I.

Introduction

Barbary Coast, historical name for a region of northern Africa that became synonymous with piracy.

The name Barbary is derived from the Latin word barbaria. It first appeared in English from the 14th century onwards with the various meanings of “land of the barbarians”, “barbarity”, and “barbarous”. From the 16th century it was applied to northern Africa to the west of Egypt, and as an adjective to its mainly Mediterranean coast.

Historically, “Barbary Coast” refers to the period of Turkish rule in northern Africa from the 16th century to the early 19th century, which was notorious for the Barbary corsairs or pirates who preyed upon the European coasts and European shipping.

II.

Origins

Piracy on a large scale began as a response to the fall of the Moorish kingdom of Granada to Spain in 1492, and the expulsion of all Muslims from the Iberian peninsula. This was followed by the Spanish capture of the North African ports of Melilla (1497), Mers el Kebir (1505), Oran (1509), Bejaïa (1510), and Tripoli (1510), together with the tiny islands off the Moroccan coast that they fortified as the Peñón de Vélez and the Peñón de Alhucemas (1508), and the Peñon of Algiers on an islet opposite the city (1509). These presidios (fortified settlements), however, failed to prevent the escalation of the Muslim response, which began with piracy but ended with the overthrow of the Ziyanid and Hafsid dynasties at Tlemcen and Tunis, and the annexation of North Africa as far as Morocco by the Turkish Ottoman Empire.

III.

The First Pirates

The Ottoman conquest began with the arrival of pirates from the Aegean Sea under the leadership of the Barbarossa brothers Arūj and Khayr ad-Dīn, who seized power at Algiers in 1516. Arūj was killed by the Spaniards in 1518, but Khayr ad-Dīn turned for help to Constantinople (modern-day İstanbul, the Ottoman capital). Appointed beylerbey or commander-in-chief at the head of an Ottoman army, by 1525 he had conquered most of what is now northern Algeria, with Algiers as his capital. Ten years later he became Kapudan Pasha or Grand Admiral of the Ottoman fleet, as did two of his successors at Algiers, his son Hassan and the renegade Uluj Ali.

Under the beylerbeys, Algiers was thus in the forefront of the protracted struggle between Spain and the Ottomans for supremacy of the Mediterranean, which was marked by the capture of Tunis by Emperor Charles V in 1535, the siege of Algiers by the emperor in 1541, the siege of Malta by the Turks in 1565, and the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, and continued until peace was made in 1581. By that time Tripoli had fallen to the Ottomans in 1551, Bejaïa in 1555, and Tunis in 1574. Of the presidios, only Oran and Mers el-Kebir then remained in Turkish territory, together with Melilla on the coast of Morocco.

IV.

Ottoman Rule

The post of beylerbey was abolished in 1587, and Ottoman North Africa was divided into three separate provinces or regencies ruled from Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the ancestors of the modern states of Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Each was initially governed by a Pasha appointed by Constantinople, and garrisoned by Janissaries (Turkish musketeers) under the command of an Agha (commander), or at Tripoli by a Bey. At Tunis the Bey commanded the sipahis (cavalry), while at Algiers three Beys were appointed to rule the interior of the country at Constantine in the east, Medea in the centre, and Mazouna (later Mascara, then Oran) in the west. The corsairs were represented by their Rais (captains).

The three regimes were exclusively Turkish, a character that was maintained by the continual recruitment of the Janissaries in Anatolia (the area of modern Turkey), and the exclusion from their ranks of the kouloughlis (their sons by native wives). The corsairs were honorary Turks, since the majority were either Spanish and North African Moors or renegades, captives of the corsairs who had “turned Turk”: the beylerbey and Kapudan Pasha Uluj Ali was only the most notable of these—captured from the Calabrian coast (the foot of Italy) by Khayr ad-Dīn Barbarossa, he later commanded the left flank of the Ottoman fleet at Lepanto. After the conquest, government was conducted efficiently in the cities with the help of local notables, and economically in the countryside through tax-collecting expeditions in alliance with tribal chiefs: the inhabitants of the more mountainous regions and the deserts to the south were left largely to themselves.

The orderliness of government and the peace that was generally kept in the three Regencies contrasted with the fighting among the Turks themselves for power and independence from Constantinople. In the course of the 17th century the Pashas sent from Constantinople to Algiers and Tunis became mere figureheads. At Algiers the Agha finally took power in 1659, followed in 1671 by the Dey, an officer elected first by the Rais and then from 1689 by the ojaq (corps of Janissaries). Despite this the Dey was frequently assassinated by the ojaq. At Tunis power fell first into the hands of the Dey of the Janissaries and then into the hands of the Beys, who established the hereditary dynasty of the Muradids followed in 1705 by that of the Husaynids. At Tripoli the Pasha was finally ousted in 1711 by Ahmed al-Karamanli, the kouloughli commander of the cavalry and founder of the Karamanli dynasty. All three regimes remained part of the Ottoman Empire, but from the end of the 16th century conducted their own affairs, and exploited for their own benefit the piracy in which they had originated.

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.