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

America into the Mediterranean and assessed its impact on corsairing
diplomacy. It analyzed the principles of American foreign policy, particularly
the founding principle of ‘new diplomacy’, and applied it to American relations
with Algiers during the period 1776-1816.
While scrutinizing diplomatic
relations between Algiers and the United States, starting with the captures of
1785 to the gunboat show of 1815-16, this research work tried to understand
how a new-born diplomacy defended by a single country could challenge
corsairing diplomacy principles that were almost two-hundred years old and
which so far functioned rather properly and guaranteed peace for all
antagonists in the Mediterranean. By doing so, this work attained a number of
conclusions. Most prominent among them was the impact of aggressiveness as
a principle inherent in American New Diplomacy on corsairing diplomacy.
Merely forty years after the independence of the United States, American
aggressiveness found expression in gunboat diplomacy and led to the
termination of annual payments in naval stores—or tribute; it also ended
enslavement of American prisoners at Algiers.
Study of the evolution of the American approach to relations with
Algiers, and particularly to ‘tribute’ as understood by Americans, has shown
that there exists an evolution in aggressiveness, characteristic of American
foreign policy, proportional to the growth of American naval power. This
research has subdivided that evolution into three major phases: the first phase,
extending from 1783 to 1789, was characterized by an American inability, and
to some extent unwillingness, to conclude a treaty with Algiers on account of
401