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

Algiers under the pretext of bringing piracy to an end. In that way, they
provided secular legitimacy for crusading intentions that persisted unaltered
over centuries. Military more powerful and ideologically and politically
increasingly inclined towards expansionism, the Christian powers considered
Algiers a ripe fruit for conquest. 89
Corsairing and Christians prisoners,
therefore, served as an excuse for the conquest of Algiers. The political thought
and military actions of the Christian powers
to save slaves from North Africa would show even more clearly the
extent to which the idea of crusade carried within it the seed of
colonization, the degree to which liberation served as guise for
conquest. 90
Therefore, although one may concede that even if corsairing had relatively lost
the religious fervor of the founding corsairs, it nonetheless continued to operate
as a defensive weapon against continuing aggressions of the western powers.
3. 1. Developments affecting Corsairing Diplomacy after 1791
The collapse of corsairing diplomacy may be imputed more to failures
on the part of Algiers to adapt to a rapidly changing secular world than to any
modifications in the legal status of corsairing. Diplomatically, militarily and
technologically, and economically speaking, Algiers continued to adhere to
values and practices that were three hundred years old while the western world
was advancing at an unprecedented pace in all domains. Indeed, corsairing as
understood in the Mediterranean Basin, and its Anglo-Saxon counterpart
89 Silverstein, “The New Barbarians,” pp. 189-92.
90 Weiss, “Imagining Europe through Barbary Captivity,” p. 56.
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