The Business, Personality, and Discretionary Power of American Consuls in North Africa, 1797–1805

This essay focuses on three consuls during the early American republic: William Eaton in Tunis, James Cathcart in Tripoli, and Richard O'Brien in Algiers. Brett Goodin argues that the consuls' autonomy and their business and personal relationships with locals and fellow consuls often impeded American policy and affected American relations with the North African "Barbary States" during the early nineteenth century. Their official correspondence with each other and with the State Department, their private diaries, and their commercial exchanges catalogue the consuls' diverse interests and heated exchanges on policy, personality, and business, exposing the nature of early American consulships.