Menacing Tides
Security, Piracy and Empire in the Nineteenth-Century Mediterranean

Menacing Tides shows how piracy disappeared from the Mediterranean through European security cooperation, enabling imperial expansion.

Erik de Lange (Author)

9781009364140, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 18 April 2024

346 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.643 kg

'Erik De Lange's elegantly written book is an 'entangled' history of cross-cultural encounters between North African 'corsairs' and Europeans in the Mediterranean in the era after the Napoleonic Wars. He demonstrates convincingly that there was a close link between the new European security culture which included the regulation of the High Seas, the fight against piracy, and the rise of intercultural violence and imperial expansion along the Mediterranean, which resulted in a true clash of civilizations.' Matthias Schulz, University of Geneva

New ideas of security spelled the end of piracy on the Mediterranean Sea during the nineteenth century. As European states ended their military conflicts and privateering wars against one another, they turned their attention to the 'Barbary pirates' of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Naval commanders, diplomats, merchant lobbies and activists cooperated for the first time against this shared threat. Together, they installed a new order of security at sea. Drawing on European and Ottoman archival records – from diplomatic correspondence and naval journals to songs, poems and pamphlets – Erik de Lange explores how security was used in the nineteenth century to legitimise the repression of piracy. This repression brought European imperial expansionism and colonial rule to North Africa. By highlighting the crucial role of security within international relations, Menacing Tides demonstrates how European cooperation against shared threats remade the Mediterranean and unleashed a new form of collaborative imperialism.

Introduction
1. Of knights and pirates. Barbary corsairing before and during the Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815
2. Opening fire. The Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers, 1815–1816
3. 'To give law to the world'. Contesting security, 1816–1824
4. 'No security, except in destruction'. The French invasion of Algiers, 1827–1830
5. Beyond the Littoral. Treaties, colonies and legacies, 1830–1856
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: International relations [JPS]