problems are not unique: Even though the Algiers pirates had murdered, tortured, castrated, raped and enslaved thousands of people from dozens of countries, and had broken every treaty that they had been bribed into signing, Lord Exmouth was ordered not to fire on Algiers unless they fired first.
Accustomed to killing Europeans and getting rewarded for it, the pirates did not hesitate to shoot first, or the world's first international police action would never have happened.
In the best traditions of the Royal Navy, Lord Exmouth was hit six times (!) during the engagement:
DID I HEAR PIRATES MATIE! ARRRRRH
I'll go with that.
Let's see haven't we been down this road before?
Wasn't it pirates that sent the USMC to shores of Tripoli when this Country was young,
[...]
See my earlier post over at Dean's World sometime back:
Dean's World Link
Just noticed my link to Roger L. Simon's site in my piece over at Dean's World is dead now:
Here's the direct link:
RLS Link
Heh, Glen W., we're using the same source, I see. What a wonderful book. Provocative on every line. Sometimes he shoots and misses but more often he draws blood.
Interesting post, I've got a question though.
I was taught the "Millions for Defense" quote arose from the XYZ affair (when Adams was President). Checking a few internet sites seems to indicate different attributions. So I checked Paul Johnson:
Paul Johnson, A History of the American People
Paul Johnson, The Birth of the Modern
My impression is that the quote had become well known by the time Jefferson used it, but I can't find the specific context it was used by Harper. Anyone know?
PD Shaw: I can't find the specific context it was used by Harper.
It seems strange to me that Jefferson would knowingly lift a quote from Harper, who was a Federalist. Especially a quote from the XYZ Affair, where Jefferson was a main butt of the criticism.
Triangulation in 1803?
Callimachus,
What a delightful post. I came across references to this piece of history at the USS Constitution Museum. (The USS Constitution played a part in the campaign.)
As an epilog, I might suggest drawing the tenuous link between the concluding act you alude to -- the taking of Algeria by the French -- and the modern era of terrorism.
Might it not be said that the Algerian Terorists who so bedeviled the French until they withdrew, invented or at least greatly inspired the modern wave of hijackings and violence against civilian populations? And did they not directly train some of the "Fathers" of terrorism? I don't have grasp of the history but recall reading something that suggests just that.
If so, are we not seeing the vengeance of the Barbary Pirates and their dreams of Caliphate writ large?
A 1937 Time Magazine asserts that Harper made the statement on the occasion of a dinner given by Congress to John Marshall, just returned from France, at Philadelphia in June, 1798. Marshall would have been returning from the XYZ Affair, but the public would have been aware of the scandel months earlier.
The history of this quote appears so muddled that its possible that people at the time would not have known the exact origin. M. Simon's suggestion that Jefferson made the statement his own also seems credible.
There seem to be interesting parallels btw the XYZ Affair & the Barbary coast dispute. Both involved American idealism in the face of accepted foreign corruption. Both led to important military developments (navy w/ French and marines w/ pirates). Both led to undeclared wars that were probably "won" by the British.
One link between Islamic piracy/slave trade is that by kidnapping vast numbers of European traders, European countries began trading in other parts of the world and avoided trade routes through the Middle East. Over 500 years, the Middle East became a commericial desert. If you see today's problems in terms of lack of "connectiveness" with the outside world, there is a history that explains this.
Great article Callimachus! It is nice to read about the muslim menace in the Mediterranean, a threat for all Europe against which Spain fought during 300 years and from it still keeps two cities in Northern Africa, Ceuta and Melilla.
There are more coincidences with today's world: Spain usually fought these wars alone, and they were regarded as useless by foreign experts, especially Northern European's. Since the battle of Lepanto in 1571, France, was an allied of the Turks, which they also supported in 1683 as they advanced towards Vienna. Prinz Eugen of Bayern saved the day. The French islamophilia has a historical ground: being a friend of the enemies of Austria and Spain.
As you say, development and civilization has done a great harm: Oran, another city in Northern Africa that was hardly kept under Spanish control during centuries in order to avoid its use as piracy haven, was gave back to the muslims through a treaty around 1790 by one of our most erudite ministers. Of course they didn't fulfil it and piracy was soon rising again.
Many Spaniards died during three centuries keeping the Christian supremacy in the Mediterranean until the country was exhausted. Their efforts were never recognized, and even other European powers supported in some ways the enemy... just as today. Nihil novum sub sole
#11 PD Shaw
You and I think alike. This is the same point I was making on trading relationships at Dean's World (Comment #3):
Not good for merchants and trusting trading arrangements. Gee we should should look to history for clues to our current problem.
[...]
We as a free people will no longer tolerate the appeasement nor apologistic movements re the enemy in the GWOT. We will confront the enemy anywhere we find it and we will not be deterred by anyone who gives aid or comfort to the enemy.
[...]
This stateless and transnational enemy is driven by and united in a cult-like religous idealogy of hate and evil whose mission is to destroy us. Our very way of life and what we believe in is the antithesis of this cult.
This fanaticism predates the religion of Islam and sprang from the nomadic tribes of the deserts of Arabia and Northern Africa. This fanaticism was incorporated into this cult's own brand of Islam.
The Religion of Islam must purge itself of this sect of evil if it is to have any standing in the modern world or risk being mistaken as the enemy.
This is evil incarnate! There is no defense or excuse. The line must be drawn in the sand before our own culture is infected.
[...]
For further see also:
belgravia dispatch link
and
cuppa politics link
For a history of the Barbary Pirates (and other Pirates as well) that isn't told from a particularly American context, you might also take a look at 'Pirate Wars':
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0312335792/qid=1123612345/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-9567302-6489451?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
The parallels with the GWOT are interesting and acknowledged in the book itself.