Jefferson's War: America's First War On Terror 1801-1805 (2004) - Plot & Excerpts
tIn his monograph, Jefferson's War: America's First War on Terror 1801-1805, journalist Joseph Wheelan asserts that the Barbary Wars “waged against Moslem Tripoli… [are] not so different from today's war on terror.”[1] Employing jingoistic rhetoric, he argues that Jeffersonian Americans “fought for the principle of sovereign trading rights” and that “Jefferson was making a statement of national character: the American belief that nations as well as people had a right to freedom from tyranny.”[2] In short, Wheelan anachronistically defines Barbary corsairs as “terrorists,” proposing that the enslavement of Americans and Europeans during the privateering actions of the Barbary States is akin to modern terrorism, or the modern use of violence to pursue political agendas. In actuality, the Barbary corsairs were pursuing an economic program and not a religiously motivated agenda against Americans – unlike the program of modern-day Al-Qaeda against the United States. Furthermore, Wheelan ignores the more complex socio-political milieu existing in the Mediterranean during the time leading up to and including the eighteenth century. In his ignorance, he overlooks the actual historical context of the Barbary Wars, instead opting to view Barbary slavery as a self-evident terrorist action. This essay will explore the Barbary Wars in its contemporary context, highlighting what other scholars have noted regarding North African privateering and slavery. Moreover, this essay will counter Wheelan’s salacious position that the Barbary Wars were a simple, religiously binary conflict, matching “an ostensibly Christian nation, [the United States,] against an avowed Islamic one that professed to despise Christians.”[3] The Barbary Wars, in fact, arose from a collision of economic systems, with slavery and privateering part of the standard politico-economic structure of the Mediterranean.However, before beginning to counter Wheelan’s fallacious conclusions, it is worthwhile to recount, briefly, what the Barbary Wars were. Shortly after taking the office of the President in 1801, Thomas Jefferson received word that the Pasha of Tripoli demanded a tribute of $225,000. The pasha assured Jefferson that failure to pay would result in the United States maritime fleet being considered prey for Tripolitan corsairs. Emboldened by years of corsairing actions against the United States, started in 1785 by the Algerian seizures and ransoms of the Dauphin and Betsey, the Pasha believed his demand would be met. Yet, Jefferson refused to acquiesce to Tripolitan threats. While he served as Secretary of State after the Dauphin and Betsey crisis, Jefferson had compelled then President John Adams to build a small naval squadron of six frigates. As a result of Jefferson’s intransigence, the Pasha of Tripoli formally declared war against the United States in late 1801. President Jefferson responded by sending the six-frigate naval squadron to blockade the port of Tripoli and counteract any privateering against American vessels in the Mediterranean. Unfortunately, for the United States, while blockading the harbor of Tripoli, the U.S. frigate Philadelphia ran aground and was captured. Shortly thereafter, American forces led by Lieutenant Stephen Decatur (1779-1820) went on a raid, sneaking into Tripoli at night and razing the Philadelphia, lest it be used against the remaining United States’ frigates. After a period of stalemate, in 1805 a joint American land and sea attack on Tripoli forced the Barbary state to lower the price for peace, as the ongoing campaign was exhausting the resources of both the Americans and Tripolians. Caving to Tripolitan demands, the United States ultimately sued for peace at the price of $60,000 – down from the initial demand of $225,000, but still far from a resounding American victory. Nonetheless, the First Barbary War was over and the exploits of Decatur invigorated Americans’ patriotic sense and belief in free trade notwithstanding the embarrassing ending of the conflict. tDespite this display of American will, during the War of 1812, Barbary privateering once more began against American merchants in the Mediterranean. In 1814, President James Madison, like Jefferson before him, sent a naval squadron to the region to counter the corsairs’ activities. The Second Barbary War, this time against Algiers, was quickly resolved by the blockading of the harbors of Algiers and the sinking of any corsair vessels that were encountered by American forces. A subsequent peace treaty forced Algiers to acknowledge American sovereignty and required Algiers to abandon privateering altogether. The age of the corsairs had finally ended as the United States was more than willing, unlike European powers, to attack any Barbary nation engaged in privateering against maritime commerce.tThus, with that background in mind, it is apparent that the Barbary Coast powers were not acting on religiously malicious intent against the United States – as a “modern Moslem terrorist” would. In fact, the corsairs and privateering that Wheelan so objectifies – going so far as to erroneously label the corsairs as “pirates” - was part of a wider socio-political system that governed interactions in the Mediterranean world.