“Between the years 1500 and 1800, the Barbary pirates are estimated to have enslaved as many as one million people.”

By John Danielski

WILLIAM Harris was roused from his sleep in the early hours of June 20, 1631. There was smoke in the air — a smell nobody who lives in thatched-roof cottage wants to ever wake to. He leaped to his feet and dashed to the small window. Harris’ eyes widened in horrified disbelief as he saw that more than two dozen dwellings in the small Cork County village of Baltimore, Ireland were ablaze. Amid the flickering lights of the flames, he could pick out several fierce looking men racing from home to home. Clad in blue and red uniforms, sporting baggy trousers and large turbans, they fired muskets at anyone who tried to resist. He watched as two villagers were cut down by gunfire and then hacked to pieces.

Harris blinked in astonishment as he realized the attackers were janissaries, the dreaded enforcers of the Barbary pirates. As Harris watched, the attackers seized women and children. They weren’t there for plunder, this was a slaving raid. 

Unlike the famed pirates of the Caribbean, the Barbary corsairs weren’t driven by the capture of treasure; It was human prizes they sought in the form of slaves.

Sailing from the North African cities of Tripoli, Tunis and Algiers, as well as Sali and Rabat in the Sultanate of Morocco — a region known collectively as the Maghreb — the Barbary pirates were akin to privateers. They enjoyed the official sponsorship of political entities and paid their patron governments a percentage of their haul. In fact, many called them corsairs, after the Italian word corsaro, which meant privateer.

The word Barbary came from the word Berber, a people long established in the region. Berber dynasties had ruled these kingdoms until the early 1500s. Then the Spanish, invigorated by the success of the Reconquista and the expulsion of the Moors from Spain, invaded the area, capturing a number of cities. Muslims across the region viewed the incursion as a symbolic contest between Islam and Christianity and pushed back vigorously. In fact, the Ottoman Sultan in Constantinople encouraged seafaring warriors to emigrate to the area and soon the mariners had organized themselves into a force that eventually reclaimed all of the conquered territories. Many of the Christianized Moors in Spain, known as the moriscos joined the pirates, itching for vengeance against the Spaniards who had banished them. Soon Barbary corsairs were attacking Christian ships across the Mediterranean in an unending jihad, even serving the Ottoman Sultan as auxiliaries in his naval campaigns, like the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

Barbary galleys featured shallow drafts and were swift and maneuverable. They used a combination of oars and sail, perfect for short-range raids against shipping and coastal settlements in the Mediterranean but unsuited to the much harsher conditions of the Atlantic Ocean. Their craft improved however with the help of European mercenaries who filled their ranks with each new success. These were often ex-privateers who had been put out of work when England and Spain concluded a peace in 1604. Eager to fight for pay, they were even willing to convert to Islam to do so. They brought with them the knowledge of square-rigged vessels far better suited to long-distance voyages and sparked a minor revolution in Barbary ship building. Armed with new ship designs, the Barbary corsairs struck out into the Atlantic to raid. Some reached as far as Iceland.

A search of Barbary ship rosters in the 18th century revealed as many of half of their captains were Europeans. One of those renegades was known as Mourad Reis, the leader of the raid on Baltimore, Ireland. His real name was Jan Janszoon, a Dutchman from Haarlem.

Reis never encountered William Harris personally in the attack on Baltimore, but the corsair did fall victim to a clever strategy that the Irishman devised. Harris knew the upper half of his village, which was little more than 40 houses on a hill well above those of the cove, had no way to resist the fearsome janissaries directly. So, he grabbed a musket and ammunition and roused several neighbors to join him atop the highest point of land and began firing into the air while using a drum to beat the sounds of an assembly.

