Millions for Credit: Peace with Algiers and the Establishment of America’s Commercial Reputation Overseas, 1795–96
In September 1795, the United States of America agreed to pay a large sum of money to the independent Ottoman regency of Algiers so that Algiers would not interfere with its trade in and around the Mediterranean. This trade was of great importance for American farmers and merchants, who hoped to meet warring European armies’ increased demand for grain, as well as for the American commercial fleet, which sought to increase its share of the Mediterranean carrying trade. For the next thirteen months, however, the United States struggled to make the payment, and the Dey of Algiers repeatedly threatened to cancel the treaty.  American historians usually describe this series of events as a diplomatic crisis and national disgrace, during which the United States was forced to pay protection money to safeguard its ships from the Algerian corsair fleets mistakenly termed “pirates.” This article argues, however, that the American payment to Algiers benefited the United States by establishing American commercial credit and political credibility overseas. As the treaty payment left the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia, entered the London financial markets, and passed through the hands of merchant houses in Cadiz and Livorno, a diverse group of international creditors became invested in American success. When the payment at last arrived as specie in Algiers, government leaders, diplomats, merchants and insurers around Europe and the Mediterranean had new reason to believe that the credit of the new republic was good.
Watchful Waiting / Money Bags and Cannon Balls
Watchful Waiting: U.S. Neutrality Law in the Atlantic World: 1815-1819. This paper addressed the ways in which American statesmen responded to the diplomatic crisis of American citizens serving as privateers for the rebelling countries of South America during the South American Wars for Independence. Most specifically, this paper analyzes the strategy of President James Monroe, who crafted a elastic and flexible policy of “watchful waiting,” which allowed the state to capitalize on events and situations in U.S. favor without bringing the nation into war with Spain. From a position of international weakness, U.S. statesmen were able to take advantage of the crisis caused by American privateers and, in the process, strengthen the state economically and territorially. Money Bags and Cannon Balls: The First Bribery War and the Expansion of American Presidential Power This paper analyzes the expansion of presidential power witnessed during the Thomas Jefferson administration during the First Barbary War of 18011805. During the Early Republic, American shipping faced piratical actions from the various Regencies of the Barbary Coast, Morocco, Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Jefferson sought to break from the noncombative precedent of his Federalist predecessors by directly engaging the Barbary corsairs. In taking the fight to the Mediterranean, Jefferson transformed the role of the executive. The demands of war forced Jefferson to empower the presidential role of commander in chief in unprecedented and long-lasting ways.
French film theory and criticism : a history/anthology, 1907-1939
These two volumes examine a significant but previously neglected moment in French cultural history: the emergence of French film theory and criticism before the essays of Andr Bazin. Richard Abel has devised an organizational scheme of six nearly symmetrical periods that serve to "bite into" the discursive flow of early French writing on the cinema. Each of the periods is discussed in a separate and extensive historical introduction, with convincing explications of the various concepts current at the time. In each instance, Abel goes on to provide a complementary anthology of selected texts in translation. Amounting to a portable archive, these anthologies make available a rich selection of nearly one hundred and fifty important texts, most of them never before published in English.