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

Those commercial barriers were indeed but few of the new weapons used by
Christians against Muslims. The immediate consequence of Europe’s new
commercial weapon discouraged Muslim trade and once more Algiers armed
its vessels for corsairing. From such discriminatory policies and attitudes, one
may deduce that confrontation between the Cross and the Crescent was by no
way just caricatured or religious. It was real and persisting. More, it expanded
to include other aspects of life. It was a perpetual clash not just between two
antagonist religions but also between to different cultures and civilizations.
Conclusion
So many aggressions, so many bombings and blockades, and so many
treaties concluded, renewed, and re-renewed, but Algiers, as long as it could
stand up militarily, did not intend to give up to European pressure either in the
name of religion, commerce, or captives. Almost all European countries—
powerful and lesser powerful—concluded scores of treaties of peace and
commerce with Algiers, but they were never satisfied with them. When not
warring against each other in Europe or in their colonies, the European powers
filled up their years of peace by sending squadrons of war to Algiers under the
pretext that those treaties were either humiliating for themselves or not
respected by Algiers. After each campaign, relations were put back, once more,
to where they had belonged before the show-off so that by 1816, i.e.: almost
200 years after the first bilateral treaty was signed, Algiers and Europe were
still standing almost exactly where they had been standing in the 1620s! The
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