The Last Days of Barbary: How Piracy Disappeared from the Mediterranean Sea
An immersive historical work on European security and the colonization of North Africa
Until 1815, Europeans sailing the Mediterranean Sea ran the risk of being captured and sold into slavery by North African corsairs. Historian Erik de Lange recounts how, with Napoleon’s defeat, the European powers came together for the first time to address a common threat. This new policy of international security in Europe, however, would ultimately mean devastating imperialism in North Africa. The Mediterranean Sea would change forever.
While privateering – state-sanctioned piracy – was common practice throughout Europe and beyond, European powers agreed to end the practice with Napoleon’s defeat. Trade needed to flourish, and with time, the continuation of the practice by the Babary Coast’s regencies of Algiers, Tripoli and Tunis and the Sultanate of Morocco came to be seen as barbarism and thievery – to say little of Europe’s outstanding debts to the region’s rulers. What followed was military repression and diplomatic intimidation, but also one of Europe’s first cooperative projects, which would spawn an early forerunner of NATO.
Giving history a human face, De Lange focusses on the lived experience of people of the time and the ideas that drove them, the negotiations and contradictions, the foiled ambitions and unforeseen consequences. He takes readers through bombardments, disastrous naval battles, brittle alliances and the most important colonial invasion of the nineteenth century, when France sacked Algiers with a fleet of a hundred ships, the large majority from other European nations. He demonstrates how the European powers, though encouraged by ideas like civilizing missions or the desire for colonies, were above all driven by one thing: security.
On how fighting piracy became a pretext for colonizing North Africa
Topical: the power imbalance imposed by Europe at the time continues to this day
Written by an exciting younger historian
Erik de Lange (b.1991) is assistant professor of the History of International Relations at Utrecht University. His area of expertise is the Mediterranean Sea, with a focus on North Africa. He was a visiting postdoctoral research fellow at King’s College in London and received a research grant from Yale University. Since 2024, he has been a member of the Dutch committee for the UN’s Ocean Decade. He is currently researching the sea within international law and international relations.