[4] For example, American colonial historian Robert Allison argues that the corsairs of Algiers provided the British, Dutch, and French a means to police one another’s respective commercial activities. The lesser navies of the United States, Swedes, Portuguese, and others meant that their respective maritime vessels were at the mercy of the Barbary corsairs – effectively rendering their commercial competition against the other European powers non-existent prior to the advent of the Barbary Wars.[5] Rather than ally themselves with their former British masters and forgo their declared belief in “free trade,” the Americans decided to pursue the more costly approach – attacking the corsairs. The Americans took heart in this course of action, as they viewed it as doing “what the nations of Europe had been unable or unwilling to do: beating the forces of Islamic despotism.”[6] Until that point, corsairing in the Mediterranean was a condoned, officially sanctioned activity, used by the European states to maintain a balance of power and by the Barbary States to finance their institutions of government. Religion had nothing to do with the conflict. tComplementing Allison’s arguments, fellow colonial and Revolutionary-era historian Frank Lambert also delineates the mercantile, and decidedly not religious, aspect of the Barbary Wars. The Wars were a collision of trading systems – free market capitalism in opposition to mercantilism. Europeans, as stated, employed the Barbary powers as a ‘bouncer,’ keeping commercial competitors out of the Mediterranean. Thus, unwilling to acknowledge “the gap between American rhetoric on free trade and the realities of Atlantic commerce,” American involvement in the Barbary Wars was not at all as surprising as were the attacks on 9/11.[7] The United States’ naïve belief that the European powers would acknowledge the benefits of free trade over mercantilism and provide a defense of American merchants willfully ignored the established tributary economy existing in the Mediterranean. European powers no longer had a need to protect American maritime interests. Americans were outside of the mercantile system, actively seeking to dismantle the established commercial practices of Europe. Hence, unlike those in the World Trade Center, who were merely going to work in New York City that infamous day in 2001, those Americans who ventured into the Mediterranean – unprotected, unarmed, and unready - did so at their own, knowable risk.tBeyond a failure to grasp the essential nature of the conflicts – based in economics and not religion –Wheelan also notes in his monograph that the success of the Americans in the Barbary Wars ensured that no future American captives would be regarded as slaves.[8] In his assertion, Wheelan equates the enslavement of Americans and Europeans with a terrorist action by a Muslim power. Yet, slavery in the Mediterranean was not unusual, nor was it unique to Muslim powers. The sheer abhorrence that Wheelan has for American enslavement – as well as it being a qualifier for his definition of “terrorism” – fails to account for the European slavers in the Mediterranean or the wider context of slavery in the early modern period.[9] For example, cultural historian Suraiya Faroqhi has noted that, “the enslavement of prisoners was by no means an Ottoman [or for that matter, North African] peculiarity.”[10] To point, Faroqhi argues that Austrian officials sanctioned the enslavement of Muslims by Europeans until 1699. Indeed, some Muslims were even enslaved in southern Italy well into the early nineteenth century.[11] As a further example, historian John Wolf rightly recounts that Keireddin Barbarossa, one of the two infamous Barbarossa brothers, was himself enslaved by the Knights of St. John in the galleys based off Malta.[12] Historian Gillian Weiss has also noted that the Spanish had established presidos in the harbors of North Africa for the handling of Muslim slaves sold by fellow Muslims to Europeans for European markets.[13] In short, slavery in the Mediterranean “was a reciprocal, religiously justified reality” that made tens of thousands of “Christians and North African Muslims into coerced laborers and speculative investments.”[14] The act of enslavement in the early modern period was a standard economic practice, not particularly abhorrent by contemporary peoples. tHowever, noting that Europeans were slavers does not discount the fact that Muslims were slavers as well. In just the six years between 1681 and 1687, the European slave population of Algiers was somewhere between 5,000 to 17,000 slaves, or – in more pessimistic models – 30,000 to 400,000 slaves.[15] Regardless of the actual numbers, though, Wheelan’s suggestion that slavery equates with modern connotations of terrorism is still flawed. Slavery for the Muslims of the North African coast was predominately an economic matter, conveniently excused by religious differences, but not driven by confessional conflicts. Often European slaves were held in ransom, with Muslim owners demanding that a slave’s relatives in Europe or the United States pay for the maintenance and boarding of the individual slave. Those unable to pay the ransom faired far worse than those that could, but even then, the conditions were far better than slavery found in the American South.