Editing Piracy (section)

====Mediterranean corsairs====

{{see also|Barbary pirates|Albanian piracy}}
[[File:A French Ship and Barbary Pirates (c 1615) by Aert Anthoniszoon.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.15|A French ship under attack by Barbary pirates, ca. 1615]]
Though less famous and romanticized than Atlantic or Caribbean pirates, corsairs in the [[Mediterranean]] equaled or outnumbered the former at any given point in history.<ref name="Earle 2003, p. 89">Earle (2003), p. 89</ref> Mediterranean piracy was conducted almost entirely with galleys until the mid-17th century, when they were gradually replaced with highly maneuverable sailing vessels such as [[xebec]]s and [[brigantine]]s. They were of a smaller type than battle galleys, often referred to as [[galiot]]s or [[fusta]]s.<ref>Guilmartin (1974), pp. 217–219</ref>

Pirate galleys were small, nimble, lightly armed, but often crewed in large numbers in order to overwhelm the often minimal crews of merchant ships. In general, pirate craft were extremely difficult for patrolling craft to actually hunt down and capture. [[Anne Hilarion de Tourville]], a French admiral of the 17th century, believed that the only way to run down raiders from the infamous corsair Moroccan port of [[Salé]] was by using a captured pirate vessel of the same type.<ref>Earle (2003), p. 45</ref>
[[File:Debarquement et maltraitement de prisonniers a alger.JPG|thumb|Barbary pirates were involved in the [[Barbary slave trade]] in North Africa]]
Using oared vessels to combat pirates was common, and was even practiced by the major powers in the Caribbean. Purpose-built galleys, or hybrid sailing vessels, were built by the English in Jamaica in 1683<ref>Earle (2003), p. 137</ref> and by the Spanish in the late 16th century.<ref>Glete (2000), p. 151</ref> Specially-built sailing frigates with oar-ports on the lower decks, like the ''James Galley'' and ''[[Charles Galley]]'', and oar-equipped sloops proved highly useful for pirate hunting, though they were not built in sufficient numbers to check piracy until the 1720s.<ref>Earle (2003), p. 139</ref>

The expansion of Muslim power through the Ottoman conquest of large parts of the eastern Mediterranean in the 15th and 16th century resulted in extensive piracy on sea trading. The so-called [[Barbary pirates]] began to operate out of North African ports in Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Morocco around 1500, preying primarily on the shipping of Christian powers, including massive slave raids at sea as well as on land. The Barbary pirates were nominally under Ottoman [[suzerainty]], but had considerable independence to prey on the enemies of Islam. The Muslim corsairs were technically often privateers with support from legitimate, though highly belligerent, states. They considered themselves as holy Muslim warriors, or [[ghazis]],<ref>Guilmartin (1974), p. 120</ref> carrying on the tradition of fighting the incursion of Western Christians that had begun with the [[First Crusade]] late in the 11th century.<ref name="Earle 2003, pp. 39-52">Earle (2003), pp. 39–52</ref>

[[File:Anglo-Dutch fleet in the bay of Algiers as support for the ultimatum demanding the release of white slaves on august 26 1816 (Nicolaas Baur, 1818).jpg|thumb|The [[Bombardment of Algiers (1816)|Bombardment of Algiers]] by the Anglo-Dutch fleet in 1816 to support the ultimatum to release European slaves]]

