[Two hundred
years ago this week, the U.S.
declared war on the North African nation of Algiers, leading to the unremembered
conflict about which I’ll write in today’s post. That
Second Barbary War is one of many such forgotten wars in American history,
and I’ll also highlight and AmericanStudy others for the remainder of the week’s
posts. Leading up to a special weekend post responding to a relevant recent
piece by one of my model AmericanStudiers.]
On why we should
remember forgotten wars, and why perhaps we shouldn’t.
It’d be possible
to make the case that the Second Barbary War just represented a second theater
within the much more famous War
of 1812. Algiers had allied itself and its significant naval might with
England during that war; although the U.S. conflict with England was officially
ended by the December 1814 Treaty of Ghent, the Battle of
New Orleans took place a month after that event (news was slow to cross the
Atlantic in those days), and President
James Madison’s early 1815 request for Congressional approval of military
action against Algiers was thus a partial response to the African nation’s role
in that prior war. Yet the
new war was also driven by other forces, especially ones related to U.S.
shipping interests and experiences in the region: tributes that Algerian
raiders were requiring of ships trading in the Mediterranean; a group of U.S.
sailors that had been impressed into captivity and service on Algerian ships;
and so on. In any case, Madison dispatched two armadas to engage the Algerians,
and the force commanded by Stephen Decatur won a
decisive victory and dictated the terms of the peace treaty in
June 1815.
There are lots
of reasons why we should better remember the Second Barbary War, starting with
the always appropriate “Because it happened!” But I would argue that it’s
particularly useful as a way to push back on any sense of an isolated American
identity in this post-Revolutionary, Early Republic era. It’s true that the
U.S. did not develop overt, globe-spanning
international imperial
ambitions until later in the century (although of course the continental
imperial ambitions already well underway by this time were entirely
international in their era as well). But that doesn’t mean that the U.S. didn’t
have an extensive
international presence throughout the 19th century, and indeed
from its earliest post-Revolutionary moments; there’s a reason why all of our late
18th and early 19th century wars (with the exception of
1812, at the start of which we were invaded) were precipitated because of conflicts
that began on the high seas, after all. Moreover, the slave trade and the
related international relationships such as the
Triangle Trade to which it connected also linked Early Republic America to
the rest of the world very fully. All of those would be histories that would
help us remember our longstanding, indeed originating, international ties, but
the Second Barbary War provides a particularly clear example of the existence
and effects of those links.
So we should
remember it, on its own terms and for what it can help connect us to about our national
identity. Yet I have to admit that I’m somewhat hesistant, in an era when so
many Americans believe us to be at
war with Islam (and concurrently fear the
threat of “sharia law” and the like here on the homefront), to remind
Americans that two of our earliest wars (both the Second and the First Barbary
War, on which more tomorrow) were with Muslim nations. Of course the answer to
ignorance isn’t more ignorance, and I’m not genuinely arguing that we should
continue ignoring forgotten histories because they could feed into contemporary
ignorance. But at the same time, histories that connect to such contemporary
controversies and bigotries are especially in need of careful and nuanced
presentation and analysis, of framing and contextualizing that can provide
understanding as well as awareness. To remember the existence of the Second Barbary
War, that is, is only the first of many steps we need to take when it comes to
this forgotten war.
Next forgotten
war tomorrow,
Ben
PS. What do you
think? Other under-remembered conflicts you’d highlight?
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