North Africa (1684–1827 CE): Alaouite Morocco, Semi-Autonomous Regencies, and European Naval Pressure

Geographic & Environmental Context

The subregion of North Africa includes Morocco (with the Western Sahara), Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. Anchors included the Atlas Mountains, the Tell plains, the Western Sahara caravan routes, the Saharan oases, and the Mediterranean ports of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, and Moroccan Atlantic harbors like Tangier and Essaouira. The region was divided between Morocco under the Alaouite dynasty and the three Ottoman regencies of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, each increasingly autonomous.

Climate & Environmental Shifts

The later Little Ice Age brought recurring droughts and cold winters, reducing harvests and triggering famines. Grain shortages particularly affected Algeria and Morocco in the early 18th century, worsened by locust swarms. The Western Sahara’s nomads faced shrinking pastures, forcing conflict over wells and caravan routes. Coastal fisheries and piracy revenues often sustained port cities during agricultural crises.

Subsistence & Settlement

• Morocco: Under Moulay Ismail (1672–1727), the Alaouites centralized authority, fortified Meknes, and secured southern frontiers into the Western Sahara. Agriculture revived through irrigation, and the port of Essaouira was built as a new Atlantic hub.

• Algeria: The Regency of Algiers operated under Ottoman suzerainty but with de facto independence, ruled by deys. Urban life centered on Algiers, supported by cereal farming and pastoralism inland.

• Tunisia: From 1705, the Husainid dynasty governed as hereditary beys, balancing agriculture and commerce with increasing European trade ties.

• Libya: The Karamanli dynasty (1711–1835) established in Tripoli maintained autonomy, combining corsairing with trade in grain and slaves.

• Western Sahara: Nomadic Sanhaja and Maqil tribes maintained pastoral lifeways and salt-gold trade, though trans-Saharan caravans were in long decline compared to Atlantic shipping.

Technology & Material Culture

Corsair fleets deployed galleys, frigates, and armed xebecs. Fortified kasbahs and citadels rose in Algiers, Tunis, and Meknes. Moroccan architecture flourished in Meknes with monumental stables, aqueducts, and palaces. Urban guilds crafted textiles, ceramics, and leatherwork. Saharan nomads sustained material culture around camel herding, tents, and oral poetry. Firearms spread widely, reshaping tribal warfare.

Movement & Interaction Corridors

• Corsair networks: Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli remained centers of Mediterranean piracy, exacting tribute from European powers.

• Western Sahara routes: Still carried salt, gum, and slaves north, though diminished.

• Moroccan ports: Linked with Britain, France, and the Netherlands for grain, wool, and leather exports.

• European navies: Increasingly challenged corsair fleets, with bombardments of Algiers (1816) and growing Anglo-American pressure during the Barbary Wars (1801–1815).

Cultural & Symbolic Expressions

Islamic scholarship thrived in Fez and Tunis; Sufi brotherhoods expanded, binding tribal societies through ritual and pilgrimage. Alaouite legitimacy in Morocco rested on claims of sharifian descent and monumental building. Oral epics and poetry glorified corsair captains and tribal heroes. In European imagination, North Africa symbolized both piracy and exoticism, recorded in captive memoirs and diplomatic reports.

Environmental Adaptation & Resilience

Rural communities intercropped cereals and legumes, supplemented diets with olives and figs, and relied on Sufi zawiyas for famine relief. Nomads shifted grazing routes deeper into the Sahara during drought. Urban populations survived shortages through grain imports and piracy revenues. Moroccan rulers redistributed grain from coastal ports to famine-stricken hinterlands.

Transition

By 1827 CE, North Africa stood at a threshold. Morocco preserved independence under the Alaouites but faced mounting European trade and military pressure. Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli operated as semi-autonomous Ottoman regencies, balancing corsairing with tribute diplomacy. The Western Sahara remained tied to Morocco but increasingly marginal in global trade. The bombardment of Algiers by Britain in 1816 and U.S. naval campaigns signaled a new era: European powers were preparing to impose direct colonial rule, beginning with France’s invasion of Algeria in 1830.

