The Great Sea: A Human History of the Mediterranean

by David Abulafia

  Thus a small elite of Jewish families remained close to the dey, occasionally attracting hostile comment from figures such as the American consul in Tunis, William Eaton.21 In 1805 Eaton addressed an appeal to the inhabitants of Tripoli, informing them that the Americans had given their support to a rival claimant to the office of bashaw. He begged them to realize that the Americans were ‘people of every nation, every tongue and every faith’, who lived ‘at the uttermost limits of the West’. The present bashaw, Yussuf Karamanli, was, he said, a ‘base and perjured traitor, whose naval commander is a drunken renegade, and whose principal counsellor is a grasping Jew’. The naval commander, Murad Reis, was virulently anti-American; he arrived in Algiers as Peter Lisle, a Scot with a fondness for liquor, converted and married the bashaw’s daughter, without, however, abandoning strong drink.22 ‘Be assured,’ Eaton wrote, ‘that the God of the Americans and of the Mahometans is the same; the one true and omnipotent God.’23 He found Tunis and its neighbours an impenetrable world. In one sense it was an enlightening one, however. He questioned the justice of slavery when he saw the white and black slaves who abounded in Muslim North Africa:

  Remorse seizes my whole soul when I reflect that this is indeed but a copy of the very barbarity which my eyes have seen in my own native country. And yet we boast of liberty and natural justice.24

  Eaton noted that in Tunis, as in Algiers, there were Jewish merchants who seemed to dominate trade. He described a Jewish trading company, the Giornata, that paid the bey of Tunis 60,000 piastres each year and possessed a ‘factory’, or warehouse, at Livorno. He asserted that 250,000 hides were exported from Tunis each year, as well as vast amounts of wax. In addition, oil, wheat, barley, beans, dates, salt and livestock (including horses) were sent to Europe; while the war between France and England was at its height, the Ragusans acted as carriers, benefiting from the special status of Dubrovnik in its last years as a tributary of the Sublime Porte. Meanwhile, the souks of Tunis were hungry for exactly the goods the Americans could bring to North Africa: ‘muslins, stuffs, fine cloths, iron, coffee, sugar, pepper, and spices of all kinds, bleached wax candles, cochineal, dried fish, and lumber’. He predicted that they would fetch three times the price in Tunis that they would command in the United States.25 His comments show that he had in mind not just direct trade between the United States and North Africa, but a role in the carrying trade of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. His account confirms the lack of manufacturing industry in Tunis, Algiers and Tripoli; even candles needed to be imported, despite the export of prodigious amounts of wax. However, the lack of good quality wood in North Africa remained a serious problem, especially for states that launched their own pirate fleets. To some extent this was resolved by the purchase or seizure of foreign ships, but the Barbary fleets had been shrinking since the late seventeenth century, under British and Dutch pressure; by 1800, each state was lucky if it could mobilize a dozen corsair ships. To the trade in North Africa could be added trade in other corners of the Mediterranean, only possible while the United States enjoyed peace with the Barbary regencies. Thomas Jefferson recorded substantial exports of American wheat and flour into the Mediterranean, as well as rice and pickled or dried fish, enough to furnish the cargo of up to 100 ships each year; but ‘it was obvious to our merchants, that their adventures into that sea would be exposed to the depredations of the piratical States on the coast of Barbary’.26

  III

  From the moment of independence, the United States tried to address the problem of the Barbary corsairs. In May 1784 Congress authorized negotiations with the Barbary states. The Moroccan sultan was the first ruler to recognize the independence of the United States. The Americans signed agreements with Morocco, Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis between 1786 and 1797. In the agreement with Algiers, of December 1794, the United States promised the dey $642,500 at once and naval stores each year worth $21,600, including powder and shot, pine masts and oak planking; they also presented him with a golden tea-set. This was a marked change from the terms originally demanded by the dey: $2,247,000 in cash and two frigates with hulls sheathed in copper. Even so, difficulties continued when the dey complained that the money he was owed had not arrived, so it became necessary to offer him a new gift – ‘a new American ship of 20 guns, which should sail very fast, to be presented to his daughter’ – but the dey successfully demanded a 36-gun ship instead.27 The North African rulers constantly berated the Americans and Europeans for the poor quality and insufficient quantity of the goods they were supposed to receive. The Christian powers did cut corners, for they saw these demands as nothing but bare-faced robbery.

