Ottoman Algeria in Western Diplomatic History with ... - Bibliothèque

Europeans as well as Americans decried as humiliating. 133 In fact, an American
bitter negotiator, who was no less than the bullish army adventurer and Consul
to the Barbary States William Eaton (1764-1811), noted that “it is hard to
negotiate where the terms are wholly ex parte. The Barbary courts are indulged
in the habits of dictating their own terms of negotiation.” 134
The western countries could never swallow nor pardon to themselves the
fact that they have accepted dictated terms during negotiations, an attitude
which resulted in a long standing animosity towards Algiers. Anti-Algerian
stands persisted well into the twenty-first century through western writings,
which invariably treat Algiers, just to name a few terms, as a ‘pirate,’ ‘rogue,’
and ‘barbary’ state—the last term denoting both the geographical position and
‘barbarity’ of its inhabitants.” 135 More, Algiers had even been regarded as not
“belonging to the family of nation.” 136 Worse, its corsairs were compared to
ferocious animals “that every nation may lawfully conduct a war” against them
and that it does not make any difference that they have “receptacle and
mansion in Algiers,” because “beasts are not the less savage because they have
dens.” 137 At best, Algiers was treated as a “persistent agent of transnational
133 The Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States of America, from the Signing of the Definitive
Treaty of Peace, 10 th September, 1783, to the adoption of the Constitution, March 4, 1789, edited by
Francis Preston Blair (Washington, D.C.: Blair & Rives, 1833-37), 1:598, 775, Eighth Report of The
Commissioners to Congress, Addressed to John Jay, Secretary for Foreign Affairs, August 14, 1785.
(Hereafter cited as USDC).
134 As cited in Wright Wright and Macleod, First Americans, p. 36. For a portrait see John Hunter
Sedgwick, “William Eaton, a Sanguine Man,” The New England Quarterly, 1: 2 (Apr., 1928), pp. 107-
123.
135 Rojas, “Insults Unpunished,” p. 162.
136 Montmorency, “The Barbary States in International Law,” p. 88.
137 Thorup, “The Horror of the ‘Enemy of Humanity,’” p. 6.
104