Diplomatic Divergence
Diplomatic Divergence
This chapter discusses the political and religious-legal challenge that North African corsairs posed to the Ottoman treaty regime in a post–“Northern Invasion” Mediterranean, and explores the reasons for and consequences of the diplomatic divergence of the 1620s, when England, France, and the Netherlands began concluding treaties directly with the North African port cities. It argues that the legal and diplomatic fallout of a series of Algerian-Tunisian piratical raids in the 1620s and 1630s led to a permanent restructuring of the imperial center’s relationship with North Africa. As a result, Istanbul washed its hands of responsibility for the North African corsairs’ predations, granting explicit permission to its treaty partners to destroy any African corsairs who threatened them and creating conditions that led to dozens of European punitive expeditions against the North African port cities beginning in the 1660s and culminating in the French invasion of Algiers in 1830.
Keywords: piracy, North African corsairs, diplomacy, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Northern Invasion
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