  In 1800 the George Washington, a bulky American man-of-war converted from an East India trading vessel, arrived in Algiers harbour carrying the gifts expected by the local ruler, along with sugar, coffee and herrings. Following the usual complaints that American presents were in arrears, the dey summarily demanded that the captain should sail to Constantinople with an Algerian envoy; the captain felt too intimidated to refuse. His bizarre cargo has been described as a ‘Noah’s ark’: it included not just horses, cattle and 150 sheep but four lions, four tigers, four antelopes and twelve parrots, and he also carried 100 black slaves who were being sent to the Ottoman sultan as tribute, as well as an ambassadorial entourage of as many people. The captain was ordered to fly the Algerian flag, though he soon reverted to that of the United States; it was reported that the sailors, in mockery of Islam, swung the vessel about during Muslim prayers so that the worshippers could no longer tell in which direction Mecca lay.28 The Americans were mortified to learn of their humiliation in their own newspapers, but, precariously, relations with the dey had been preserved. While relations with Algiers remained afloat, even if low in the water, those with Tripoli deteriorated as the bashaw demanded further tribute. On failing to receive any, he sent his men to the American consulate to chop down the flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes, and then sent out ships to hunt for prizes; as well as a captured Swedish vessel, his flotilla included the Betsy of Boston, seized from the Americans a few years earlier and renamed the Meshuda.29

  This was a period, between October 1801 and May 1803, when France and Great Britain were at peace, and the Americans and Scandinavians were seeking to exploit the relative quiet of the Mediterranean for purely commercial reasons. But the Barbary states again and again stood in their way, and the United States, for the first time, felt itself being pushed towards war with a foreign power. In 1802 the Swedes, with grievances of their own, gladly joined the Americans in a blockade of Tripoli. This conflict was already spilling over into something larger, and its range was extended still further when the Moroccan emperor, irate at an American refusal to guarantee free passage for his ships carrying grain to Tripoli, declared war on the United States.30 Then, in October 1803, the frigate USS Philadelphia, which was taking part in the blockade of Tripoli, ran aground while pursuing a Tripolitanian vessel. It was captured by the bashaw’s men, along with its crew of 307. The bashaw thought he could use this opportunity to extract $450,000 in ransom money. The commander of the American fleet, Preble, was still committed to a military solution, and was convinced that possession of the Philadelphia by his foes would give them the advantage they needed at sea: even in peacetime the Philadelphia would be used in corsair raids, or as a bargaining counter to squeeze more money out of the Americans and Europeans. The ship had to be destroyed or, better still, recaptured. A daring plan was drawn up for a night-time attack on the ship, and the ketch Intrepid was sent into Tripoli after nightfall on 16 February, impudently flying the British flag, under the command of Lieutenant Stephen Decatur. The Intrepid argued its way into Tripoli harbour: the harbour pilot was hailed in lingua franca and told that the vessel was bringing in provisions. Meanwhile, the Tripolitanian fleet remained sleepily unaware of what was happening. Decatur fought his way into American legend by leading the attack, rendered easier by the rapid flight of most of the enemy. Realizing that they had no chan
ce of sailing it back to their own lines, the Americans set the Philadelphia alight within a quarter of an hour of taking it. All of Tripoli is said to have been illuminated by the blaze.31 A later attack on Tripoli harbour, in August 1804, brought Decatur still greater fame: he was said to have searched out a vast Turkish Mamluk who had killed his brother earlier that day; he grappled with the giant, not giving way even when his cutlass broke, and finally (after his life was saved by a selfless sailor who parried the mortal blow intended for Decatur) he managed to shoot the Turk at close quarters. The event was celebrated in paint and print throughout the United States. It showed how American courage triumphed over brute force, the small, free and resolute Decatur over the dark and ugly Mamluk slave. This small victory in Tripoli added immeasurably to American self-confidence.32

