The End of Barbary Terror: America's 1815 War Against the Pirates of North Africa (review)

When Henry G. Barnby published The Prisoners of Algiers in 1966, he referred to the first American-Algerian conflict of 1785–1797 as a "forgotten war." There is today a striking regain of interest for the drawn-out conflict (1776–1815) commonly known as the Barbary Wars, between the young American republic and the Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Prompted by the emergence of political Islam in Middle Eastern and international politics and by the terrorist attacks of 9/11 particularly, a spate of new books about the old conflict has appeared recently, many of them showing a presentist inclination to draw links between America's first contact with the Islamic world two centuries ago and her "War on Terror" today. Frederick C. Leiner's book, which focuses on the concluding phase of the Barbary Wars, is one example of this literature.

As in 1776, Britain emboldened Algiers to attack American ships again during the War of 1812, resulting in the capture of the brig Edwin with a crew of eleven. President Madison instructed Consul Mordecai Noah to redeem the captives, but, since the Dey of Algiers proved inflexible about the ransom, Madison declared war and dispatched a naval squadron to the Mediterranean under the command of Stephen Decatur, hero of the US-Tripolitan War of 1801–1805. A splendid little war it was for the United States. The showdown with Algiers, the strongest Barbary power, was practically a no-show, at best a military promenade. The Algiers navy was, in the words of one American sailor, "a mere burlesque" (p. 113). Quickly smothered by the American squadron, Algiers's unique battleship Meshuda surrendered in 25 minutes. The high-sounding Barbary War of 1815 claimed only one American loss to enemy fire, while a couple more sailors died from the bursting of their cannon; in his log, Decatur "spent more ink on the bursting of the cannon than he did on the battle itself" (p. 101). Decatur inaugurated "American gunboat diplomacy" (p. 129) by dictating the terms of peace with Algiers and proceeding (in what Leiner calls "unfinished business") to wrest similar treaties with Tunis and Tripoli, although no state of war existed between the latter regencies and the United States.

Leiner builds a vivid narrative of those events, complete with the classic Barbary literature opening that dramatizes a chase and capture on the high seas. No account of the actual capture of the Edwin exists, but Leiner imagines it on the basis of analogy with similar events. Leiner then presents "the four Barbary regencies . . . nominally subject to the rule of the Ottoman sultan at Constantinople" (Morocco, however, was never a part of the Ottoman Empire), the previous war against Tripoli, and the failure of Noah's mission. Chapters 2 and 3 give short biographies of the main characters of the drama (including Secretary of the Navy Benjamin W. Crowninshield, Commodore Decatur, and several other officers) and describe the naval squadron and its arsenal in great detail. Chapters 4 and 5 narrate step by step the squadron's victory against the Meshuda and the completion of "unfinished business" with Tunis and Tripoli. Chapter 6 offers a glimpse of the triumphal return of Decatur's squadron. The last chapter chronicles the decisive follow-up by Britain in 1816, with Lord Exmouth's bombardment of Algiers, his show of force before Tunis and Tripoli, and the definitive termination of Christian slavery in the three regencies, while African slavery in America (which involved Muslim slaves) remained a "far more intractable problem" (p. 175).

This book has two interpretive dimensions. First, it fits the traditional historiography of the Barbary Wars and argues the traditional interpretation that the United States played a glorious role in initiating the suppression of the regencies' corsairs, tribute system, and white slavery. Leiner's tone and prose are also typically celebratory, occasionally lapsing into hyperbole (as when...