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

plunder. The first type, called corsairing or privateering, was legally recognized
by the prevailing laws of nations; the second, much older called piracy, was
condemned under the same laws and those who practiced it were declared
‘hostis humani generis,’ or ‘enemies of humanity,’ a legal argument permitting
execution of pirates. By analysis, this thesis came to the conclusion that
plunder as it was practiced by Algiers fell in the first category. In other terms,
unlike contemporary studies, this work has found that what has been
perpetuated as ‘Algerine piracy’ was in fact corsairing—the two practices
bearing two utterly different legal meanings—and concludes that tagging
Algiers as a ‘pirate state’ was sufficient argument for westerners to terminate
its existence as a polity.
Like contemporary studies, however, this work maintains that there is
indeed an analogy between the amalgam of piracy and terrorism, on the one
hand, and piracy and corsairing, on the other; but the argument of this research
work is contrary to what most westerners affirm. As contemporary western
analogies are meant to cover less idealistic goals, including maintaining global
hegemony, access to and control of critical resources such as oil, and
maximization of multinational corporations’ interests, the amalgam between
corsairing and piracy also served as a cover to legitimate western policies of
expansion be they religious, political, economic, or territorial which ultimately
led to the conquest of Algiers. Research has shown that it was precisely those
policies which gave birth to the myth of the ‘Algerine pirate’.
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