Posted on 08/21/2002 10:59:58 PM PDT by swarthyguy
The American encounter with Islam began long before the "Middle East" existed as a geographical region, and before the United States existed as a nation.
by Robert J. Allison
When the Christian kingdoms of Castille and Aragon, the nucleus of what became Spain, united and conquered the Muslim kingdom of Granada in 1492, King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella realized their goal of uniting Spain under Christian rule. They wanted to continue their holy war against Islam, chasing Muslims into North Africa.
President Jefferson To wage this war, Ferdinand and Isabella needed money. Christopher Columbus's bold plan, to sail west and find the "wealth of the Indies," offered an opportunity for the Christian monarchs to pay for their crusade.
While Columbus did not find the Indies, he did find the Americas, and the colonization of the New World diverted Spain only slightly from the immediate goal of invading North Africa. Spain conquered the fortress of Oran in Algiers and held the Western Sahara well into the twentieth century. Spain's last attempt to take Algiers, in 1775, was a disaster for the Spanish forces.
Spain became more interested in securing the wealth of the Americas. However, in the rest of 16th century Europe, the goal of driving the Muslims from the Mediterranean and Eastern Europe was more important than establishing colonies in the New World.
John Smith (1580-1631), celebrated both for founding Jamestown in 1607, and for naming the territory of "New England," joined a Christian army in the 1590’s to fight against the Ottoman Turks in Eastern Europe. Smith was left for dead on a battlefield in Transylvania and was taken prisoner by a Muslim ruler, but he escaped. Smith told two stories of his dramatic escape: in one, he killed his captor; in another, the captor's daughter and a beautiful Turkish princess took pity on Smith and prevented her father from lopping off his head. Whatever the truth, Smith went on to become a founder of American society, following this encounter with a Muslim tyrant. In Virginia he was taken captive by an Indian ruler and rescued by a beautiful Indian princess, Pocahontas.
The American colonies, as part of the British Empire, shared England's trade routes and England's struggles with other nations. In 1625, Moroccan cruisers captured an American merchant ship. Twenty years later, in what historian and novelist James Fenimore Cooper called the first American naval battle, a ship built in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with a Massachusetts-born crew, fought and defeated an Algerian ship in the Mediterranean. In 1673, when England and Algiers went to war, Algiers captured a New York ship. New York's churches raised money to redeem its captive sailors. Bostonian Joshua Gee wrote his story of deliverance when he returned home, and puritan minister Cotton Mather celebrated his return from captivity.
All of these episodes were important for the individuals involved. But they were also part of a larger struggle. Americans came to see these struggles as part of the larger contest between Christians and Muslims, between Europeans, or Euro-Americans, and the Turks or the Moors. Ultimately, the Westerners would call it a struggle between what they would call "civilization" and "barbarism." The Westerners had come to define the Muslim world as a place of licentiousness, tyranny, and chaos. The struggle with Muslim rulers, and with Muslim sea-raiders, was much more than a struggle for trade routes. It was a struggle for identity and for survival. The Americans inherited much of the European misunderstanding of Islam, which had been born of the long struggle between Europe and the Muslim world. English and French writers had written of Muslim tyranny as a counter to European ideas of government, and Americans saw the Muslim world through this European lens.
The Americans, though, chose to pursue this phantom enemy more relentlessly than any European nation had done. By the end of the 18th century, England and France had made peace with the Muslim powers of North Africa - Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Morocco - sparing their own merchant ships from capture by the North Africans, while turning the raiders on the weaker European nations. It was a common phrase among the merchants in Paris, London, and Amsterdam, that "If there were no Algiers, we would have to build one."