[16] tIn response to such ransoming practices, an economic system developed in Europe and the United States around the manumission of American and European slaves. For example, historian Robert Davis notes that, “typically each Italian state operated its slave ransoming through a confraternity,” or intermediary whose existence depended on the slave trade.[17] Such intermediate agencies were characteristic of every nation that had contact with the Barbary powers, including the United States, where ransoms were collected by the local church of the individual slave’s family. The Muslim slavers had no qualms with taking money from these religious institutions and those very institutions grew as a result of the exchange of goods. These confessional intermediaries streamlined the process of enslavement and ransom payments, effectively contributing to the financing of the Barbary States and the perpetuation of the economic status quo in the Mediterranean. Slavery was a booming industry, not a device used by Muslims to force Europeans or Americans into political concessions. Indeed, as noted above in this essay, it was the Europeans whom used the threat of corsairs and slavery to coerce others from competing commercially against their own respective countries’ interests. tIn addition, unlike chattel slavery in the United States, slavery in North Africa was not lifelong, hereditary, or particularly brutal – another distinction Wheelan fails to note fully when defining the Barbary Wars as a “war on terror.” Historian Robert Allison rightly notes that the children of European and American slaves in North Africa would be born free if their parents were then currently enslaved. In addition, the slave himself or herself could gain their respective freedom upon conversion to Islam. Moreover, Euro-American slaves could also own property, testify in court, and even serve as ambassadors for their respective states.[18] Historian Linda Colley notes that North African slavery also had temporal limits, with a third of those writing about their captivity experiences spending less than a year as a Barbary slave.[19] Thus, slavery in North Africa allowed for “a means of incorporating kinless strangers into society” upon successful conversion to Islam, “while slavery in the Americas meant lifetime hereditary servitude, and the slave, instead of being a potential convert and a member of society, was a chattel, a piece of property.”[20]tContemporaries of the Barbary Wars took note of the differences between American and North African slavery. Historian Lawrence Peskins convincingly argues that contemporary American authors employed the genre of captivity tales – accounts written by those who were once slaves under Muslims – to criticize American chattel slavery. Peskin posits that, “these literary works… [were crucial] in the formation or revitalization of abolitionist societies throughout America.”[21] The tracts of this narrative-type were initially left ambiguous, allowing readers to conclude on their own that the subjugation of Americans abroad was horrific. Accounts of punishment and brutality in the narratives were often hearsay, rarely witnessed by the author and, even rarer, ever experienced personally by the narrator. Indeed, Linda Colley asserts that, “both white and black slaves in North Africa lived more diverse lives, and sometimes much freer lives, than the majority of plantation slaves in the Caribbean or American South.”[22] tTaken at face value, then, the tracts are not properly understood by modern readers when removed from their contemporary context in a manner like that which Wheelan has done. First, many of the former captives recounted their time as a slave expecting to receive monetary compensation for their narratives.[23] The more stunning and eye-catching the account of slavery was, the more copies of the narrative in question would sell. Second, with the denouncement of slavery abroad under Muslims, many of these tracts intended to criticize the horrific nature of slavery in the United States more than condemn Islam and the Barbary powers. Robert Allison states that contemporary audiences, upon reading these accounts, viewed “Islamic despotism as wrong… because it prevented men and women… from enjoying the benefits of liberty” and not necessarily due to confessional differences arising from some grand religious conflict.[24] Therefore, the stories “forced Americans both in captivity and at home to decide what kind of people they were” in the reflection of a Muslim Other.