In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

c h a p t e r f i v e Captive Nation Algiers and Independence When James Cathcart began to write his memoirs, he described himself and his fellow Algerian captives as “victims of independence.” In 1785 this would have been an apt description for the United States as a whole. The independence achieved in 1783 created new problems abroad and led to a severe economic crisis, which would in turn lead to internal violence in places like western Massachusetts . Rather than celebrating triumph over the world’s greatest superpower, post-Revolutionary Americans wondered whether they could long survive as an independent nation. Ordinarily, the capture of twenty-one seamen in a remote corner of the world might not seem all that important. America wondered, however , whether the capture foretold an inability to pursue commerce as an independent nation without the aid of the British empire and whether it would be forced to slip into postcolonial dependence on the former mother country. Thus the misfortune of the Dauphin and the Maria became a national tragedy. Before the Revolution, Algiers had not been an issue precisely because of the colonies’ position within the British empire. Blessed with superior naval power, Britain was able to negotiate alliances with Algiers on favorable terms. So long as they were protected by the British flag, American colonists had little trouble with the Barbary “pirates.” After the Revolution, when they could no longer depend on this protection, Americans were confronted with the truth that all adolescents must one day learn: independence comes with new responsibilities as well as new freedom. At least one report from the mother country chortled at the new nation’s hard lesson. “How different is the case now from what it was,” observed one Lon- Captive Nation 91 don newspaper, recalling that before independence “the American vessels could sail secure, and had no other enemy to dread but the wind and waves!”1 Far from being organic and timeless entities, modern nation-states have been constructed to some extent by their inhabitants. The United States is a prime example. In 1775 it was a collection of colonies with widely varying histories, settled by peoples from throughout the Atlantic world following different religions , speaking different tongues, and practicing different forms of government. By July 1776, with the stroke of a pen this motley assortment had become “one people” ready to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another.” Strictly speaking, it was the ensuing Revolution that separated the putative United States from Great Britain. But, historians emphasize that it was the Declaration and other writings, celebrations, and newly contrived rituals that constructed a new nation.2 This notion of constructedness implies a group of people securely in control of the process of creating nationhood. That certainly was not the case in the United States. Nations, whether ancient or newly declared , are rarely left alone for long, and their relations with the outside world are just as likely to affect their sense of identity as are carefully constructed domestic rituals and celebrations. The most obvious example is the newly declared French état, the nature of which after 1791 was influenced as much by its ongoing warfare with European monarchies as by domestic rituals celebrating liberté, egalité, and fraternité. America’s Algerian crisis was hardly as dramatic, but because it occurred when it did, it had an inordinate influence on the new nation’s sense of identity. Unlike the Declaration and the popular fêtes of the early republic, its influence was largely a negative one, leading Americans to see their nation as weak and generally incompetent in its relations with the outside world.  The initial impact of the Algerian captures was enormous. As the new nation digested the first reports, Louis Guillaume Otto, the French chargé d’affaires in New York wrote, “The hostilities of the Barbarian corsairs have made a great sensation in America.”3 In Paris, Thomas Jefferson publicly discounted the danger, claiming it was exaggerated by the British press. But privately he was terrified that his daughter Polly might be captured during the 1785 crisis. “My mind revolts at the possibility of a capture,” he wrote her uncle, Francis Eppes, “so that unless you hear from myself . . . that peace is made with the Algerines, do not send her but in a vessel of French or English property; for these vessels alone are safe from prizes by the barbarians.” He was so concerned that he repeated this [18.116...

Share