Skip to main content

Jefferson Versus the Muslim Pirates

By


Interesting study by Christopher Hitchens on Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates,

One immediate effect of the American Revolution, however, was to strengthen the hand of those very same North African potentates: roughly speaking, the Maghrebian provinces of the Ottoman Empire that conform to today’s Algeria, Libya, Morocco, and Tunisia. Deprived of Royal Navy protection, American shipping became even more subject than before to the depredations of those who controlled the Strait of Gibraltar. The infant United States had therefore to decide not just upon a question of national honor but upon whether it would stand or fall by free navigation of the seas.

Hitchens also reinforces Wills' contention that,


There is of course another connection between 1805 and 1812. Renewed hostilities with Britain on the high seas and on the American mainland, which did not terminate until the Battle of New Orleans, might have ended less conclusively had the United States not developed a battle-hardened naval force in the long attrition on the North African coast.

This is the book Hitchens was researching,

Thomas Jefferson: Author of America

Comments

  1. avrdsJanuary 28, 2010 at 4:14 PM

    This is one of the three bios I have in that mini collection of mini biographies. Hitchen is an interesting thinker/writer, even though he's sort of gone over the top now.

    ReplyDelete
  2. James FergusonJanuary 28, 2010 at 4:23 PM

    Yea, I think 9-11 proved to be a strange tipping point for him. He hasn't satisfactorily explained why he tacked so far to the right after than incident, IMO. City Journal appears to be a neocon outlet, judging by the endorsements in its bannerhead.

    ReplyDelete
  3. James FergusonJanuary 29, 2010 at 4:48 PM

    I won't get too far ahead of the game in regard to Madison, but Wills noted that The Tripolitan War (1801-1805) gave the American Navy invaluable experience which was later served in the War of 1812 when the British seriously misjudged the strength of the American Navy. The funny part is that neither Jefferson nor Madison were too excited about the Navy and wanted to put it into mothballs.

    ReplyDelete
  4. avrdsJanuary 29, 2010 at 5:00 PM

    I'll switch gears if Trippler's ready. I read Wills once, so shouldn't take long to remember it all.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

By
  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro
228 comments
Read more

Dylan in America

By
Whoever it was in 1969 who named the very first Bob Dylan bootleg album “Great White Wonder” may have had a mischievous streak. There are any number of ways you can interpret the title — most boringly, the cover was blank, like the Beatles’ “White Album” — but I like to see a sly allusion to “Moby-Dick.” In the seven years since the release of his first commercial record, Dylan had become the white whale of 20th-century popular song, a wild, unconquerable and often baffling force of musical nature who drove fans and critics Ahab-mad in their efforts to spear him, lash him to the hull and render him merely comprehensible. --- Bruce Handy, NYTimes ____________________________________________ I figured we can start fresh with Bob Dylan.  Couldn't resist this photo of him striking a Woody Guthrie pose.  Looks like only yesterday.  Here is a link to the comments building up to this reading group.
182 comments
Read more

Team of Rivals Reading Group

By
''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005
293 comments
Read more