Coastal villages and towns of Italy, Spain and [[List of islands in the Mediterranean|islands in the Mediterranean]] were frequently attacked by Muslim corsairs, and long stretches of the Italian and Spanish coasts were almost completely abandoned by their inhabitants. After 1600, the Barbary corsairs occasionally entered the Atlantic and struck as far north as Iceland. According to Robert Davis between 1&nbsp;million and 1.25&nbsp;million Europeans were captured by Barbary corsairs and sold as slaves in North Africa and the [[Ottoman Empire]] between the 16th and 19th centuries. The most famous corsairs were the Ottoman [[Albanians|Albanian]] [[Hayreddin Barbarossa|Hayreddin]] and his older brother [[Oruç Reis]] (Redbeard), [[Turgut Reis]] (known as Dragut in the West), [[Kurtoglu Muslihiddin Reis|Kurtoglu]] (known as Curtogoli in the West), [[Kemal Reis]], [[Salih Reis]] and [[Koca Murat Reis]]. A few Barbary corsairs, such as the Dutch [[Jan Janszoon]] and the English [[John Ward (pirate)|John Ward]] (Muslim name Yusuf Reis), were renegade European privateers who had converted to Islam.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm|title=When Europeans were slaves: Research suggests white slavery was much more common than previously believed|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110725220038/http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/whtslav.htm|archive-date=July 25, 2011}}</ref><ref>"''[https://books.google.com/books?id=5q9zcB3JS40C&pg=PR14 Christian Slaves, Muslim Masters: White Slavery in the Mediterranean, the Barbary Coast and Italy, 1500–1800] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221226081027/https://books.google.com/books?id=5q9zcB3JS40C&pg=PR14 |date=December 26, 2022 }}''". Robert Davis (2004) {{ISBN|1-4039-4551-9}}</ref>

The Barbary pirates had a direct Christian counterpart in the military order of the [[Knights of Saint John]] that operated first out of [[Rhodes]] and after 1530 [[Malta]], though they were less numerous and took fewer slaves. Both sides waged war against the respective enemies of their faith, and both used galleys as their primary weapons. Both sides also used captured or bought [[galley slave]]s to man the oars of their ships. The Muslims relied mostly on captured Christians, the Christians used a mix of Muslim slaves, Christian convicts and a small contingency of ''buonavoglie'', free men who out of desperation or poverty had taken to rowing.<ref name="Earle 2003, pp. 39-52"/>

Historian Peter Earle has described the two sides of the Christian-Muslim Mediterranean conflict as "mirror image[s] of maritime predation, two businesslike fleets of plunderers set against each other".<ref>Earle (2003), pp. 51–52</ref> This conflict of faith in the form of privateering, piracy and slave raiding generated a complex system that was upheld/financed/operated on the trade in plunder and slaves that was generated from a low-intensive conflict, as well as the need for protection from violence. The system has been described as a "massive, multinational protection racket",<ref>Earle (2003), p. 83</ref> the Christian side of which was not ended until 1798 in the Napoleonic Wars. The Barbary corsairs were quelled as late as the 1830s, effectively ending the last vestiges of counter-crusading [[jihad]].<ref>Earle (2003), p. 85</ref>

[[File:Amaro Pargo.jpg|thumb|[[Amaro Rodríguez Felipe|Amaro Pargo]] was one of the most famous corsairs of the [[Golden Age of Piracy]]]]
Piracy off the [[Barbary coast]] was often assisted by competition among European powers in the 17th century. France encouraged the corsairs against Spain, and later Britain and Holland supported them against France. By the second half of the 17th century the greater European naval powers began to initiate reprisals to intimidate the Barbary States into making peace with them. The most successful of the Christian states in dealing with the corsair threat was England.{{citation needed|date=September 2013}} From the 1630s onwards England had signed peace treaties with the Barbary States on various occasions, but invariably breaches of these agreements led to renewed wars.

[[Albanian piracy]], mainly centered in the town of [[Ulcinj]] (thus came to be known as ''[[Albanian piracy|Dulcignotti]]''), flourished during the 15th to the 19th century.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Canka |first=Mustafa |date=2024 |title=The Pirate Republic of Ulcinj: An Epic of Two Centuries |url=https://en.vijesti.me/culture/728069/the-pirate-republic-of-Ulcinj%2C-a-two-century-long-epic |work=Vijesti}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |date=2023-08-27 |title=Albanian piracy |url=https://balkanacademia.com/2023/08/27/albanian-piracy/ |access-date=2024-11-24 |website=Balkan Academia |language=en}}</ref>