[25] Could Americans condemn Muslim slavery without looking at their own more brutal and personalized form of slavery? t Joseph Wheelan’s account of the Barbary Wars is offensive and ill-informed. First, he opts to employ the terms “terrorism” and “terror” infused with their modern, political meaning. Second, he anachronistically projects the modern construction of “terror” back in time, ignoring the contemporary historical context of the Barbary Wars. Such an omission is understandable if one wishes to sell books, but it is rather unscrupulous, at worst, and sloppy, at best. Third, the Barbary Wars took place due to economic factors, with the Barbary powers merely continuing their centuries’ long work of financing their respective states through ransom and privateering. A financing process that was condoned by the European powers of the period as a means to stifle mercantile competition and check one another’s influence in the Mediterranean theater. Fourth, the enslavement of captives in the Mediterranean was not unique to the Barbary powers. Europeans had Muslim slaves well into the nineteenth-century. Fifth, slavery in the Mediterranean was not the equivalent of American chattel slavery in brutality or scope. The status of slaves in North Africa – as individuals and not property – was a far cry from the violent, arbitrary nature of slavery in the American South. Finally, the narratives of American slavery abroad that contribute to Wheelan’s anachronistic usage of the term “terror” illustrate his failure to account, once again, for historical context. Captivity narratives existed as both political devices to criticize American slavery and as a commercial vehicle to sensationalize Barbary enslavement in order to sell books. Brutality in such narratives did occur, but rarely without explanation and often without first-hand experience. Therefore, Wheelan’s monograph and argument that the Barbary Wars was the “First American War of Terror” is salacious, jingoistic, opportunistic, and entirely without proper historical understanding. [1] Joseph Wheelan, Jefferson's War, p. xxii.[2] Wheelan, p. 366.[3] Wheelan, p. xxiii. [4] Wheelan, pp. xxiii, 50, 80, 313, and many other instances. Piracy is the robbing of ships without authorization by a state-actor; privateering/corsairing is the capture of enemy merchant vessels designated by a writ granted to a sea captain by a state-actor.[5] Robert J. Allison, The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. xv.[6] Allison, p. xvi. [7] Frank Lambert, The Barbary Wars: American Independence in the Atlantic World (New York: Hill and Wang, 2005), p. 42.[8] Wheelan, p. 356.[9] Wheelan never defines “terrorist” or “terror,” instead relying on innuendo and assumed agreement with his assertion and modern, 21st century understanding of the word – the use of violence, often by non-state actors but not necessarily all the time, to pursue political aims. Thus, his continual notice of slavery and its employment to denigrate Muslims is noteworthy in that it suggests he equates “terror” and “terrorist action” with enslavement. [10] Suraiya Faroqhi, The Ottoman Empire and the World Around It (London: I.B. Tauris, 2007), p. 135.[11] Ibid. [12] John Wolf, The Barbary Coast: Algeria under the Turks (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1979), p. 6.[13] Ibid. [14] Gillian Weiss, Captives and Corsairs: France and Slavery in the Early Modern Mediterranean (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2011), p. 170.[15] Robert C. Davis, Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500-1800 (New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2003), p. 10.[16] Davis, p. 91.[17] Davis, p. 150.[18] Allison, The Crescent Obscured, p. 107.[19] Linda Colley, Captives: Britain, Empire, and the World, 1600-1850 (New York: Anchor Books, 2003), p. 89.[20] Allison, p. 109.[21] Lawrence A. Peskin, Captives and Countrymen: Barbary Slavery and the American Public, 1785-1816 (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2009), p. 83.[22] Colley, p. 59.[23] Colley, p. 87.[24] Allison, p. 46. [25] Allison, p. 151.
Jefferson's War is an insightful look into an over looked period of American History. In 1800, on the cusp of Thomas Jefferson's election, the United States was still finding itself. Having survived the American Revolution, the upheaval of the establishment of the Constitution, and the early struggles of the 1790s, the United States now faced the difficult task of establishing itself on the world theater. The Barbary War of 1801-1805 enabled the US to do just that.Wheelan does an excellent job of tracing the history of Jefferson's problems with the Barbary States and his decision to launch the United States on its first foreign war. What follows is one of the most fascinating stories ever described. The events of the Barbary War would make a wonderful action movie...and the most remarkable aspect is the historicity of the events.On this stage walk Stephen Decauter and Edward Preble, early heroes of the US Navy. We read of their thrilling adventures at sea, their intrigues and the political backdrop of a world at war. Wheelan is at his best describing the sea actions of the various sailors and personalities. His vivid imagery puts the reader on the deck of the USS Constitution or in the prison in Tripoli. This book is important to read some of the current military and political struggles we are currently facing. It is difficult for Americans to remember that this is not the first time we have declared war on Muslim nations. By understanding these earlier wars, we might be able to get a grasp on the current struggles in Afghanistan and Iraq. I highly recommend this book for its timely subject matter and vividness of writing.