Reis was an experienced pirate who had survived by being cautious. He interpreted the gunfire and drumming as a sign that the English garrison from Kinsale, 30 miles from Baltimore, had somehow arrived on the scene. The corsair had only 230 men and was not looking for a pitched battle with a large force of trained soldiers and ordered an evacuation. Before withdrawing to his ships, Reis and his men snatched 107 villagers, mostly women and children. Harris’s quick thinking had prevented the toll from being much greater; he’d later receive the formal thanks of Parliament.

Other coastal towns within reach of the corsairs were not so lucky. Between 1500 and 1800, the Barbary pirates are estimated to have enslaved as many as one million people. Between 1609 and 1680, it is estimated that 9,000 Britons were taken. The situation became so bad at one point, that fishermen in the English Channel refused to leave port for fear of capture. And while Britain was hard hit, residents of Spain, Sicily, Corsica, the Baleric Islands, and the Italian states suffered far worse.

Like privateers, Barbary corsairs possessed letters of marque and reprisal, which were effectively licenses to prey on enemy shipping. However, while most nations’ letters authorized privateering in wartime only, Barbary commissions were perpetually in force. North African rulers considered the pirates as fighting a holy war against Christians, which was a conflict that had no end.

While Barbary corsairs often targeted ships and their crews, most of their plunder came from land raids. Along the Mediterranean coast, whole villages were deserted as the inhabitants moved inland when the corsairs were prowling. The Barbary reputation for cruelty was so widely known falling into their hands was considered a fate worse than death by most Christians. Stories circulated of men dying as galley slaves, women sold as concubines, and children raised to despise their Christian heritage. While true, the slaves taken by corsairs served a variety of less lurid functions. The Maghreb suffered from a chronic labor shortage and slaves were a valuable source of workers. Just as states in the Persian Gulf today would be hard pressed to function without foreign guest workers, so the Barbary states needed slaves to keep their cities functioning. In fact, a slave with specialized expertise could rise quite high in Barbary governments and captives who converted to Islam saw a great and immediate mitigation of their suffering.

Slaves could also bring in ransom. This was a lucrative source of revenue and literate slaves were encouraged to write sad letters home, begging for help. A wealthy captive with an influential family stood a good chance of being repatriated. Sadly, the 107 captives of the Baltimore raid had neither money nor clout and never saw home again.

The governments of Europe waged campaigns to eliminate the pirates. Fleets would periodically bombard Barbary cities. These efforts had little lasting impact. Europeans were too involved in their own internal power politics to make a concerted effort against the Barbary Coast and were willing to tolerate the corsairs so long as they damaged their continental rivals more.

Ultimately, the Europeans concluded it was cheaper to buy off the Maghreb corsairs with a yearly tribute than finance the cost of repeated military expeditions. Beginning in the 1620s, the rulers of Europe concluded a series of treaties with the pirates, involving sizable fortunes. Between slave trading, ransom, and tributes, the Barbary Pirates grew wealthy.

Despite the pejorative label of pirates, the Barbary states were administered with a remarkable degree of competence. Their bureaucrats were skilled and efficient. One traveler in Tunis in the 18th century said the streets of that city were safer to walk at night than those of London. Many of the chief advisors of the local rulers were experienced sea captains and raids were plotted well in advance, each flotilla of corsairs having a distinct patrol area.

In the 18th century wars fought by European ships in the Mediterranean, the Barbary states made excellent money by supplying provisions to all sides. In fact, Horatio Nelson’s chief source of supply in the months preceding the Battle of Trafalgar was the Maghreb coast. So long as Europeans fought each other, the pirates served a useful function.

Things changed however when the pirate warlords sought more substantial tributes. One of the first victims of these greedier corsairs was the newly independent United States. Since ships from America no longer enjoyed the protection of the Royal Navy, they were now considered fair game. The first vessel taken was the Betsy in 1784.

Unfortunately, America’s navy had been disbanded at the end of the Revolutionary War; the depredations of the Barbary corsairs prompted Washington to reconstitute its fleet. In 1794 Congress introduced a bill to establish a permanent United States Navy, staring with six frigates.

