 |
   |
||||
|
|
|
 |
||
|
 |
 |
 |
||
|
in Publications: Font size:    
|
|
How John Adams Tamed the Barbary Coast Mussulmen: America’s First Foreign Policy Crisis
The new United States of America was desperate for trade in the 1780s. Its economy was in shambles, its paper money was nearly worthless, and the ousted British excluded American vessels from Canada, the West Indies and Britain. Moreover, the British no longer protected American merchant ships, which had traded extensively in the Mediterranean before the Revolutionary War. As a result, in July 1785, Algerine Barbary pirates seized two American ships off of the coast of Portugal and forced 21 American sailors into slave labor. Morocco seized another ship, but soon freed the American crew in exchange for a ransom of $25,000. Thus began the first foreign policy crisis for the US—how to manage the Barbary pirates who demanded “tributes” from the US in return for the safe passage of her ships and ransoms for captured sailors and passengers.
Who were the Barbary pirates? The Barbary pirates were residents of the “Barbary States,” which was the collective name given to Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the four North African seaports along the “Barbary Coast.” These ports were under the nominal control of the Muslim Ottoman Empire headquartered in Istanbul, yet their real rulers were Mussulman [Turkish Muslim] corsairs [pirates] who plundered Mediterranean ships and captured sailors for slave labor and ransom. How did the Barbary States come under control of the Muslim Turks of the Ottoman Empire? One of the earliest and most powerful corsairs was Khair ad Din, known in the West as Barbarossa (in English, Redbeard). Born in Greece in the 1470s on the island of Lesbos to a Turkish father, Yacoup, and a Christian mother, Katalina, Barbarossa and his three brothers worked as sailors and privateers in the Mediterranean, counteracting the privateering of the Knights of St. John of the Island of Rhodes and attacking islands controlled by Christians. [ To privateer is to operate a ship privately owned and crewed but authorized by a government during wartime to attack and capture enemy vessels.]
In 1510, Barbarossa seized Algiers and appointed himself the first ruler of a sovereign pirate state. His territorial seizure should have threatened the sultan in Istanbul, but when he pledged his fealty to the throne in exchange for a large payment for services provided to the throne, he was given regency of “Maghrib”--the region of northwest Africa comprising the coastlands and the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia (see map below). Hence, Barbarossa brought Turkish Ottoman rule to Algiers specifically and the Maghrib generally. “His descendants, both biological and methodical, maintained control over the shores of Northern Africa for the next two hundred years.”* By 1662, piracy had blossomed into a highly disciplined and sophisticated racket. “In that year, England revived the ancient custom of paying tribute, which meant that corsairs agreed to spare English ships for an annual bribe paid in gold, jewels, arms, and supplies. The custom quickly spread to all countries trading the Mediterranean.** Capturing and looting ships and collecting ransoms for captured sailors comprised the revenues that financed Algiers and the other three Barbary States.
In May 1785, John Adams (1735-1826) became the new American ambassador to the Court of St. James in London. There, in a July 1785 meeting with His Excellency Abdrahaman, envoy of the Sultan of Tripoli, Adams was told “ America was a great nation, but unfortunately a state of war existed between America and Tripoli. Adams questioned how that could be, given there had been no injury, insult, or provocation on either side. The Barbary States were the sovereigns of the Mediterranean all the same, he was told, and without a treaty of peace there could be no peace between Tripoli and America. His Excellency was prepared to arrange such a treaty…The sooner peace was made between America and the Barbary States the better. Were a treaty delayed, it would be more difficult to make. A war between Christian and Christian was mild, prisoners were treated with humanity; but, warned His Excellency, a war between Muslim and Christian could be horrible.” *** Adams summoned Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), the new ambassador to nearby France, to London to discuss this turn of events. At a meeting with Ambassador Abdrahaman, Adams and Jefferson were told that peace with all of the Barbary States might cost 200,000 to 300,000 guineas [a huge amount]. One year earlier, in 1784, the Continental Congress had authorized Adams and Jefferson to negotiate treaties with the Barbary States. But the request for such a large sum of money left them no choice but to refer the matter to Congress. The US was in a quandary. Two factors—military and financial— influenced the decision making of its leadership. First, the US had no navy with which to fight the Barbary pirates. “The Continental Navy of the Revolutionary War was disbanded in 1784, and the navy was not reestablished until the Navy Act of 1794. During the intervening years, the US had minimal naval power. Disbanding the Continental Navy was primarily a cost-savings measure. However, there were also important non-financial arguments for and against the navy. Some Americans who favored reestablishing close ties with England feared that the presence of a US navy on the high seas would lead to confrontations with the British Navy. Other Americans, including John Adams, viewed a strong navy as the best national defense against foreign threats. Many Americans preferred the prospect of building a navy over an army due to their general distrust of standing armies—the result of their experience with the British occupation in America during the latter part of the Colonial Era.” **** “The financial factor that influenced the US response to the Barbary pirates was that any effective response would require a significant expense relative to the government’s funds. The US government found itself in a precarious financial condition in the years immediately following the Revolutionary War. The Continental Congress and individual states borrowed over $40 million to finance the war, including about $6 million from France. From 1781 to 1788, the period during which the United States operated under the Articles of Confederation, the federal government did not have the power to tax its citizens, levy tariffs, or regulate commerce. The cost of operating the government during this time was about $500,000 annually, not including funding the debt. Some income was generated by the post office and from sales of public lands, but the two principal revenue sources available to the government were requesting support from the states and issuing paper money. State contributions to the federal government constituted only a small fraction of what was needed, and issuing