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

At a time the clash between Islam and Christianity reached a zenith, the
Christians sanctioned their corsairs as rightful warriors while they decried
Muslim corsairs as pirates. For this reason, the thesis sets out to demonstrate
that, by Europeans’ own legal and religious standards, Algiers can by no means
be considered as a pirate entity and that it was a corsairing state. Then it
proceeds to give an overview of diplomatic relations between Algiers and the
major European powers with the purpose of defining the foundations of
corsairing diplomacy along with the prevailing laws and usage of nations.
Those principles were fashioned over a period of almost two centuries by the
Mediterranean countries and other European powers and were still in usage
when the United States emerged as an independent country after 1776. An
examination of the period 1776-1816 provides the context surrounding early
contacts between Algiers and the United States and denotes a progressive move
among American policy-makers from sniveling and duplicity to trampling
centuries-long laws and customs of the Mediterranean region to finally plain
naval aggression against Algiers in the name of national interest but under the
guise of meliorism. A discussion of America’s New Diplomacy as a concept
provides a framework for a critical examination of the founding principles of
American foreign policy. It reveals features of jingoism, or belligerent
nationalism, that were exhibited through feelings of superiority and tendency
towards aggressiveness in foreign policy that became America’s guiding line in
matters relating to relations with militarily weaker countries.
6