Barbary Coast

"Barbary" redirects here. For other uses, see Barbary (disambiguation) and Barbary Coast (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Barbaria (region).

A 17th-century map by the Dutch cartographer Jan Janssonius showing the Barbary Coast, here "Barbaria"

The Barbary Coast (also Barbary, Berbery, or Berber Coast) was the name given to the coastal regions of central and western North Africa or more specifically the Maghreb and the Ottoman borderlands consisting of the regencies in Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, as well as the Sultanate of Morocco from the 16th to 19th centuries. The term originates from an exonym for the Berbers.

History

Ex-voto of a naval battle between a Turkish ship from Algiers (front) and a ship of the Order of Malta under Langon, 1719

Barbary was not always a unified political entity. From the 16th century onward, it was divided into the political entities of the Regency of Algiers, Regency of Tripoli, Regency of Tunis, and the Alawi Sultanate. Major rulers and petty monarchs during the times of the Barbary states' plundering parties included the dey of Algiers, pasha of Tripoli, bey of Tunis, and the sultan of Morocco.

In 1625, the pirate fleet of Algiers, by far the largest, numbered 100 ships of various sizes, carrying 8,000 to 10,000 men. The corsair industry alone accounted for 25 percent of the workforce of the city, not counting other activities of the port. The fleet only averaged 25 ships in the 1680s, but these were larger vessels than had been used since the 1620s, so the fleet still employed some 7,000 men. In addition, 2,500 men manned the pirate fleet of Tripoli, 3,000 in Tunis, and several thousand more in the various minor pirate bases such as Bona, Susa, Bizerta, and Salé. The corsairs were not solely natives of the cities where they were based; while many were Arabs and Berbers, there were also Turks, Greeks, Albanians, Syrians, and renegade Italians, especially Corsicans, among their number.

Purchase of Christian captives in the Barbary states

The establishment of the U.S. Constitution in 1789 empowered the federal government to levy taxes and maintain a military, authorities previously absent under the Articles of Confederation. The nascent nation's first naval vessels were commissioned in 1794 to counter Algerian piracy. Subsequently, in 1801, the Pasha of Tripoli declared war on the United States, citing unpaid tribute.

The first overseas military land action of the United States was executed by the US Marines and the US Navy in April 1805 at the Battle of Derna, at Tripoli, a coastal city now in eastern Libya. It was part of an effort to destroy the Barbary pirates and end piracy between warring tribes by the Barbary states, which were themselves member states of the Ottoman Empire. The opening line of the Marines' Hymn refers to this action: "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli...".

See also

• Langue de Barbarie – Peninsula and national park in Senegal
• Beylik of Tunis – North African monarchy (1705–1881)
• Republic of Salé – 17th-century city-state in North Africa
• Tunisian navy (1705–1881) – Navy of the Vilayet of Tunis
• Turkish Abductions – Barbary slave raids against Iceland
• Corsairs of Algiers – 1516–1830 unit of the Algerine army
• Barbary slave trade – Slave markets in North Africa

Sources

• London, Joshua E. (2005). Victory in Tripoli: How America's War with the Barbary Pirates Established the U.S. Navy and Shaped a Nation. New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 0-471-44415-4.
• LAFI (Nora), Une ville du Maghreb entre ancien régime et réformes ottomanes. Genèse des institutions municipales à Tripoli de Barbarie (1795–1911), Paris: L'Harmattan, 2002, p. 305

External links

• Media related to Barbary Coast at Wikimedia Commons
• "When Europeans Were Slaves: Research Suggests White Slavery Was Much More Common Than Previously Believed", Ohio State University