When the United States became independent, the British quickly informed the Algiers that American ships were no longer under English protection. In 1785, Algiers captured two American ships, demanding ransom for the vessels and two dozen sailors. For each captain, Algiers demanded $6,000, and for each sailor, $15,000. A treaty would cost the United States at least $100,000. John Adams, the American minister to London, thought his country should do what the nations of Europe did and pay the Algerians not to attack American ships. Thomas Jefferson, the American minister to France, thought differently. The nations of Europe might pay tribute to Algiers, but Jefferson saw no reason for "laying the other hemisphere at their feet." The surest way to secure a lasting peace was "thro' the medium of war." Jefferson did not believe the United States would have to bear the burden of war alone. Other neutral nations - Naples, Russia, Portugal, and Sweden - would cooperate in a blockade of Algiers. Jefferson began meeting in Paris with representatives of neutral nations, and with his proposed leader of the expeditionary naval force, American naval hero John Paul Jones. The American leadership of a fight against Algiers, Jones said, would "make us respected as a great people who deserve to be free."
Action on the Barbary Coast. The USS Constitution and the schooner USS Vixen bombard Tripoli, August 3, 1803. However, it was not meant to be. France, like England, had its own interests in the Mediterranean. When the emperor of Morocco had made peace overtures to the U.S., the French foreign ministry tried to dissuade the Americans from sending an ambassador. In fact, Morocco was the second country in the world to recognize American independence. When Jefferson had proposed sending an envoy to Turkey, France's foreign minister told him that would be useless. Now, when the French government learned that the United States was trying to organize an anti-Algiers coalition, it acted quickly. No discussions of this matter were permitted on French soil, Jefferson was told. Jefferson did not forget his bold idea. In 1789 he returned to the United States to become the first Secretary of State. He presented Congress with a report on the Mediterranean trade, and he urged Congress to build a navy to protect its commerce. The other alternatives were to abandon the Mediterranean market or pay tribute to Algiers.
Congress disagreed. Building a navy would require Congress to raise taxes, and the political leaders wanted to avoid this unnecessary expense. While Portugal patrolled the Straits of Gibraltar, there did not seem to be a reason for the U.S. to build its own fleet. Instead, Congress authorized President George Washington to spend $40,000 to ransom the American captives, and another $100,000 to make peace with Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.
Before the U.S. could send a negotiator, Algiers struck again. The British agent in Algiers engineered a fraudulent treaty between Algiers and Portugal which allowed Algerian ships to cross into the Atlantic. By the time Lisbon had disavowed the treaty,
Algiers had captured 11 American ships and more than 100 American sailors. Now the U.S. needed to act. Congress voted to build a navy, authorizing six frigates - including the U.S.S. Constitution - to protect American trade. Congress also authorized Washington to spend up to $800,000 for peace in the Mediterranean. It took much longer to build ships than to send money. In September 1795, Algiers and the United States agreed to peace. Algiers released the surviving captives, although many had died of the plague, and in turn the U.S. paid $180,000 for ransom, another $345,000 in cash, and promised to send $20,000 in naval supplies every year. Richard O'Brien, one of the Americans captured in 1785, sailed to Tunis and to Tripoli to make treaties there, and he would return to Algiers in 1797 as American consul general. The Washington and Adams administrations made peace in the Mediterranean by paying for it, as the nations of Europe did.
Tripoli's ruler, Yusuf Qaramanli Pacha, was not satisfied with the American treaty. The U.S. was habitually slow to send its promised tribute, and the treaty suggested that he was a subsidiary of Algiers. In 1800, he demanded a new treaty with an increased payment: $250,000 for the treaty, and annual payments of $20,000. If not, he would begin attacking American ships. Qaramanli's threats of war reached the United States just as Thomas Jefferson was becoming President of the United States. Qaramanli's demands, Jefferson told Congress, "admitted but one answer," and he sent three frigates and a schooner to patrol the Mediterranean and join other countries at war with Tripoli - Sweden or Naples - in a blockade. Qaramanli, without waiting for Jefferson's answer, declared war on May 14; he had the flagpole in front of the American consulate cut down to signify war had begun.