paper money was an inflationary measure that had already been used extensively during the Revolutionary war. The financial plight of the new nation was sufficiently acute that during this period, the government borrowed from foreign sources just to meet the interest obligations on existing foreign debt.” **** John Adams’ expressed his view on the matter in a letter to Thomas Jefferson, as follows: +++ Grosvenor Square June 6, 1786 Dear Sir …The first Question is, what will it cost us to make Peace with all [of the Barbary States]? Set it if you will at five hundred thousand pounds Sterling, tho I doubt not it might be done for Three or perhaps for two. The Second Question is, what Damage shall we suffer, if we do not treat. Compute Six of Eight Per Cent Insurance upon all your Exports, and Imports. Compute the total Loss of all the Mediterranean and Levant Trade. Compute the Loss of half your Trade to Portugal and Spain. These computations will amount to more than half a Million sterling a year. The third Question is what will it cost to fight them? I answer, at least half a Million sterling a year without protecting your Trade, and when you leave off fighting you must pay as much Money as it would cost you now for Peace. The Interest of half a Million Sterling is, even at Six Per Cent, Thirty Thousand Guineas a year. For an Annual Interest of 30,000 [pounds sterling] st. then and perhaps for 15,000 or 10,000, we can have Peace, when a War would sink us annually ten times as much.”**** +++ To this, Jefferson replied as follows: Paris July 11, 1789 Dear Sir …I ask a fleet of 150 guns, the one half of which shall be in constant cruise. This fleet built … will cost 450,000 pounds sterling. It’s annual expence is 300 pounds sterling a gun, including every thing: this will be 45,000 pounds sterling a year. … Were we to charge all this to the Algerine war it would amount to little more than we must pay if we buy peace. But as it is proper and necessary that we should establish a small marine force (even were we to buy a peace from the Algerines,) and as that force laid up in our dockyards would cost us half as much annually as if kept in order for service, we have a right to say that only 22,500 pounds sterling per annum should be charged to the Algerine war. (Cappon 1959, 142-143)" +++ While George Washington and John Adams were US President (1789-1797 and 1797-1801, respectively), the US acquiesced to the demands (i.e., bought peace) of the Barbary States as all the while the Barbary pirates continued to capture additional US ships and crews. Jefferson meanwhile (as President Washington’s Secretary of State) was exasperated and suggested that war was the only solution. Tribute money, he declared, was “money thrown away” and that “the most convincing argument that these outlaws would understand was gunpowder and shot. The future president proposed a multi-national effort between European powers and America that would in effect economically blockade North Africa and ultimately provide for a multi-national military force to combat pirate terrorism. The European powers chose to continue paying tribute to the Barbary States.”** Finally, in 1794, Congress authorized the construction of six ships—the birth of the US Navy—in anticipation of fighting the Barbary pirates. Yet, in 1795, Congress approved a treaty with Algiers that led to the release of the hostages the following year, but that cost the US nearly $642,500 in cash, munitions, and a 36-gun frigate, besides a yearly tribute of $21,600 worth of naval supplies! Ransom rates were officially set for those Americans already in Barbary prisons: $4000 for each passenger and $1,400 for each cabin boy. In a humiliating incident, the Dey of Algiers in 1800 directed Captain William Bainbridge to sail the “George Washington,” which was docked in Algiers with a consignment of tribute from the US to Algiers, to Istanbul to impress the Sultan of Turkey. The ship’s American flag was replaced by Algerian colors in a final shameless slap. Upon viewing the Americans’ weakness, the other Barbary States stepped up their blackmail demands (which is a good example of “demonstration effect” as described in Biot #173 at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_173.html).
By 1797, three ships, including the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) were completed. When George Washington died on Dec. 14, 1799, Yusuf, the Pasha of Tripoli, informed “President Adams that it was customary when a great man passed away form a tributary state to make a gift in his name to the crown of Tripoli. Yusuf estimated Washington to be worth about $10,000.”** When, in the spring of 1801, Yusuf had not received the cash, he summoned the American representative to his court, demanded that he kiss his hand and then relay to the US that the annual tribute would be raised to $250,000 plus $25,000 annually in goods o f his choice. If refused, the alternative was war. “To make his point, Yusuf had his soldiers chop down the flagpole in front of the American consulate, a significant gesture in a land of no tall trees and one that meant war.”** The reason no tribute had been forthcoming is that Thomas Jefferson had been elected President. To his horror, he learned that tribute and ransoms paid to Barbary had exceeded $2,000,000, or about one-fifth of the entire annual income of the US government !***** Continued in Biot #221 : “How Thomas Jefferson Tamed the Barbary Coast Mussulmen: America’s First Foreign Policy Crisis” at: http://www.semp.us/biots/biot_221.html. Editor’s Note : If you are interested in seeing more rare maps of the Barbary States, go to http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/historic_cities.html. If you are interested in viewing the covers of beautiful books on the Barbary pirates, go to: http://larryvoyer.com/Piratical/pirate%20pages/barbary.htm. Sources: * “ America’s First War on Terror” by Paul Fallon, October 17, 2002. Available at: http://www.deansemay.comarchives/000374.html. ** “Terrorism in Early America: The US Wages War Against the Barbary States to End International Blackmail and Terrorism” by Thomas Jewett. Available at: http://www.earlyamerica.com/review/2002_winter_spring/terrorism.htm. *** “John Adams” by David McCullough. Simon & Schuster, 2001, pp. 353-4. **** “John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and the Barbary pirates: an illustration of relevant costs for decision making” by Dennis Caplan. Issues in Accounting Education – August 1, 2003. Available for download for a modest cost from Amazon.com. Go to: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0008DVQW0/qid=1117852667/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/103-4869687-6578255?v=glance&s=books&n=507846. ***** For more on the Barbary Treaties of Tripoli 1796, go to the Avalon Project at Yale Law School at: http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/barbary/bar1796e.htm. |
Copyright
2007 - SEMP INC., All Rights Reserved.