The First Barbary War begins during Thomas Jefferson's term when he refuses to pay tribute, an amount that had been greatly increased when he became president.

The pasha of Tripoli declares war on the United States by having the flagpole on the consulate chopped down on May 10, 1801.

A U.S. naval fleet had been sent on May 13, 1801, at the beginning of the war under the command of Commodore Richard Dale.

Other notable officers in the fleet include Stephen Decatur, assigned to the frigate USS Essex and William Bainbridge in command of Essex, which was attached to Commodore Richard Dale's squadron which also includes Philadelphia, President and Enterprise.

The schooner Enterprise (1799) captures the fourteen-gun Tripolitan corsair polacca Tripoli off the north African coast in a single-ship action on August 1, 1801.

War ends between Sweden and Tripoli on October 2, 1802.

The United States also negotiates peace, but war continues over the size of compensation.

Stephen Decatur leads a raid to burn the pirate-held frigate USS Philadelphia at Tripoli on February 16, 1804, to deny her further use by the captors in the First Barbary War.

The former Consul to Tunis, William Eaton (1764-1811), who had returned in 1804 to the Mediterranean Sea with the title of Naval Agent to the Barbary States, had been granted permission from the United States government and third President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826, served 1801-1809), to back the claim of Hamet Karamanli, the rightful heir to the throne of Tripoli, who had been deposed by his brother Yusuf Karamanli.

Yusuf, who had assassinated his older brother by shooting him in front of his mother, was out of the country at the time and decided to remain away, in exile.

Upon his return to the area, Eaton had sought out Hamet Karamanli, who was in exile in Egypt.

Upon locating him, Eaton made a proposal to reinstate him on the throne.

The exile had agreed to Eaton's plan.

Commodore Samuel Barron, (1765-1810), the new naval commander in the Mediterranean Sea, has provided Eaton with naval support from several small warships of the U.S. Navy's Mediterranean squadron: USS Nautilus, commanded by Oliver Hazard Perry (1785-1819), USS Hornet, under Samuel Evans (c.1785-1824), and USS Argus, captained by Isaac Hull (1773-1843).

A small detachment of seven U.S. Marines has been given to Consul Eaton commanded by First Lieutenant Presley Neville O'Bannon, USMC, (1776-1850).

Eaton and O'Bannon had based their operations at Alexandria, Egypt, and with the help of Hamet Karamanli, had recruited about four hundred Arab, Turkish and Greek mercenaries.

Eaton had become self-appointed general and commander-in-chief of the combined multi-national force.

On March 6, 1805, Lieutenant Eaton (as self-designated general and commander in chief) began to lead his forces on a five hundred miles (eight hundred kilometer) trek westward across the Libyan North African desert from Egypt.

Their objective wis the port city of Derne, capital of the Ottoman Empire province of Cyrenaica (in eastern modern Libya).

The mercenary forces have been promised supplies and money when they reach the city.

During the fifty-day trek, Eaton had become worried over the strained relationship between the Greek Orthodox/Christian Greeks and the roughly two hundred to three hundred Muslim Arab and Turkish mercenaries.

The expedition's supplies were dwindling with Eaton reporting in 1805 that, "Our only provisions [are] a handful of rice and two biscuits a day."

At one point, some of the Arabs in the expedition had made a desperate attempt to raid the supply wagon, but were beaten back by the Marines and a few Greek artilleryman, who used the expedition's lone cannon

Mutiny had continuously threatened the success of the expedition on several occasions.

Between March 10 and March 18, several Arab camel drivers mutinied before reaching the sanctuary of the Massouah Castle.

From March 22 to March 30, several Arab mercenaries under the command of Sheik el Tahib staged mutinies.

By April 8, when he crossed the border into Libya / Tripoli, Eaton had quelled the Arab mutinies.

In late April, his army finally had reached the port city of Bomba, on the Gulf of Bomba, some miles up the coast from Derne, where U.S. Navy warships Argus, Nautilus and Hornet, with Commodore Barron and Captain Hull, were waiting for him.

Eaton had received fresh supplies and the money to pay his mercenaries.

