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

it was customary; a temporary stand that could be explained more by
greediness and deceitfulness than by principle and meliorism. 41
2. United States Search for European Protective Treaties
United States’ self-interested search for a protective umbrella for its
commerce in the Mediterranean, and later relations with Algiers, could only be
understood when put in the proper commercial and diplomatic contexts of
American and European policies. Commercially, as previously discussed, the
Americans had already developed a large and profitable Mediterranean trade
and were intent upon keeping it. The Europeans too had even more important
commercial interests in the area but, unlike the Americans, they had also
obtained favorable trading concessions on Algerian soil, monopoly over
Algiers’s external trade, and different sorts of political and legal privileges they
secured for themselves by the means of scores of treaties often concluded by
‘visiting’, menacing, or cannon-balls spitting squadrons at the Bay of Algiers.
European rivalry for power and markets was at its height then, and logically it
would be unconceivable to think that the European powers, after centuries of
power-struggle with Algiers, were going to make room, or even accept
American commercial rivalry in the area.
Diplomatically, the Americans set out to find a ‘protector’ for their
shipping to replace Great Britain which had withdrawn its passes. As colonies,
Britain’s protective diplomatic shield and naval might had secured those
41 One may be tempted here to approach realpolitik in early American foreign policy but it may be
considered out of context.
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