Barbary Coast

V

The Nature of Piracy

After the ending of hostilities between Spain and the Ottoman Empire, the crusade against the Muslims was carried on by the Knights of St John at Malta and the Knights of St Stephen at Livorno (Leghorn), Christian pirates who kept commercial Turkish shipping off the seas (see also Military Religious Orders). But the corsairs of Barbary benefited from the increase in Christian shipping entering the Mediterranean from northern Europe, and the decline of the Spanish navy. At the same time they joined the global network of piracy in which the English, Dutch, and French preyed on Spanish shipping around the world. Like the corsairs, many of these were privateers licensed by the state to attack the enemy, but many were adventurers like Sir Robert Dudley, who made Livorno his base for attacks upon the Turks.

Many more fell in with the Barbary corsairs, who for the first time sailed out into the Atlantic. There they were joined by the “Sallee Rovers”, Moriscos expelled from Spain who took over the Moroccan port of Salé. For many years these were captained by the renegade Dutchman Jan Jansz (Murad Rais) who sacked Reykjavík in Iceland in 1627. They also carried out raids on Cornwall on the south-western coast of England. At Algiers a fellow Dutchman, Simon Danser, became Simon Rais, while Tunis was chosen by the renegade Englishman John Ward. All three were important for their introduction into the corsair fleets of high-sided sailing ships alongside the galleys on which the corsairs had relied throughout the 16th century, together with the expertise required to build, maintain, and sail them.

A

Pirate Ships

The galleys themselves were light and fast, propelled by oar and sail, and highly manoeuvrable, but unsuited to heavy seas; the adoption of sailing ships extended the range of the corsairs’ action while keeping them abreast of the advances in ship design in northern Europe. Vessels were bought or built to order in the Netherlands; otherwise they were constructed in North Africa out of materials taken from captured vessels or procured from Europe in spite of the ban on their export, to meet the essential requirements of speed and manoeuvrability.

The operation of these corsair fleets was a well-organized business. The ships were crewed by seamen of all nationalities, with a complement of Janissaries and other North African troops, and Christian slaves to row the galleys, all under strict discipline. They hunted in packs. Each expedition was a commercial enterprise in which each man had a share in the profits after the costs had been met, including the share demanded by the state, and those owed to investors in the venture. The substantial capital outlay was subsidized by international finance, of which Livorno was an important centre after the settlement there of Jews expelled from Spain in 1492.

The fact that Livorno was at the same time the base for the Knights of St Stephen shows the extent to which the religious divide on which corsairing was based was ignored for the sake of a share in the enterprise by those who put up the money as well as the many who joined in the action as renegades. In the same way, the merchants of Marseille imported munitions into Algiers, and exported back to Europe the commodities taken by the corsairs on land and at sea. Given the tally of the corsairs’ prizes, which in the early 17th century was running at the rate of hundreds of ships a year, this was a lucrative trade favoured by the Turkish authorities in the Regencies. The result was that while English ships, for example, might be captured, English merchants began to frequent the ports of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli as part of their regular business.

B

White Slaves

The captives of the corsairs, who ran into thousands, were no less involved in this commercial undertaking. Young boys and girls were sold into domestic slavery; the men were employed at sea as oarsmen and on land as building and farm workers, while craftsmen were valued for their skills. Though chained and imprisoned, they could earn money, run wine shops, and buy their freedom. And they could always be ransomed, not necessarily by families rich enough to pay. In the course of the 17th century, Catholic religious orders sprang up to raise the money. In Protestant England money came from public appeals and legacies. A whole literature dwelt on the plight of the captives, but the effect was counterproductive. The more money that was raised for the purpose, the more captives were taken and bought up in the slave markets for resale at a profit to the agents of the various charities.

VI

The End of the Barbary Coast

From time to time European governments negotiated the release of their nationals, and with the growth of their navies in the second half of the 17th century both the English and the French backed up their demands with punitive expeditions. By the 18th century European naval superiority and the growth of normal commerce between the Regencies and Europe meant that the great age of the corsairs was over. Their fleets shrank away, and their piracy became a state monopoly, which was used to obtain tribute in exchange for immunity from attack in treaties with European states. These were now represented by consuls with responsibility for the growing number of their nationals who came to reside as merchants in the country.

The French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars from 1792 to 1815 not only brought a further increase in trade, but a final revival of corsairing. While Algiers supplied grain to France and Tripoli supplied cattle to the British fleet at Malta, the Regencies expanded their corsair fleets to take advantage of the European conflict. Along with the shipping of the minor European states, that of the new United States was especially targeted. The Americans paid tribute to Algiers and Tunis, but between 1801 and 1805 were engaged in the unsuccessful Tripolitan War with Tripoli, during which the frigate Philadelphia was lost.

The end of the Barbary Coast came abruptly with the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and the successful, if costly, bombardment of Algiers in 1816 by the British fleet under Lord Exmouth. Corsairing was then virtually at an end, and the old Barbary Coast did not long survive. Algiers was taken by the French in 1830, and the whole of the Regency conquered and annexed by 1848. Tripoli was reabsorbed into the Ottoman Empire in 1835, although Tunis survived until the French occupation in 1881.