  Even so, they were unable to break the bashaw’s will, and the Americans now adopted a very different plan, long advocated by William Eaton. Eaton sailed to Alexandria in search of Hamet, the claimant to the throne of Tripoli, who had been pushed aside by his younger brother Yusuf. Eaton found himself leading an army of men (mainly Arabs) overland from Egypt to Tripoli, in tough conditions. It took six weeks to march 400 miles, as far as Derne, a coastal city thought likely to accept Hamet as its ruler. In the end, the United States failed to install him in Tripoli, but the mere threat of Hamet’s return forced the bashaw to negotiate. He was willing to agree to modest terms, in no way comparable to the fortune other North African rulers had extorted – a $60,000 ransom payment.33

  IV

  Algiers proved more intractable. In 1812, aware that war had broken out between the United States and Great Britain, the dey of Algiers decided to place further pressure on the Americans, who would not now be able to mobilize a fleet in the Mediterranean. He insisted that the presents brought on board the Allegheny were of poor quality: for example, he had asked for twenty-seven large-diameter ropes and was only given four. He demanded $27,000, and, when the Americans refused, he expelled them, subject to payment of that amount, which the consul, Lear, had to borrow at 25 per cent interest from the Bacris.34 The Algerians had meanwhile brought home the captured American brig Edwin, engaged in contraband trade through Gibraltar in support of the British army in Spain (and in ignorance of the severe deterioration in Anglo-American relations). The crew of the Edwin was held in Algiers along with the ship, and the United States government, preoccupied with war on its Atlantic seaboard and in Canada, resolved to send an envoy to the Maghrib, in the hope that negotiations might still succeed. Mordecai Noah was appointed consul at Tunis. He was a remarkable figure, keen to show his fellow-Jews that they had a place in American society, who talked of encouraging the ‘Hebrew nation’ to bring its funds across the Atlantic from the Old World, to the general benefit of all Americans. The American administration knew all about the Bacri family, and Noah might provide a valuable means of access to the dey through his co-religionists. In winter 1814 he passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, cultivating links with the Jewish community of Gibraltar, and obtaining from one of its leaders a letter of introduction to the Bacris. But he was able to secure the release of only a handful of the American captives.35

  President Madison was not a warmonger, but the United States had tasted blood in the war against Tripoli, and saw war against Algiers as the second phase in a conflict that would put an end to the importunings of the Barbary rulers. On 17 February 1815 the United States and Great Britain made peace; a week later, Madison requested Congress to declare war on Algiers, and the Americans assembled the largest fleet they had ever put together (numbering only ten warships). The national hero Stephen Decatur was placed in charge of the expedition.36 He amply fulfilled expectations, seizing several Algerian ships well before he reached Algiers. He was thus in an excellent position to dictate terms to the dey, who was quite new to office (the two previous deys having been assassinated). When the dey’s envoy asked Decatur for time to think about the terms of the treaty the Americans wished to impose, Decatur answered: ‘Not a minute!’37 A treaty with Algiers was followed in swift succession by treaties with Tunis and Tripoli. The Algerian treaty provided for the return of American captives, and it regulated the functions of the American consul, but its real importance in the history of the Mediterranean lies in the second article: there were to be no presents or tribute payments ever again. This was the great achievement of Decatur’s expedition. A precedent had been set and its importance was well understood by the European powers; they viewed the United States with far greater respect than ever before. The Americans congratulated themselves – John Quincy Adams wrote: ‘our naval campaign in the Mediterranean has been perhaps as splendid as anything that has occurred in our annals since our existence as a nation’. That was not very long, but this made the victory with a brand-new navy all the more impressive.38 The victories against the men of Barbary were a defining moment in the emergence of an American identity.

  V

  A new order was coming into being in the East as well. By 1800, the Ottoman sultan found that his Egyptian and Greek subjects were becoming unmanageable. The warlord Muhammad Ali took advantage of the chaos created in Egypt by Napoleon’s arrival and withdrawal to overthrow the Mamluk functionaries of the Ottoman state and to install himself as ruler in 1805. Although he acknowleged Ottoman suzerainty and officially functioned as viceroy, he was very much his own master. He was an Albanian who spoke Albanian and Turkish, not Arabic, and he looked beyond the Ottoman world, seeking to draw on the learning and technology of western Europe, especially France – he was for Egypt what Peter the Great had been for Russia. He saw economic improvement as the key to the success of his plans, taking the land into state ownership and building a war fleet. These policies recall in almost uncanny detail the policies of the Ptolemies 2,000 years earlier. He encouraged new agricultural schemes, including irrigation projects, for he recognized the strength of demand in western Europe for good-quality cotton, but he was also keen to establish an industrial base, so that Egypt did not simply become an exporter of raw materials to richer nations.39 His ambition was to bring to Egypt the benefits of the economic expansion that was transforming Europe at the start of the nineteenth century. He could see, for instance, to what poverty Alexandria had been reduced: the city had shrunk in size and population so that it was now little more than a village; its long-distance trade was not very significant. Its revival began under Muhammad Ali with the arrival of immigrants from all around the eastern Mediterranean: Turks, Greeks, Jews, Syrians.40