On the morning of April 26, Eaton sends a letter to Mustafa Bey, the governor of Derne, asking for safe passage through the city and additional supplies, though Eaton realizes the governor probably will not agree.

Mustafa reportedly writes back, "My head or yours!".

Eaton observes a fort in Derne with eight guns on the morning of April 27.

The brig USS Argus sends a cannon ashore to use in the attack.

Captain Hull's ships then open fire and bombard Derne's batteries for an hour.

Eaton meanwhile  divides his army into two separate attacking parties.

Hamet is to lead the Arab mercenaries southwest to cut the road to Tripoli, then attack the city's left flank and storm the weakly defended governor's palace.

Eaton with the rest of the mercenaries and the squad of Marines are to attack the harbor fortress.

Hull and the ships will fire on the heavily defended port batteries.

The attack begins at 2:45 p.m., with Lt. O'Bannon and his Marines leading the advance.

O'Bannon leads his Marines and fifty Greek gunners with the field piece from the Argus, though the gun's effectiveness is lessened after the firing crew carelessly leaves the ramrod in the tube and fires it down range.

The harbor defenses have been reinforced, and the attackers are temporarily halted, but this had weakened the defenses elsewhere and allow the Arab mercenaries to ride unopposed into the western section of the city.

Eaton's mercenary army is hesitant under the enemy's musket fire, and he realizes a charge is the only way to regain the initiative.

Leading the charge, he is seriously wounded in the wrist by a musket ball.

On the Argus, Captain Hull sees the Americans and mercenaries are "gaining ground very fast though a heavy fire of Musquetry [sic] was constantly kept upon them."

The ships cease fire to allow the charge to continue.

Eaton will report that O'Bannon with his Marines and Greeks "pass'd through a shower of Musketry from the Walls of houses, took possession of the Battery".

The defenders flee in haste, leaving their cannons loaded and ready to fire.

O'Bannon raises the American flag over the battery (the unique fifteen stars - fifteen stripes emblem used 1795-1818, later made famous in the War of 1812 as the "Star-Spangled Banner"), and Eaton turns the captured guns on the city.

Hamet's force has seized the governor's palace and secured the western part of the city.

Many of the defenders of the harbor fortress flee through the town and run into Hamet's force.

By 4:00 p.m. the entire city has fallen, and for the first time in history, an American flag flies over fortifications on the opposite side of the Atlantic Ocean.

According to Spencer Tucker, casualties during the fighting for the Americans are two killed and three wounded, while those among the Christian / Greek mercenaries were nine killed or wounded. (Tucker, Spencer, ed. (2014). The Encyclopedia of the Wars of the Early American Republic, 1783–1812: A Political, Social and Military History. Volume I: A–K. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. p. 167.)
 
Muslim Turkish / Arab mercenary casualties are unknown, as are those of the defenders.

Yusuf in Tripoli to the west is aware of the attack on Derne and had sent reinforcements to the city.

By the time this force arrives, however, the city has fallen. His men dig in and prepare to recapture the city.

Eaton fortifies his new position, while Hamet takes up residence in the governor's palace and has his Arabs patrolling the outer areas of the city.

Yusuf's men dig in south of the city and wait.

Yusuf's men attack the city on May 13 and drive Hamet's Arabs back, almost recapturing the governor's palace.

USS Argus and Eaton's captured batteries pound the attackers, who finally flee under heavy fire.

Nightfall finds both sides back in their original positions.

Skirmishes and several other minor attempts have been made on the city in late May and early June, but the city remains in American control.

From Derne, Eaton now plansto march across the desert and attack Tripoli from the land.

During his march he is informed of the treaty signed on June 10, 1805, between American emissary Tobias Lear (1762-1816) from the U.S. Department of State and Yusuf Karamanli.

The first land battle of the United States on foreign soil after the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the Battle of Derna is the decisive action of the First Barbary War (1801-1805), although Eaton is furious over what he calls a 'sell-out' between Tobias Lear and the bey.

Hamet Karamanli will return to Egypt and the mercenaries will never be fully paid.