A critical book review of The End of Barbary Terror America's 1815 war against the pirates of North Africa

¶ … Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa

During the 19th century, pirates were far from an abstract threat on international seas. Nor was piracy merely due to the actions of some rogue elements. The nations of Algeria, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli used state-sponsored piracy to profit off of ransom money. Sailors who were not ransomed in a system of state-sponsored forced labor. European nations had long taken the attitude that piracy was inevitable, and rather than fight it, they rationalized that "paying Barbary rulers a 'license' for trade was less expensive than constantly convoying ships or attacking the Barbary powers in their heavily fortified ports" (Leiner 14). Remarkably, the still relatively weak and young American nation under the leadership of President James Madison was able to challenge and defeat the Barbary nations at the piracy game. The book The End of Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War against the Pirates of North Africa by historian Frederick Leiner demonstrates that not only was America's victory salutary for the sailors it freed from bondage but the military action was also critical in establishing American legitimacy as a world power.

Leiner attempts to bring a little-known aspect of America's history to light, suggesting Madison's actions against the Barbary pirates were as equally as crucial in gaining respect for America on the world scene as penning the Constitution and winning the War of 1812. Leiner is a Baltimore-based lawyer and historian with a particular interest in naval history. He is also the author of Millions for Defense: The Subscription Warships of 1798.

Leiner tells his story as a narrative in an almost-novelistic form. He uses primary source documents to give credibility to his analysis and to continually stress the extraordinary nature of both Madison's boldness and above all the remarkable leadership of Commodore Stephen Decatur, who led the Navy to success. The crisis arose when Algerian pirates enslaved seven American sailors in 1812 from a New England-based rig in North Africa. They demanded one million dollars as a ransom, an astronomical fee during that era. For many years, America had attempted to use diplomacy like its European counterparts. This diplomacy was not only a failure, but many suspected the British of tacitly allowing Barbary slavery to continue, given that "British trade indirectly benefited from Barbary seizure of poorer country's ships and seamen" (Leiner 152). Eventually, frustrated with the increasing power of the pirates, America decided to try another approach and use violent force. The pirates' financial demand steeled Madison's nerves and he deployed the largest Navy mission to that date to recover the captured men.

Leiner uses contemporary language to underscore the extent to which the world hated and feared the specter of 'white slavery' embodied in the actions of the pirates. The rhetoric in the primary source documents used by Leiner is comparable to the language after 9/11, when America declared itself in a holy war against a nation that had attacked its freedom. According to Leiner, in the perception of Algeria, "under Islamic law, the seizures of ships from Christian countries were an article of faith, part of the jihad against nonbelievers: (Leiner 13). Leiner seamlessly weaves in contemporary commentaries on the practice of slavery, ships logs, speeches, and other primary source documents into his narrative. When there is disagreement amongst his sources, such as in the case of the nature of the institution of slavery, he includes extensive endnotes fleshing out the debate.

Retrieving the pirates became an act of self-definition that transcended the immediate details of the case. The ironic fact that America was a slaveholding nation at the time does not escape Leiner. He suggests that this was one of the reasons why the United States was so passionate and so determined to show itself as a force for freedom. But although the mission was successful in realizing its objective, slavery in America would grow more, rather than less common in the ensuing years. President James Madison was a slaveholder and while committed to ending "white Christian slavery at the hands of darker, Islamic people overseas," he made no motion to end the practice (Leiner 175). Leiner does not see the actions of the United States to end white slavery as sheer hypocrisy but rather an important step on the road to ending slavery in its entirety. But of all of Leiner's claims, this one is most difficult to substantiate, given that there are no documents which support such a notion, and the historical actors clearly viewed 'white slavery' (as evidenced in the use of the phrase) as something unnatural and evil, compared with 'normal slavery' [i.e., the enslavement of nonwhites).

Leiner's argument that defeating slavery and defending freedom is dubious, but overall his portrait of the magnitude of the operation and the greatness of the effort is supported by his detailed account of the obstacles the Navy had to overcome. America showed that it could accomplish what the European powers could not. It did so alone, and its efforts shattered current diplomatic notions of how it was possible to deal with piracy.