John B. Wolf
The sixteenth century witnessed the clash between the Spanish and Ottoman empires in the Mediterranean and the emergence of the Algerian regency in North Africa - a unique society ruled by the Turkish Janissary army and supported by the plunder from corsairs engaged in a holy war against Spanish Christendom. This regime, founded by Khair-ed Din Barbarossa, brought the entire central Maghreb under its control., , In the early seventeenth century, when the war between the two empires ended, the Algerian corsairs, refusing to recognize any peace, found new areas for their depredations when France, England, and the United Netherlands made peace with Spain. Soon the princes of Europe were embarrassed as their merchants, whose subjects became slaves, cried for relief. The sultan was unable to force his vassals to behave, and the great princes, like the kings of France and England, were willing to deal directly with the republic of cutthroats and thieves. A century of negotiation and wild naval action resulted in a more or less reasonable solution, but in the meantime the corsairs had extended their pirate activity in the Atlantic, and by 1650 there were about 25,000 Christian slaves in Algiers. , This book deals with the tumultuous rise and final collapse of the regency as well as with its problems with both Europe and the native Berber who resented its rule. The French invasion of 1830 ended its story.
Barbary Coast: Algeria Under the Turks