What do You think about Jefferson's War: America's First War On Terror 1801-1805 (2004)?
Contrary to what you might expect from reading the title of this book, there's very little Jefferson in here. Which is a good thing because I despise Thomas Jefferson. And, if this book were about him I'd have to go off on a harangue about what a hypocritical sneaky son-of-a-bitch he is. Instead, I get to ramble about how great pirates and broadsides and 19th century sailing vessels are. Also the word scuttle is the shit.The primary (and really only) problem with this book is the introduction where the author tries to be all topical and link the Barbary Wars with the Bush administration's "War on Terror". He stops drawing those parallels fairly early on, though, and settles into a rollicking recount of the relationships and battles of the Barbary Wars. This book is much more involving than Six Frigates (a book about the same general topic and time period). If you threw Jefferson's War into a time warp to 1801, I think you could use it as a recruitment tool for the early Navy.
—Jason
Enterprise over Tripoli, after 3 weeks as pacifist President, preyed on Christians for 200 years, Tripoli declared war first, Adams last days sold all 30 ships, slavery for centuries by Muslims, redemptorists paid for 15K, excuse of Koran to conduct aggression, justice honor respect least expensive option, Adams wanted to purchase peace, 1793 Washington epidemic malaria and yellow fever, Algiers slavery you shall eat stones, Merchant Marine Act increased shipping, build ships for optimal speed and firepower, Alliance last one auctioned off in 1785 for $26K, 50year live oak of Carolinas vs 10yr white oak, model after French vs larger 3story Brits, security payments by European countries to Tripoli Algiers Tunis as Shaw demanded, Nelson advocated swift reprisal, Philadelphia aground surrender commando raid by Intrepid and Decatur, kill or be killed, fiercer better trained better lead, Fort Enterprise, freedom from tyranny and prisons.
—Don Weidinger
This was an exceedingly jingoistic, unscholarly, ludicrous retelling of the Barbary Wars. Like many authors writing about this historical event, the author feels the need to compare the Barbary corsairs to Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. As I have said before, this is a stupid comparison. The only reason is it made is so neoconservative Americans to attack Islam and to claim that "the war with radical Islam has been going on forever." The book itself, filled with typos, is quite antiquated. Its citation format is dated as is its spelling of the word Muslim (spelt Moslem). The names of most of the Muslim characters are spelt how Americans would have spelt them in the 18th century (Mahomet, Hamet, Soliman, Unis). On the second page the author mentions that Europeans called Barbary corsair attacks "The Terror", for which he gives no citation and in all the books and articles and primary sources I have read about this subject, which is a lot, I have never once heard it called "The Terror". The only reason that this made up fact is used is so that once again the connection between the Barbary Wars and the War on Terror can be made. Later on the author extols of the virtues of America while castigating the Barbary states as "medieval, closed, tyrannical and corrupt." He goes on to state that it would "difficult to find more dissimilar nations than the United States and the...Barbary States." This of course is true seeing as how the amount of slaves in all the Barbary states numbered hardly above 10,000 while across the ocean over 600,000 slaves laboured for Americans, one of whom is the name sake of this very book! The author rarely mentions black slavery in America while going on and on about slavery in Barbary. In the third chapter he opens with a quote from the Quran book 9 verse 5, or the verse of the sword, taking the verse totally out of context and without explanation leaving the reader to think, unless he or she possesses a brain, that Islam is a religion of violence. Chapter two, the introduction to the history of the Barbary states, relies heavily on two books, one written in 1901, that simply restate Orientalist ramblings about the East. The newest book the author uses for this chapter was published in 1984. The author's bibliography is tiny and which I would probably add 5 or 6 books that he should have read before writing this one. This of course does not come as a surprise because the author is a journalist by profession and has little to no academic historical training. In a few years I will be more qualified to write a history book than him. All in all, the book does not add anything to the field of study, it does not profess any new ideas like all good history books should. It simply recycles the old stereotypes of Muslims as violent, bloodthirsty, greedy tyrants, adding in a few "ra-ra-ra America is great" jingoisms, and attempts to compare them to todays Muslims. I would recommend this book only to smart people who are capable of seeing that this book is pack of silliness.
—Joel Trono-Doerksen
