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The Dey of Algiers striking the French consul with his fly-whisk in 1827, the diplomatic incident that lead to the French invasion
Algiers was by far the most powerful of what the Europeans came to know as the Barbary coast cities. An autonomous province of the Ottoman empire – the Regency of Algiers - its privateers reached the peak of their power in the early 17th century, regularly raiding the coasts of Devon, Cornwall, Ireland, even Iceland.
Algeria’s importance to France and Spain, but also to the United Kingdom once the latter had wrestled control of Gibraltar from Spain in 1704, was its supply of wheat (and meat) when the crop failed on the northern shores of the Mediterranean. The author notes that “for fifty years, from 1740, nine-tenths of the wheat brought into Marseilles for distribution throughout France was of Algerian origin.” The French army which, under General Bonaparte, invaded Italy in 1798 was fed with Algerian grain and it was the non-payment of part of the monies due to the Dey of Algiers which, indirectly led to the French conquest of 1830. Throughout the period, the French were keen to prevent others, notably the British and the Spanish, buying the grain.
In Algiers, unlike Istanbul and the Levant, Europeans were hardly represented – one French trading house and hardly any Dutch or English traders. Kalman writes: “This lack of competition from local and European Christians meant that Jews like the Basris could occupy multiples spaces in the regency’s economic and political hierarchy.” In other words they were insider-outsiders. They were often muquddam – heads of the Jewish community which gave them access to the elite. They traded on behalf of the Dey and his officials, hence the confusion between private interests and affairs of state which meant they could play both sides of the game. Debts unpaid by European merchants often resulted in diplomatic spats and seizure of European ships. Many Bacris acted officially as diplomats for the Dey. But the author notes the position was deeply vulnerable as the holder “was only protected and rewarded as long as his elite business partner remained in power.” In late 18th century Algiers that could be simply a matter of years, at worst months as the assassinations of rulers became more frequent.
Privateering was cut back in the 18th century owing to a larger British naval presence and the fact that French and British ships far outclassed Algerian vessels but, as Kalman writes, it regained some lustre after 1789:
As the Napoleonic Wars progressed, and islands in the Mediterranean were gained and lost, treaties had to be constantly renegotiated. Each new treaty required the regular presentation of sumptuous gifts, and Deys could choose to reject anything that they considered to be insufficiently luxurious. There was always a Bacri in the middle of these transactions, managing both finances and diplomacy.
Such games carried their own risks and no more so then when family members started feuding. European consuls in Algiers spent a lot of time interacting with the different Bacris and Busnachs, discussing strategies and making deals. The hostilities between Britain and France during Napoleon’s reigns allowed fortunes to be made. It was the first US consul to Algiers in 1785, Richard O’Brien, who named the two families “The Kings of Algiers.” As letters between Talleyrand, Napoleon’s minister of foreign affairs and members of the extended Jewish family make clear, the latter were ill at ease in more institutionalised systems such as France’s where all was not decided by gifts and personal relations.
As Europe emerged from the wars which had been raging from 1793 to 1815 the historian James McDougall noted in A History of Algeria, (CUP, 2017) that “it suited the European powers to see Muslim privateers as a barbarous relic of a previous age. Britain and France were cooperating, no longer at war as they had been throughout the 18th and early 19th centuries. The restored European order that emerged from the Congress of Vienna saw itself as advancing in international peace, rational government and ‘civilisation’, containing revolution with a rational dose of liberalism and preaching ‘liberty’ as its own watchword.”
Pirates from Algiers were seen as a ‘barbaric’ relic of a previous age. In 1816, the English Lord Exmouth negotiated terms of peace with Algiers on behalf of Sardinia and Naples that included the free release, as British subjects, of Gibraltarian and Maltese captives. “This was still recognisable diplomacy in the old style, but English public opinion was unimpressed” writes Kalman. Six months later in August 1816 Exmouth returned and bombarded Algiers and “demanded the abolition of ‘slavery’, the restitution of all Christian slaves and the repayment of the indemnities – a properly firm action, to European eyes, on behalf of the ‘civilised’ nations against an ‘outlaw’ state.”
This was indeed a new world and Tunis was only saved from the same treatment by Exmouth as Algiers had received because the estranged wife of the Prince Regent, Caroline of Brunswick had travelled to Naples and from there sailed to Tunis with her Italian lover, Bartholome Pergami to escape the boredom and unpleasantness of life in London. When it was suggested to her that she might leave to give Exmouth a free hand, she allegedly replied that she had no intention of cutting short her holiday: “I find the Berberies much less barbarous than the Christians.”
Plus ça change…..except that Jews have all but disappeared from North Africa where they lived and prospered for two millennium save for a few thousand left in Tunisia and Morocco.
Julie Kalman has given us a highly readable and well researched history of two remarkable Jewish families and how they were able to flourish in a Muslim world in a way that is inconceivable today.
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