In the meantime, U.S. diplomats concluded several treaties with the Barbary pirates, following the European practice of paying tribute. By the end of John Adams’ administration in 1801, the U.S. had paid the pirates more than $ 1 million dollars in tribute, which constituted almost 15 per cent of the national budget. Thomas Jefferson, Adams’ vice-president, was outraged, and campaigned against his former running-mate on the slogan: “Millions for war, but not a penny for tribute.”

By the time Jefferson took office, the United States had a small but efficient navy. Jefferson declared war on the pirates in 1801. The conflict lasted until 1806 and schooled a whole generation of American naval officers in how a war should be fought. A handful of U.S. Marines under Lieutenant Presley O’ Bannon even carried out a daring assault against Tripoli with the help of an army of local auxiliaries birthing the Corps’ reputation as kick-in-the-door shock troops. The war was partly successful. The U.S. policy of tribute-paying was over, and the American captives were returned. The Barbary states however continued their depredations against other nations.

With the start of the War of 1812, Algerian corsairs became tacit allies of the British and again started preying upon American shipping. After reaching a peace agreement with Great Britain in 1814, President James Madison assembled a fleet of 10 ships under Stephen Decatur, a hero of the first Barbary War. Decatur’s squadron made short work of all the Barbary states. Treaties were soon concluded, hostages were returned, pirates paid heavy indemnities, and tribute paying stopped for good.

In 1816, the British and Dutch, impressed by Decatur’s action, bombarded Algiers over a matter of captives that were massacred rather than returned. A day-long bombardment ensued during which the combined forces fired 50,000 cannon balls and 1,000 explosive projectiles into the city. With Algiers reduced to rubble, its ruler was forced to accept the harsh terms the British proposed.

After 1816, the Barbary states went into rapid decline since their main occupations of piracy and slave taking had no place in the new order of things. The Congress of Vienna brought about a lasting and stable peace in European for the first time in centuries. The barbary corsairs, which could only flourish when the nations of Europe were at loggerheads, swiftly declined.

The final blow came in 1830 with the French invasion of Algeria and the systematic elimination of the last corsair strongholds. Piracy was finished.

The Barbary pirates have a deserved reputation for cruelty and ruthlessness: terror followed in their wake. No kind words can be spoken about human traffickers, but slavery was not exclusively a Muslim practice. The Christian Knights of Malta and Spaniards routinely enslaved Muslim prisoners or war and other European powers treated Muslim captives with callousness and contempt. Europeans denigrated Muslims untrustworthy, yet on more than a few occasions European freebooters broke the terms of treaties and attacked Muslim merchant vessels. Christians who converted to Islam were shown considerable mercy, while Muslims who converted to Christianity saw only a slight easing of their misery. Islam is often blamed for the excesses of the Barbary corsairs, but the Barbary navies owed much of their infamy to the Christian renegades from Europe.

History is written by the victors, and the victors cast the Barbary pirates as the first representatives of the boogeyman “Radical Islam.” The pirates were, in fact, a cruel but understandable response to international power politics and part of an ongoing struggle between two contending religions. Unlike the storied pirates of the Caribbean, the Barbary corsairs enjoyed no flattering novels or glamourous Hollywood portrayals. Buccaneers are often remembered as dashing and enviable rogues, while the corsairs of Maghreb are still seen by many as bloodthirsty fanatics, ridiculously attired and sporting comic opera mustaches over Hannibal Lecter smiles.

The truth is that no pirate was ever a good one. However you dress them up, all of them, be they buccaneers or corsairs, were still disruptors and destroyers. Favoring one kind over another is like asking whether arsenic is to be preferred to cyanide as a poison.

John Danielski is a historian of the Napoleonic Wars and the author of nine novels about the fictional Royal Marine hero Thomas Pennywhistle. The tenth book in the series, The Corsair Conundrum and the Pirates of Algiers, is due out in April.