On August 1, 1801, the American schooner Enterprise encountered a Tripolitan ship, the Tripoli. In a daylong battle, 50 Tripolitan sailors died before their captain surrendered. Not a single American was killed. This, President Jefferson said, was not only a significant naval victory; it was proof that the Americans would fight, though they would rather "direct the energies of our nation to the multiplication of the human race, and not to its destruction." Jefferson's administration, unlike those of Washington and Adams, would pay tribute to the Barbary States only out of the mouth of a cannon.
The war against Tripoli had the emotional effect John Paul Jones and Thomas Jefferson had anticipated. It awakened a sense of American courage, enterprise, and identity. A contemporary song promised that the "pirates of Tripoli" would either "render us justice, or encounter our blows." Despite the emotional celebrations, the war did not go smoothly. The second largest ship in the American fleet, the U.S.S. Philadelphia, ran aground off Tripoli. Captain William Bainbridge and more than three hundred American sailors were taken prisoner, and Tripoli began to repair the ship for use against the United States. Back home, Jefferson realized high spirits and a small naval force would not win the war.
In the Mediterranean, American lieutenant Stephen Decatur proposed another idea. Decatur and a small crew sailed into Tripoli harbor on a captured Tripolitan vessel disguised as a merchant ship. They pulled up next to the Philadelphia, overpowered the Tripolitan crew, and set the American frigate on fire. The American prisoners in Tripoli reportedly cheered as they saw their ship burn and heard the roar of its cannon exploding in the inferno. Decatur and his men escaped under fire from Tripoli's batteries, having carried out what the British admiral, Horatio Lord Nelson, called "the most bold and daring act of the age."
President Jefferson immediately promoted Decatur to captain. At age 25, Decatur is still the youngest man ever to be a captain in the United States Navy, and Congress voted Decatur a sword. Decatur became an instant hero, celebrated in poems, paintings, plays, and his name lives on in dozens of American towns and cities. A contemporary song promised that if any foreign despot dared to insult the Americans, "We'll send them Decatur to teach them 'Good Manners.'"
In August the American fleet, led by the U.S.S. Constitution, bombarded Tripoli and fought a fierce series of battles in Tripoli harbor. Qaramanli was reportedly stunned, having believed the Americans would not fight, but were content to let others do their fighting for them. Commodore Edward Preble made good use of his ships and men, and he brought more ships from Naples and other allied states. Pope Pius VII praised Preble for having done in a short time, and with a small fleet, what all of the nations in Europe for so long had failed to do. Preble also asked the United States to send more forces, and just as he concluded bombarding Tripoli, a larger American fleet arrived. But with it came Preble's replacement. Commodore Samuel Barron came to relieve Preble, and though Barron was a senior officer, he was seriously ill, so he spent the winter of 1804-1805 unable to act. Barron had brought with him another American strategist, Colonel William Eaton.
Official portrait of President George Bush, Sr. by Ronald N. Sherr. Eaton, formerly American consul in Tunis, had his own plan to win the war. He would make an alliance with Yusuf Qaramanli's brother, Hamet, whom the Pacha had deposed in the 1790’s. Eaton and Hamet would raise a military force, invade Libya, and when the people of Tripoli rose up to support Hamet, he could depose Yusuf Qaramanli. Because Hamet would have come to power with American help, he would make a favorable treaty with the United States. President Jefferson and Secretary of State James Madison did not endorse Eaton's bold plan, but they did instruct Barron not to hinder the ambitious colonel. Eaton ventured into Egypt to find Hamet, who had an unfortunate habit of disappearing. They signed an understanding by which Eaton, for the purposes of this expeditionary force, a general, and Hamet, for the purposes of the force, the" rightful Pacha of Tripoli," would invade Libya. Eaton and Hamet left Egypt in March, 1805, with ten American marines, 300 Arab horsemen, 70 Albanian mercenaries, and 1,000 camels. In April they besieged the city of Derne in northern Libya. For the first time, the American flag was raised in a captured foreign city.
