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Algeria
Relations with the United States
European maritime powers paid the tribute demanded by the rulers
of the privateering states of North Africa (Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli,
and Morocco) to prevent attacks on their shipping by corsairs.
No longer covered by British tribute payments after the American
Revolution, United States merchant ships were seized and sailors
enslaved in the years that followed independence. In 1794 the
United States Congress appropriated funds for the construction
of warships to counter the privateering threat in the Mediterranean.
Despite the naval preparations, the United States concluded a
treaty with the dey of Algiers in 1797, guaranteeing payment of
tribute amounting to US$10 million over a twelve-year period in
return for a promise that Algerian corsairs would not molest United
States shipping. Payments in ransom and tribute to the privateering
states amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual
revenues in 1800.
The Napoleonic wars of the early nineteenth century diverted
the attention of the maritime powers from suppressing what they
derogatorily called piracy. But when peace was restored to Europe
in 1815, Algiers found itself at war with Spain, the Netherlands,
Prussia, Denmark, Russia, and Naples. In March of that year, the
United States Congress authorized naval action against the Barbary
States, the then-independent Muslim states of Morocco, Algiers,
Tunis, and Tripoli. Commodore Stephen Decatur was dispatched with
a squadron of ten warships to ensure the safety of United States
shipping in the Mediterranean and to force an end to the payment
of tribute. After capturing several corsairs and their crews,
Decatur sailed into the harbor of Algiers, threatened the city
with his guns, and concluded a favorable treaty in which the dey
agreed to discontinue demands for tribute, pay reparations for
damage to United States property, release United States prisoners
without ransom, and prohibit further interference with United
States trade by Algerian corsairs. No sooner had Decatur set off
for Tunis to enforce a similar agreement than the dey repudiated
the treaty. The next year, an Anglo-Dutch fleet, commanded by
British admiral Viscount Exmouth, delivered a punishing, nine-hour
bombardment of Algiers. The attack immobilized many of the dey's
corsairs and obtained from him a second treaty that reaffirmed
the conditions imposed by Decatur. In addition, the dey agreed
to end the practice of enslaving Christians.
Data as of December 1993
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