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Joshua E. London Victory
in Tripoli: How America’s War with the Barbary
Pirates established the U.S. Navy and Built a
Nation. Hoboken, NJ:
John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2005. 288 pp. Photos. Bib. Index.
$24.95.
Reviewed by Dr. Howard J. Fuller
University
of Wolverhampton
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It was perhaps with
some irony that Thomas Jefferson observed, “Timid men prefer the
calm of despotism to the tempestuous sea of liberty”; for the
‘freedom of the sea’ itself was a serious contention during Jefferson’s own presidency (1801-1809). Nowhere was this dichotomy
between a strong federal government and personal liberties—and
between the new American republic’s need for proper naval defense
and political (and financial) expediency—put more to the test than
in the Barbary Wars (1801-1805, 1815). Joshua London, a political
analyst by trade, offers us a piercing examination of this
fascinating though often-overlooked period of U.S. naval history and
international relations, which “would give birth to the U.S. Navy
and the Marine Corps. It
would also raise serious questions about the president’s right to
wage undeclared wars, the need to balance defense spending against
domestic appropriations, the use of foreign surrogates to fight our
battles, and even whether or not it was a good idea to trade arms
and money for the release of hostages.”
By the end of the
Revolutionary War, maritime commerce in the Mediterranean was
overshadowed by systemic piracy; a protection racket engineered by
the cooperation of the Old World powers with the four Ottoman-controlled
North African states (Morocco, Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli). Rather than continue the weary
thousand-year struggle between Christianity and Islam head-on,
European monarchies settled into the strategic manipulation of the
Barbary pirates’ unending ‘holy war at sea’, or al-jihad fi’l-bahr,
against one another. Richer
states could thus enjoy the fruits of free trade, while watching
their weaker competitors fall prey to ‘barbarians’ (who enslaved
most of their captives).
Stripped from the protection of the British Royal Navy,
Americans now had to choose whether to pay ‘tribute’ or fight. As London notes, neither choice
would be easy. The ‘United States’
itself, though newly bound by the ratified Constitution, was
nevertheless weakened by intense political rivalries and sectional
interests which effectually handicapped American diplomacy. The South, for one, had little
interest in a strong (Federal) navy. Furthermore, it was not until
1792 that Congress was able to procure $100,000 for ‘peace treaties’
and the release of American hostages long held under ransom in Algiers.
Complications
associated with the Napoleonic Wars, however, unravelled
most of these efforts, and re-emphasized the need for a U.S. Navy
ready to address short-term emergencies (against the Barbary
pirates) as well as confront long-term, potential adversaries
(namely Britain
or France). Yet the first U.S.
retaliatory strikes against Pasha Yusuf Qaramanli’s inflated extortions were more
embarrassing than honorable.
The frigate Philadelphia ran aground in Tripoli harbor
and was burned to avoid capture, with Captain William Bainbridge
and his crew taken as prisoners.
An attempt to blow up the Pasha’s fortifications with a
gunpowder-packed USS Intrepid
likewise failed. Successful
attacks by subsequent American frigates led to the immediate
acceptance of peace offers, but these were soon violated by the
Barbary Powers when American forward presence was weakened in the
interests of national economy.
Only William Eaton’s expedition of U.S.-supplied and led
Arab insurgents against the strategic port-city of Derna—a presidential-backed attempt at regime
change in Tripoli—managed
to force a peace. Even then,
London concludes, “While the
arrangement freed the hostages and obliged Tripoli to end its war against
American shipping, it did nothing to penalize Qaramanli
or actually restore national honor, and it tied treaty fulfilment to the promises of a murdering
pirate.” It took a renewed
‘war’ in 1815, punctuated by even bloodier frigate actions against
Algerian corsairs, before the peace really stuck.
This is a valuable
work boasting an impressive array of research (much of it utilizing
newly digitized archival sources via the internet), despite the
deliberate absence of citations to directly support the narrative
for the sake of ‘story’—which is quite good, and indeed well
told. Photos and
illustrations are adequate, but the impact of Eaton’s epic 500-mile
trek across the Libyan Desert is
not supplemented by a map, while the 1685 (why 1685?) ‘Map of the Mediterranean’ is so digitally fuzzy as to be
worthless. In one sense,
there was no conflict at all between the needs of freedom and security, as Jefferson argued. However, as Victory in Tripoli shows, there are often mitigating
factors both politicians and navy professionals ignore at their
peril. War (and peace) is
seldom ‘absolute’. As such,
the author hardly needs to capitalize on obvious, tempting
parallels with politicized statements such as “Whether to give in
to or actively fight against terrorism remains one of the most
fundamental decisions of U.S. foreign policy to
this day.” Good history,
after all, is revealing; great
history is insightful.
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