Yusuf Qaramanli tried, but failed, to recapture Derne from Eaton and Hamet. On the other hand, the people of Libya did not rally to Hamet's side, and Eaton found himself and his force stalled in Derne. When an American ship arrived at Derne in June, it did not bring reinforcements, but rather news that the United States and Yusuf Qaramanli had made peace. Tripoli's foreign minister, Muhammad D'Ghies, met with American envoy Tobias Lear on the U.S.S. Constitution. As the diplomats conferred in the captain's cabin, the ship's carpenter, on the spar deck, built a new flagpole for the American consulate. The U.S. paid Tripoli $60,000 for the captured Americans, and Tripoli would not demand any tribute. Why did Tripoli decide to make peace? Partly because of the naval bombardment, and partly because of the naval blockade which had made it more difficult to feed Tripoli's population, exacerbating a rebellion in the southern part of the country. The peace, however gained, would endure. The meaning of the war, too, would endure. The Marines took as their motto, "To the Shores of Tripoli," and Navy and Marine officers adopted the "Pacha's Sword," with a curved blade, for their equipment.
The Tripolitan war lives on not only in the Marine hymn, but also in other songs. In Georgetown, Maryland, a banquet honoring Stephen Decatur and the other heroes celebrated the victory with a song written by lawyer Francis Scott Key. Key took the popular drinking song, "Anacreon in Heaven," which had been used for many patriotic songs of the day, and turned it into an anthem:
When the warrior returns from the battle afar, To the home and the country he has nobly defended, Oh! Warm be the welcome to gladden his ear, And loud be the joys that his perils are ended! In the full tide of song, let his fame roll along. To the feast-flowing board let us gratefully throng. Where mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave, And form a bright wreath for the brow of the brave. The next verse celebrates the "band of brothers" that braved the desert and ocean to secure the rights and "fair fame" of America. The third verse continues the theme, more explicitly focused on the Tripolitan war: In conflict resistless each toil they endured, Till their foes shrunk dismay'd from the war's desolation: And pale beam'd the crescent, its splendor obscur'd By the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation. Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war, And the turban'd heads bowed to the terrible glare. Then mixt with the olive the laurel shall wave, And form a bright wreath, for the brow of the brave.
Nine years later, Key would stand aboard a British warship as it bombarded Fort McHenry in Baltimore. He would rewrite this song about Tripoli, with its imagery of bombs and warfare, and the arresting image of the "star-spangled" flag, which here obscures the Muslim crescent. Key's song of Tripoli lives on in the American national anthem.
In 1807, Algiers declared war against the United States. Algiers captured several American ships while the U.S. was distracted by its own war with England. In 1815, President James Madison sent a new force to the Mediterranean, the American fleet commanded by Stephen Decatur. Decatur arrived in Algiers with a significant American fleet and with two Algerian ships he had captured on his way. Algiers quickly made peace with the United States and renounced all tribute from the Americans. Decatur sailed on to Tunis and Tripoli, who reaffirmed their treaties. The United States had achieved its goal of free trade in the Mediterranean.
Much has changed in the two centuries since the Pacha of Tripoli cut down the American flagpole. The United States has become the world's most powerful country, and petroleum has become the fuel of American industrial power. At the same time, the United States has come into conflict with other Muslim powers, notably Iran in the 1970’s, Libya in the 1980’s and Iraq in the 1990’s. Today the United States confronts the Al-Qaeda, supported by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The Taliban and Al-Qaeda hope to make this struggle one between the United States and all Muslims.
A destroyed Iraqi tank in northern Kuwait rests near a series of oil well fires during the 1991 Gulf War. (AP Photo/David Longstreath) During the 1991 Gulf War, President George H.W. Bush created a multi-national force to liberate Kuwait. The fact that the war against Iraq was fought on behalf of another Muslim country, Kuwait, helped to prevent the war from being presented as one between the Muslim world and the rest of the world.
The lessons that the leaders of the Gulf War had learned were from more recent history, particularly the American war in Vietnam, where General Colin Powell began his own military service. During the Gulf War, Americans had two persistent nagging fears: first, by acting unilaterally, Americans would be isolated from the rest of the world, as they had been during the Vietnam War; and second, Americans would, as in Vietnam, become hopelessly entangled in a complex political situation they could not understand and in a war they could not win.
