The Barbary Wars

Podcast Transcript

In the early years of the United States, American ships faced a threat far from home along the North African coast.

Sailors were captured, tribute was demanded, and the young republic had to decide whether it would pay for peace or fight for its place on the high seas.

The result was America’s first overseas military conflict and the birth of a new navy.

Yet, despite its historical significance, it has been almost completely forgotten.

Learn more about the Barbary Wars on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

During the 17th and 18th centuries, four states of the North African coast, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, known collectively as the Barbary States, operated a system of organized maritime piracy that functioned as both a business and a form of statecraft.

Pirates from the Barbary States would seize unprotected merchant ships off the coast of North Africa and demand ransoms from the crews’ families and governments. The general practice at the time was simply to pay “tributes” to the pirates for safe passage in the Mediterranean rather than confront them militarily.

Morocco was an independent kingdom, while Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli owed a loose allegiance to the Ottoman Empire but effectively operated autonomously.

These were not simple criminal enterprises but quasi-sovereign entities whose rulers understood that the threat of violence was a renewable economic resource.

European powers had found it cheaper to pay than to fight. The two major European powers, Great Britain and France, found it expedient to encourage the Barbary States’ policies and pay tribute to them, as this allowed their merchant shipping to secure a larger share of Mediterranean trade. Captured ships were seized, their cargoes sold, and their crews enslaved or held for ransom.

This system had existed for centuries.

Before independence, American merchant ships had been protected by the British Royal Navy and by treaties Britain had with the Barbary powers. However, once the United States became independent, that protection disappeared.

American ships now sailed under a weak new flag, backed by no serious navy and no established diplomatic leverage. To the Barbary rulers, the United States was just another maritime state that could be forced to pay for safe passage.

The problem appeared almost immediately after the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1783, ending the Revolutionary War. In 1784, Moroccan corsairs captured the American brig, Betsy. Morocco, however, proved to be the easiest of the Barbary powers to deal with.

In 1786, the United States signed a treaty with Morocco, one of the earliest treaties in American diplomatic history. That treaty recognized American shipping rights and established peaceful relations. Morocco would remain the least troublesome of the Barbary States to the United States.

Algiers was a much bigger problem. In 1785, Algerian corsairs captured the American ships Maria and Dauphin, taking their crews prisoner. The United States under the Articles of Confederation had almost no ability to respond.

It had no navy, little money, and a weak central government. American diplomats such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams debated how to respond. Adams believed paying tribute might be unavoidable, at least temporarily, because the United States lacked force.

Jefferson favored building a navy and resisting tribute, arguing that paying only encouraged more demands. It was the 18th century version of “we don’t negotiate with terrorists.”

This debate exposed a basic weakness in the early United States. American merchants wanted access to Mediterranean trade, but the government lacked the tools to defend them.

In 1794, the continuing threat from Algiers helped lead Congress to authorize the creation of the United States Navy. The Naval Act of 1794 provided for six frigates, including famous ships such as the USS Constitution, USS United States, and USS Constellation.

These ships were originally intended in large part to deal with the Barbary pirate threat, although they would first see major action during the Quasi-War with France.

Despite the naval buildup, the United States initially chose tribute. In 1795, it signed a treaty with Algiers, agreeing to pay large sums and provide equipment to build and maintain ships in exchange for the release of American captives and protection for American shipping.

Similar arrangements followed with Tripoli and Tunis. This was humiliating but practical. The United States was still young, financially strained, and militarily limited. Paying tribute bought time.

The arrangement did not last. The most serious challenge came from Tripoli, ruled by Yusuf Karamanli, the Pasha of Tripoli. He believed the United States was not paying him enough compared with what it paid Algiers.

In 1801, shortly after Thomas Jefferson became president, Tripoli demanded a larger payment, and Jefferson refused. In response, Tripoli declared war by cutting down the flagpole at the U.S. consulate, the traditional local signal that relations had been broken.

This was the beginning of the First Barbary War, fought from 1801 to 1805. It was not a conventional war with mass armies. It was a naval and diplomatic conflict centered on blockades, raids, coastal bombardments, prisoner exchanges, and pressure on Tripoli’s government. It was also not a war declared by Congress as specified under the Constitution.

Jefferson sent a naval squadron to the Mediterranean. At first, the American effort was cautious. The Navy was new, commanders had limited experience operating so far from home, and logistics so far from home were difficult.

The United States had to maintain ships across the Atlantic, negotiate with European ports, and operate near hostile shores. Still, the deployment itself was significant. It showed that the United States was willing to send armed forces overseas to defend its commerce.

The early war featured blockades of Tripoli and engagements with Tripolitan vessels. One of the first dramatic American successes came in 1801, when the schooner USS Enterprise, commanded by Lieutenant Andrew Sterett, defeated the Tripolitan corsair Tripoli.

Because Congress had not issued a formal declaration of war, the captured enemy ship was disarmed and released rather than taken as a prize. That reflected the ambiguous nature of the conflict. Tripoli considered itself at war, but the United States treated the matter as a limited naval campaign authorized by presidential and congressional action short of a formal war.

The war’s most famous disaster came in October 1803, when the frigate USS Philadelphia, commanded by Captain William Bainbridge, ran aground on an uncharted reef while blockading Tripoli.

The ship could not be freed, and Tripolitan forces captured it along with its crew of more than 300 men. This was a major blow to the Americans. The Philadelphia was one of the most powerful ships in the U.S. Navy, and if Tripoli managed to refloat and use it, the balance of power could shift.

