"The Barbary States of America": The Barbary Wars and American Racial Politics
Open AccessThis dissertation examines the Barbary Wars’ impact on American racial discourse and racial politics, including the debate over the Atlantic Slave Trade, domestic slavery, and Indian Removal. From 1785 to 1815, corsairs from the Barbary States of North Africa (Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis) captured over 700 American sailors, held them as slaves in Africa, and demanded ransom for their release. To free the captive sailors, the United States built a navy and launched it to the Mediterranean in 1801. After two successive naval campaigns against Tripoli (1801-1805) and Algiers (1815), the American navy finally forced each Barbary State to free all captive Americans and pledge to never again attack American ships, bringing the Barbary Wars to an end.This dissertation argues that the Barbary Wars, which pitted Americans against supposedly savage, violent North Africans, reinforced the racial prejudice that underpinned the white supremacist policies of the early Republic, including slavery and Indian Removal. White Americans took the dual lesson from the Barbary Wars that they, as virtuous people who fought for their liberty, deserved freedom, while barbarous races, whether in North Africa or North America, had to be controlled or eliminated. However, the Barbary Wars also provided precedent of a militant antislavery campaign that inspired later generations of antebellum abolitionists to challenge slavery in the southern United States, or, as Charles Sumner referred to them: The Barbary States of America.
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