To allay these fears, the American strategists did two things. First, they assembled an impressive coalition of forces, including former American enemies, like Russia, and most of the Muslim states. The inclusion of Muslim states, and the fact that the war was intended to liberate one Muslim state from occupation by another, prevented Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime from raising the cry that the Americans were attacking all Muslims. The creation of this coalition was an impressive feat of American diplomatic skill. Second, to prevent Kuwait from becoming "another Vietnam," the Bush administration focused the war on a limited goal - the liberation of Kuwait, rather than the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime. By limiting the objective, the allies guaranteed a more attainable victory. Both of these strategies, to create a coalition and to avoid installing regimes in other nations, harkens back to President Jefferson's Mediterranean strategy. But the United States' response in the Persian Gulf was not dictated by what had happened two centuries earlier. Instead, it came from the more recent experiences of Vietnam.
In his inaugural address in 1801, President Jefferson had spoken of the American people as possessors of a "chosen country," and "kindly separated" from the "exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe." Jefferson meant the exterminating havoc of Europe but discovered before the end of his term that an ocean did not insulate a country involved in the world.
Until September 11, 2001, Americans felt secure in their chosen country. Americans could choose the scale of war and could remove themselves from the exterminating havoc of the world's crisis points. But the events of that day awakened us to the fact that we are not isolated. We should have awakened earlier, maybe in 1993, when the World Trade Center was first attacked; when our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were destroyed in 1998; or when the U.S.S. Cole was bombed in the harbor of Yemen in 2000. Just as the Washington and Adams administrations tried to keep peace in the Mediterranean by paying Algiers, the U.S. government tried to keep peace by pretending we were not at war. Jefferson fought Tripoli not only to secure peace with Yusuf Qaramanli, but also to show the nations of Europe that the United States would not follow their corrupt, self-interested rules. Today, our challenge is to respond not only in a way that prevents Al-Qaeda from ever attacking American citizens again, but to prevent attacks on any innocent civilians by terrorists of any kind. Our challenge is also to respond to this terrorist attack without turning on people who have also been subject to terror, or against our own citizens, or Muslims living in the United States.
The United States ignored the attacks on our citizens in the 1990’s, and most of the world has ignored terrorist attacks other than those against their own citizens. Jefferson and Madison learned from the mistakes of the 1780’s and 1790’s; President Bush and Secretary of State Powell have learned from the mistakes of the 1990’s. Our response now, even more than our response to the Barbary threat in our republic's infancy, will shape our character as a nation.
Robert J. Allison teaches history at Suffolk University in Boston. He is the author of “The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815” (University of Chicago Press, 2000)
An Englishman man named Dr. Trumbull was married to a Greek woman from Smyrna. They wanted to bring some of her people out of Greece which was suffering under the Turkish yoke.
The colony in New Smyrna failed after about 9 hard years and the 90 surviving Greeks took refuge in St. Augustine in a house on St. George Street.
Today that house is a Shrine to the memories of those the first Greeks in America and refugees from Turkish oppression. It is called St. Photios Greek Orthodox Shrine. It is has a lovely chapel and a museum inside.
I am deeply saddened at Robert J. Allison's scholarship. The 70 were NOT Albanians but Greeks.
From famousamericans.net: <a href="http://www.famousamericans.net/williameaton/><i>The reigning pacha of Tripoli, Jussuf Caramalli, had gained the throne by deposing his brother Hamet. On learning that the latter had taken refuge in Egypt, Eaton sought him out, and with the sanction of the government proposed to reinstate him. In the early part of 1805 he assembled a force of about 500 men, four fifths of whom were Arabs, <b>the remainder being Greeks</b> and a few Americans.</i>
I am deeply saddened at Robert J. Allison's scholarship. The 70 were NOT Albanians but Greeks.
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