8 - “Our Affairs with the Pyratical States” : The United States and the Barbary Crisis, 1784–1797

Summary

Abstract The Barbary crisis (1784–1797) saw increased tensions between the United States and the North African nations of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco, leading to the capture of American citizens. This chapter explores how the United States perceived the complex crisis that exposed American weaknesses, its fragile political state and lack of institutions, and which situated the new nation's citizens as unfree and threatened. Examining newspapers and diplomatic correspondence of the period, this chapter reveals how use of the word “piracy” spoke to specific anxieties permeating the United States and was politically charged. Looking at contemporary use of “Barbary piracy” it also makes clear that the term continues to reveal more about political agendas than about the “pyratical states” themselves.

Keywords: Piracy; Corsairs; Early Republic; Treaties; Thomas Jefferson; Islam; War on Terror

The two last decades of the eighteenth century were marked by increased tensions between the United States and the Ottoman Regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, and the Kingdom of Morocco. This period of hostile relations between the nations, commonly referred to from the American perspective as the Barbary crisis, saw approximately 137 American citizens held in foreign captivity following the Moroccan capture of the Betsey in 1784, and the Algerine captures of the Maria and Dauphin in 1785 and eleven more ships in quick succession in October and November 1793. The capture of the American citizens and vessels came about as a result of the corsairing policies of the North African nations, which authorised attacks on the vessels of enemy nations with whom they were at war, or the vessels of nations who did not pay tribute. The vessels would be seized and all on board would be taken captive, held in North African bagnios, or prison-houses, and put to work. Peace and the redemption of the captives would then be demanded through the payment of ransoms, or through the negotiation and conclusion of annual tributes stipulated by treaties of peace and amity. While treaties between the North African nations and Great Britain had protected the North American colonies, following independence the US found itself alone in facing the corsairing threat without a treaty to protect its interests.