ABSTRACT
In the reader Terrorism. Essential Primary Sources from 2006, the editors write: ‘The first war fought by an independent United States was a war against terrorism, the Tripolitan War against pirates on the Barbary Coast of North Africa from 1801 to 1805.’2 This is part of a seemingly still more prevalent trend of drawing a connection between present-day terrorism and a group of pirates known as the Barbary corsairs,3 who were the target of what many take to be the first US anti-terrorist campaign, the Barbary wars of 1801-15. The Barbary wars were waged against a number of Muslim North African communities in present-day Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia, and who – among other things – earned their living by piracy (actually privateering, but understood by Europeans and Americans as illegitimate plunder), slavery and protection money. This reading of the Barbary wars as the first anti-terror war is often much more political than analytical and focuses on the American wars against the Barbary states as the model for contemporary anti-terrorist campaigns. This often very skewed and one-sided narrative – only highlighting Muslim piracy, exaggerating the religious aspect and criticizing the Europeans for just paying protection money and even cooperating with the pirates – portrays the American campaigns as heavy-handed, adventurous even, performed by small groups of dedicated people fighting on behalf of a righteous nation standing up to the tyranny and fear inflicted by the ‘pirate menace’.4 The political lessons drawn from this anti-pirate discourse are evident when Thomas Jewett under the title ‘Terrorism in Early America. The U.S. Wages War Against the Barbary States to End International Blackmail and Terrorism’ writes:
There was another time when it was determined that diplomacy would not only be futile, but humiliating and in the long run disastrous. A time when
ransom or tribute would not buy peace. A time when war was considered more effective and honorable. And, a time when war would be fought, not with large concentrations of military might, but by small bands peopled with individuals of indomitable spirit.5