  Muhammad Ali’s growing assertiveness was expressed during the 1820s in his attempts to gain recognition of his authority over Crete and Syria. If he wished to make Egypt into a modern naval power, the viceroy would need access to good supplies of timber and, as in past millennia, this meant he would have to gain control of well-forested lands. The difficulty that faced him in the 1820s was that the Ottomans were proving even less successful in managing their European lands than they were in managing their African ones. In 1821 revolts broke out in the Morea, where geography favoured the rebels, who soon controlled the countryside, leaving the Turks in charge of naval bases at Nafplion, Modon and Coron. Even so, the Turks did not maintain command of the seas. Islands such as Hydra and Samos became the new focuses of resistance. The Greek merchant communities, increasingly active since the seventeenth century, cobbled together a war fleet mainly consisting of merchant ships armed with cannon. One Greek fleet possessed thirty-seven vessels, another a dozen, both under commanders from Hydra. By late April these Greek sea-dogs had captured four Turkish warships, including two men-of-war, giving the Greeks the confidence to patrol the Aegean and to confront the Turkish fleet in the approaches to the Dardanelles; although the Greek fleet proved no match for the Turks, the Greeks retreated without serious loss. By 1822 the Turkish government had become exasperated by Greek sea-raids, and mobilized a much larger Turkish fleet mainly brought from the Barbary states. In April the Turks intervened in Chios, where a Greek exped
itionary force was trying to capture the citadel. The Greek force was chased away and the Turks went on to massacre much of the population, in a bloodbath that understandably found its way into the heroic history of Greek opposition to the Turks, and provided a powerful theme for a painting by Eugène Delacroix.41 The Greeks riposted in kind: they massacred the Muslims and Jews of Tripoli in the Morea five and a half months later. Over the centuries many Greeks had turned Muslim and many Turks had become Hellenized. The massacres and ethnic cleansing of the Graeco-Turkish wars, which continued for a century and a half, were thus based on a tragic denial of the common heritage of Greeks and Turks in the eastern Mediterranean.

  This did not, however, impede observers in Great Britain, France and Germany from celebrating the success of the Greeks, seeing in them the heirs of the classical world whose history, philosophy and literature they studied at school. Governments might be more cautious about giving their support to the rebels: the British government, pragmatically, wondered whether the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire was desirable just yet, a view shared by Muhammad Ali, though few imagined it had very long to last. The problem was that the break-up of the Balkans would alter the whole balance of power in Europe, the delicate mechanism known as ‘the Concert of Europe’ created in the aftermath of Napoleon’s final defeat at Waterloo. One source of concern was Austria, which protected its commercial interests by maintaining a larger fleet of warships (twenty-two) in the eastern Mediterranean than did Great Britain. The Austrians were compromised in the eyes of the Greeks by their willingness to trade with the Turks, though all they were doing was continuing the age-old commerce between Dalmatia and the eastern Mediterranean by way of Dubrovnik and its neighours.42 Only in 1827 did the European powers send substantial aid to the Greeks. Meanwhile, Muhammad Ali saw the Greek rebellion as a chance to pick some ripe plums for himself, and decided to send a fleet towards Greece early in 1825. He intended to win Crete, Cyprus, Syria and the Morea for his personal empire, and imagined that he could hold Greece if he summarily expelled the Greeks and repopulated southern Greece with Egyptian fellahin. His aim, then, was domination over almost the entire eastern Mediterranean. He spared no expense, sending sixty-two vessels to the waters east of Crete, in the hope of knocking out Greek naval forces in the southern Aegean.43