Security measures aimed at the repression of corsairing continued apace in the wake of 1816. ‘Barbary piracy’ remained a subject of negotiation and cooperation during the late 1810s and early 1820s. It was dealt with at ambassadorial conferences in London, during meetings of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), in combined talks with the Ottoman Porte, and through an Anglo-French expedition to the coasts of North Africa. Increasingly ambitious efforts to enact maritime security and an increasingly vocal opposition to such efforts marked the eight years following the Anglo–Dutch bombardment of 1816. The authorities of the regencies managed to thwart several European security practices, ranging from concerted communications to defensive alliances. To understand the starts, stops and reversals of the fight against Mediterranean piracy, local activity needs to be analysed. This chapter foregrounds the role of actors who were deemed piratical threats. The contestations of these threatening actors influenced the shape and success of European security practices.

In order to appreciate the imperial impact of the new security culture, the French invasion of Algiers in 1830 ought to be seen within the framework of the post-1815 Congress System and the Concert of Europe. Though the invasion of Algiers was essentially a unilateral action undertaken under the national flag, it nevertheless took shape through extended multinational deliberation and involved a fair share of diplomatic concertation among the different European Great Powers. French imperial aspirations became intertwined with the repression of Mediterranean piracy, which was understood as a shared, European project. In attacking Algiers, members of the French government sought to reassert the country’s position as a nation on par with the other Great Powers of the European continent. The conflict with Algiers allowed French officials to assert status through the much more ‘disinterested’, ‘European’ goal of ending piracy and bringing security to the Mediterranean Sea.

This book focuses on the way in which ideas and discourses of security have shaped the conduct of international relations in the past. Its main concerns include how historical actors conceived of security as an idea, used it in their writings and discussions, pondered its implementation and turned conceptions into practice. Security efforts shaped international relations at a crucial moment in history, during the first half of the nineteenth century, when international systems and global divisions of power dramatically changed. International involvement with Mediterranean piracy reflected all of these changes. Yet, in order to better grasp the impact of security considerations, one must look at the means by which contemporaries made sense of, were swayed by and, also, turned against the concept. Security must be historicised.

As a historical model of how to end an extended period of international conflict and to establish a stable and peaceful international order, the Vienna Congress has claimed the attention of academics and politicians ever since 1815. Against this background the chapter will deal with the question of how the Congress of Vienna and the Vienna system were regarded by various actors and under changing political circumstances. Rather than merely collecting views and interpretations of the Congress and the international system taking shape in 1814/15, the chapter will ask how the varying interpretations of Vienna and the Vienna system reflected changing ideas and visions of international order and what they can tell us about national and international security cultures in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.