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

void because they emanated from a non-sovereign polity. Third, after February
1778—date at which the United States obtained the first diplomatic recognition
from France, letters of marque did not give their holders the right to seize
property of non-belligerents. 83 Therefore, all acts committed before February
1778 by American seamen were acts of piracy; those committed after this date
against non-belligerents were also acts of piracy. To the question ‘who’s who?’
one may answer simply: during the two-sub-phases mentioned above, the
Americans were pirates; the Algerians were corsairs who carried legal acts of
war against their lawful Christian enemies.
A spirit of fairness here imposes further consideration of the third
prerequisite: the existence of a lawful enemy. In his pre-revolution writings
Franklin also wrote:
So far as the being of our present colonies in North America is
concerned, I think indeed with the remarker, that the French there are
not “an enemy to be apprehended;”—but the expression is too vague to
be applicable to the present, or indeed to any other case. Algiers, Tunis,
and Tripoli, unequal as they are to this nation in power and numbers of
people, are enemies to be still apprehended. 84
Even though Franklin decided to consider Algiers and the other Muslim states
as “an enemy to be apprehended” without any apparent reason—except perhaps
to defend his Francophile inclinations, this does not make of the British
colonies of North America a lawful enemy of Algiers simply because Franklin
83 For sovereign authorization and Letter of Marque and Reprisal see Ramsey, “Textualism and War
Powers,” pp. 1615-16.
84 Franklin, Memoirs, 2:195, The Canada Pamphlet: The Interest of Great Britain considered, with
regard to her Colonies and the Acquisitions of Canada and Guadaloupe. This piece of writing is
undated by its classification indicates that it was written before 1776, see ibid., p. iii.
186