The American response became one of the legendary episodes in early U.S. naval history. In February 1804, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small raiding party into Tripoli harbor aboard the Intrepid, disguised as a local vessel.

Decatur and his men boarded the Philadelphia, overcame its guards, set the ship on fire, and escaped. The raid denied Tripoli the use of the frigate and became a minor military victory and a major morale victory. British Admiral Horatio Nelson is often said to have called it one of the most daring acts of the age.

The United States also bombarded Tripoli from the sea in 1804. Commodore Edward Preble led aggressive attacks against the harbor, using frigates, gunboats, and mortar vessels. These actions did not capture the city, but they increased pressure on the pasha and demonstrated that American forces could operate effectively in the Mediterranean.

At the same time, the United States pursued a landward political strategy. Former U.S. consul William Eaton promoted a plan to replace Yusuf Karamanli with his brother, Hamet Karamanli, who had been pushed out of power.

Eaton believed that backing Hamet could force Tripoli to make peace or even create a friendly government. With a small force of U.S. Marines, Greek and Arab mercenaries, and supporters of Hamet, Eaton marched across the desert from Egypt toward Tripolitan territory.

This campaign produced the Battle of Derna in April 1805. Eaton’s force, supported by U.S. naval vessels offshore, captured the city of Derna. It was the first time the American flag was raised in victory on a foreign battlefield, and it was later immortalized in the Marine Corps Hymn with the phrase “to the shores of Tripoli.”

Militarily, Derna was not the conquest of Tripoli itself, but psychologically and diplomatically, it mattered. It showed that the United States could threaten the pasha from both land and sea.

The war ended in 1805 with a treaty between the United States and Tripoli. The agreement required the United States to pay $60,000 for the release of American prisoners from the Philadelphia, but it did not agree to the kind of continuing annual tribute Tripoli had demanded.

This left the outcome unresolved. The United States did pay a ransom, so it was not a total refusal to pay anything. But it also proved willing to fight rather than submit to escalating demands, and it secured peace on better terms than Tripoli had originally sought.

The First Barbary War became a source of national pride. It strengthened the reputation of the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, gave early American officers valuable experience, and helped create a tradition of defending American commerce abroad. It also reinforced Jefferson’s belief that a republic could use limited naval force without maintaining a large standing army.

However, the Barbary problem was not fully solved. After the First Barbary War, the United States still had to manage relations with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. During the War of 1812, American attention turned back to Britain.

With the U.S. Navy occupied, Algiers resumed attacks on American shipping. In 1812, the leader of Algiers rejected the existing arrangement with the United States and declared war. American ships were captured, and Americans were again held prisoner.

Once the War of 1812 ended, the United States moved quickly. In 1815, President James Madison sent a squadron to the Mediterranean under Commodore Stephen Decatur, who had become one of the country’s most celebrated naval officers. This began the Second Barbary War.

Decatur’s campaign was swift and aggressive. In June 1815, his squadron captured the Algerian flagship Meshuda off the coast of Spain. Soon after, he captured another Algerian vessel, the Estedio. These victories gave Decatur immediate leverage. He sailed to Algiers and demanded a treaty. Faced with an American naval force and no time to prepare, Algiers capitulated.

The resulting treaty ended tribute payments by the United States to Algiers, freed American prisoners without ransom, and required compensation for seized American property. Decatur then sailed to Tunis and Tripoli and pressured those governments into similar settlements, including compensation for violations involving American ships during the recent conflicts.

The Second Barbary War was much shorter than the first, but in some ways it was more decisive. The United States no longer approached the Barbary States as a weak country seeking tolerable terms.

To be fair, Barbary piracy did not end solely because of the United States. European powers, especially Britain and later France, also acted against the Barbary States. In 1816, a British-Dutch fleet bombarded Algiers and forced the release of many European captives.

France’s conquest of Algiers in 1830 effectively ended Algiers as a Barbary power. But the American wars were part of the broader decline of the Mediterranean tribute system.

The Barbary Wars had several lasting consequences for the United States.

First, they helped justify the creation and maintenance of a permanent navy. Many Americans in the 1790s had been suspicious of standing military forces, seeing them as tools of monarchy and tyranny. But the Barbary crisis showed that a commercial republic needed naval power.

Second, the wars established an early precedent for American military action overseas. The United States did not fight the Barbary Wars to annex territory or build an empire. It fought to protect trade, free captives, and end tribute.

Third, the wars shaped the identity of the U.S. Marine Corps and Navy. Decatur’s raid on the Philadelphia, the bombardments of Tripoli, and the capture of Derna became foundational stories.

In the end, the Barbary Wars were not merely episodes of piracy suppression. They were the young American republic’s first real lesson in the cost of independence.

Without Britain’s protection, the United States had to decide whether it would pay for safety or build the power to defend itself. At first, it did both. Eventually, it chose force over tribute.

The result was a stronger navy, a more confident foreign policy, and the first steps of the United States as a global power.

The Executive Producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The Associate Producers are Austin Oetken and Cameron Kieffer.

I want to remind everyone that we are getting into the home stretch for the 6th anniversary episode of the podcast on July 1.

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I have a couple of reviews today. The first comes from listener A Woman in Berlin on Apple Podcasts in Germany. They write:

A rich booster for learning

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Great Show!

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Thanks to both of you for the kind reviews.

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