Xenophon
Gone and forgotten
- Thread starter
- #21
The United States did not 'pay them off' after it sent naval forces to break them.Well, Marocca had the totally awesome position of beeing the only barbary state beeing able to attack Atlantic shipping wihtout having to get by Gibraltar, this alone made them more "powerfull" than Tripolis.
On a similiar vein, Algiers actually had manpower.
Also, Barbary pirate raid continued until the French intervention.
Last but not least, look at the history of the Barbary pirates.
They were not stopped by the Spanish, who temporally conquered Algiers, initiated Blockades and shelled their capitals.
They were not stopped by the Portugese or English who blockaded them at Gibraltar, and shelled their capitals a bit more.
And you argue that the United States, who actually payed them a ransom to return to the Status Quo Ante Bellum, somehow was what stopped them? From your article, the most daring thing the US did in the first war was blowing their own ship up. Another Bey than used the fact that the Bey in question was a bit distracted to stage a coup (particpants in the coup, 500 Berbers, 8 Marines), ending the first war.
On the other hand, the French invaded their lands, killed a third of the population and moved in French settlers in significant numbers.
If I would be a Pirate Bay, I know which of the 2 things would stop me from pirating
Concerning Barbary pirates primarly attacking and enslaving non Moslems:
Well, there was not anyone else they could raid in a profitable way. Going after Ottoman Shipping was obviously not an great option, the earlier Mamelucks were the same. They did some raids on the only non Barbary moslem faction that was around, Mali.
However, the Gold routes going from Mali went overland, and Marocco was profiting from the "peacefull" gold trade too, meaning they did not have a huge incentive to destabilise Mali.
Due to their geographic situation, the 3 other Berber states were far less able to raid Mali, when Mali later collapsed there was not a lot to pillage from them anyway.
Profitable non Moslem targets would have been in India and the far east, getting their was by far to difficult to be worth the effort.
Morroco has no Med seaports, in fact it's atlantic ports are not defensible, the main one being Agadir. They were never 'more powerful' then anyone at sea, certainly not Tripoli. It's clear to me you don't understand the sea route around africa, in order to catch the correct wind and avoid the perpetual storm zone near the equitorial coast of Africa sailing ships moved far out to the ocean, considerably west of teh Canaries. Muslim pirates used for the most part Xebecs and Galleys, which are unsuited to heavy seas.
'Manpower' is pointless when discussing sea power.
The US did NOT pay for 'status quo' anything, that was the entire point of the story, which you are not registering, they had tried to pay, released they could not and choose the correst option, military operations.