France, which had recently emerged as a leading naval power, achieved comparable success soon afterwards, with bombardments of Algiers in 1682, 1683 and 1688 securing a lasting peace, while Tripoli was similarly coerced in 1686. In 1783 and 1784 the Spaniards bombarded [[Algiers]] in an effort to stem the piracy. The [[Bombardment of Algiers (1784)|second time]], [[Antonio Barceló|Admiral Barceló]] damaged the city so severely that the Algerian [[Dey]] asked Spain to negotiate a peace treaty. From then on, Spanish vessels and coasts were safe for several years.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}}

Until the American [[United States Declaration of Independence|Declaration of Independence]] in 1776, [[Kingdom of Great Britain|British]] treaties with the [[Northwest Africa|North African]] states protected American ships from the [[Barbary]] corsairs. [[Morocco]], which in 1777 was [[Moroccan–American Treaty of Friendship|the first independent nation to publicly recognize the United States]], became in 1784 the first Barbary power to seize an American vessel after independence. While the United States managed to secure peace treaties, these obliged it to pay tribute for protection from attack. Payments in ransom and tribute to the Barbary states amounted to 20% of United States government annual expenditures in 1800,<ref>{{cite web|last=Oren|first=Michael B.|title=The Middle East and the Making of the United States, 1776 to 1815|date=2005-11-03|url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/11/michaelOren.html|access-date=2007-02-18|archive-date=July 15, 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190715201453/http://www.columbia.edu/cu/news/05/11/michaelOren.html|url-status=live}}</ref> leading to the [[Barbary Wars]] that ended the payment of tribute. Algiers broke the 1805 peace treaty after only two years, and refused to implement the 1815 treaty until compelled to do so by Britain in 1816.

In 1815, the sacking of Palma on the island of [[Sardinia]] by a Tunisian squadron, which carried off 158 inhabitants, roused widespread indignation. Britain had [[Slave Trade Act 1807|by this time banned the slave trade]] and was seeking to induce other countries to do likewise. This led to complaints from states which were still vulnerable to the corsairs that Britain's enthusiasm for ending the trade in [[Atlantic slave trade|African slaves]] did not extend to stopping the enslavement of Europeans and Americans by the Barbary States.

[[File:Decatur Boarding the Tripolitan Gunboat.jpg|thumb|upright=1.1|U.S. naval officer [[Stephen Decatur]] boarding a Tripolitan gunboat during the [[First Barbary War]], 1804]]
In order to neutralise this objection and further the anti-slavery campaign, in 1816 [[Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth|Lord Exmouth]] was sent to secure new concessions from [[Ottoman Tripolitania|Tripoli]], [[Beylik of Tunis|Tunis]], and [[Ottoman Algeria|Algiers]], including a pledge to treat Christian captives in any future conflict as [[prisoners of war]] rather than slaves and the imposition of peace between Algiers and the kingdoms of [[Piedmont-Sardinia|Sardinia]] and [[Kingdom of the Two Sicilies|Sicily]]. On his first visit he negotiated satisfactory treaties and sailed for home. While he was negotiating, a number of Sardinian fishermen who had settled at [[Annaba|Bona]] on the Tunisian coast were brutally treated without his knowledge. As [[Sardinians]] they were technically under British protection and the government sent Exmouth back to secure reparation. On August 17, in combination with a Dutch squadron under Admiral Van de Capellen, he bombarded Algiers.<ref name=EB1911/> Both Algiers and Tunis made fresh concessions as a result.

Securing uniform compliance with a total prohibition of slave-raiding, which was traditionally of central importance to the North African economy, presented difficulties beyond those faced in ending attacks on ships of individual nations, which had left slavers able to continue their accustomed way of life by preying on less well-protected peoples. Algiers renewed its slave-raiding, though on a smaller scale. Measures to be taken against the city's government were discussed at the [[Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818)|Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle]] in 1818. In 1820, another British fleet under Admiral Sir Harry Neal again bombarded Algiers. Corsair activity based in Algiers did not entirely cease until its [[French Algeria#French conquest of Algeria|conquest by France in 1830]].<ref name=EB1911>{{EB1911|wstitle=Barbary Pirates|inline=1}}</ref>