Dispatch: The Marquis de Lafayette on Middle Eastern Hostage Takers

A missive from Caleb D'Anvers

“The Barbary States were pirates, and I determined to treat them as such.”

—Thomas Jefferson

The Marquis de Lafayette on Middle Eastern Hostage Takers

Note: My good friend Caleb D'Anvers has submitted a short missive regarding recent “protests” at Lafayette Square in Washington DC and the “Hi, Historian Here” response. Enjoy!

            On Saturday June 8, 2024 a perfectly normal thing happened in Lafayette Square across from the White House — a protest occurred. This one was ostensibly in favor of a cease-fire in the ongoing Gaza War. But, unlike most protests, this one was more in tune with the iconoclasm of the Black Lives Matter summer of 2020. These pro-Palestinian demonstrators defaced statues of the Marquis de Lafayette, the Comte de Rochambeau, and General Andrew Jackson. A silent Lafayette stood unmoving with a red, black, white, and green banner that read “Free Palestine.” On his pedestal these words appeared: “Free Gaza”, “Collective Liberation”, and “Death to Amerikkka”.

In response to the protestors’ defacement of the Lafayette statue, Richard Brookhiser — a longtime editor with National Review and a biographer of several founding fathers — tweeted (Xeeted?) an anodyne measure of disapproval.

            Replying to Brookhiser’s tweet, Professor Manisha Sinha — a specialist in Civil War Era history at the University of Connecticut (who is best known online for being one of the leading practitioners of “Hi, Historian Here”) — responded that “They are not defiling the statue. You might stop and think that they are evoking Lafayette’s legacy of revolutionary resistance. The people who defile the American republic are those who worship Confederate statues and flags.” From Sinha’s perspective the protestors in Lafayette Square were “protesting war crimes” and they had her complete sympathy. In her view, Lafayette’s modern historical meaning can be traced to his material support for a noble cause — in this case the American Revolutionary War. Sinha thinks that there is a line, however crooked it might be, between the legacy of the American Revolution, the Marquis’ role in it, and the protestors in Lafayette Square. The Palestinians take the role of the Americans, while the Israelis take on that of the British Empire.

            While Lafayette’s support for the American Revolution might be a serviceable comparison for one’s rhetorical needs in 2024, there is a much closer historical analogy for today’s Gaza War — American relations with the Barbary Pirates and Lafayette’s suggestions on how to handle them.

            Beginning in the sixteenth century, the Barbary States of North Africa — Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli — all participated in captive-taking across the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Raiding parties from these states would fall on small, unprotected coastal towns in Europe, even reaching as far as Iceland! Their swift lateen sailed vessels also regularly seized merchant ships, capturing both cargo and crew. The Barbary Pirates took their captives to North Africa and worked them as slaves until they either converted to Islam, escaped, or were freed through ransom payments. As historian Robert C. Davis argued in his 2010 book, Holy War and Human Bondage, these captures were a form of “faith slavery,” and faith slavery could be distinguished from the then emerging racial slavery in the Western Hemisphere. Faith slavery was not permanent — it could be ended through religious conversion — but more importantly there was also a strong financial incentive at work. European powers willingly paid ransoms to free their subjects. These people were, in effect, hostages.

By the eighteenth century an entire system of North African diplomacy had emerged to treat with the Barbary states. Weaker European powers, such as Denmark and Sweden, would simply pay tribute in order to ensure that their towns were not raided and their ships not seized as they traversed the Mediterranean. Stronger maritime powers, such as Great Britain, had force on their side. They could simply threaten these states with destruction should they interfere with their subjects on the high seas.

The history of the Barbary Pirates and the United States collided during the American Revolution. Prior to the revolution, American colonists were subjects of the King of Great Britain, and their vessels sailing to Mediterranean ports were under the protection of the Royal Navy. The Declaration of Independence changed all that, as American merchants would now be on their own. As part of the United States’ first diplomatic white paper, John Adams’ 1776 Model Treaty, he proposed that the King of France would “defend and Secure” Americans “against all Attacks, Assaults, Violences, Injuries, Depredations or Plunderings by or from the King or Emperor of Morocco, or Fez, and the States of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.” In effect, Adams thought that the King of France would simply replace the King of Great Britain as the protector of American commerce. Unfortunately for the American diplomats in Paris, in the resulting Treaty of Amity and Commerce with France, King Louis XVI merely pledged to interpose on the behalf of Americans seized by the Barbary States. There would be no protection against the hostage takers.

Unprotected by either Britain or France, in the immediate aftermath of the War for Independence American merchants faced capture from the Barbary Pirates. In October 1784, the brig Betsey of Alexandria, Virginia was captured by a Moroccan vessel. According to a Genoese diplomat writing to Benjamin Franklin, the Moroccan Emperor was not hostile to the United States but rather desired that country to sign a peace treaty. That is, the Emperor wanted the tribute that he thought was due him. The following year, Algiers captured the Boston schooner Maria and the Philadelphian ship Dauphin, similarly demanding a tributary relationship with the United States. There were now dozens of American seamen held captive in North Africa, and if the United States wanted its citizens released then it would have to cough up money for ransom and an annual tribute.

March 1786 Letter to Knox

It was at this point that the Marquis de Lafayette offered Americans his views on how to deal with these Middle Eastern hostage takers. The best path forward was not tribute, or ransom, but war. In a March 6, 1786 letter to Henry Knox, the American Secretary at War, Lafayette laid out his proposal. If the Americans showed “vigor” through a naval expedition – as opposed to European states who simply preferred to pay off the North Africans – then they might succeed where others had failed. To support this claim, the Marquis attached a memorandum from the Comte d’Estaing, one of France’s leading admirals. In the memo d’Estaing estimated that as few as three ships could blockade one North African port and “prevent almost entirely all communication.” This was “not only practicable but is the only mode of reducing those Barbary powers against which it is directed.” Modern navies would prevent pirate vessels from heading to the open seas, thus cutting off a valuable source of income for these states. In other words, the hostage taking would not end until the Barbary Pirates feared American military power.

Lafayette’s recommendations were not acted upon during the 1780s and the 1790s. The Continental Congress was too weak to muster a naval force, and the administrations of George Washington and John Adams preferred the easier route of entering into tributary relationships. Like Lafayette, Thomas Jefferson preferred war to tribute, and after his election the United States entered into the First Barbary War (1801-1805) against Tripoli and then renegotiated the terms of its treaty with Tunis in 1806 at the barrel-end of American cannon. The Second Barbary War (1815), similarly ended with Algiers suing for peace.

Certainly, there are tremendous differences between the current Gaza War and conflicts between the Barbary Pirates and the United States. However, given the prevalence of hostage taking in both cases, it is hard to see how the Marquis de Lafayette might have empathized with Hamas or its American supporters. Given his suggestion for a tight naval blockade in order to force a surrender, he may even have supported the creation — in the parlance of our time — of a “vast, open air, prison.”

CALEB D’ANVERS, Esq.

Gray’s Inn