America's first war was with the Barbary States (Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli). They're the reason why the USA has the Navy, grounded by Pres. George Washington.
Fun fact.
Discussion
True story. And that’s why Morocco was the first nation to sign a treaty with the US.
The sums the US was paying as ransom was absolutely enormous. A fifth of the national budget. 👀
Whoa…
Interesting fact: if you go to Walt Disney world, in Epcot Morocco, there is a facsimile of a letter George Washington wrote to the king of Morocco…I believe it is framed under the title “America’s first friend,” which is a nice way of looking at the conflict and “Treaty of Peace and Friendship.”
Apparently Morocco was held hostage too by the same pirates, but history is always tricky to parse finely.
Some of the European shipmen that were enslaved converted to Islam and became captains. They were the most successful pirates because they knew the European coastline.
Some eventually went rogue and started their own states.
Reminds me of the German ISIS guys, who went to Asia and immediately took over.
Or the Chechyen troops leading the Russian front.
European + Islam = Holy Terror
Like Andrew Tate. 😂
Converts to Islam and 5 minutes later he's like
Look at me. Look at me. I am the captain now.
lol…well, those pirates learned that America really doesn’t like it when you mess with our boats. The US destroyed half the Iranian navy in 8 hours for an attack during freedom of navigation exercises to reopen the gulf back in the 70’s I think…
A lot of global trade has been enabled by US boats guaranteeing freedom of navigation…the lack of a piracy tariff (nation state tariffs are barely different and bad enough) has enabled economies to develop in historically unlikely places.
Yes indeed. The Barbary Pirates kept attacking American ships, so Washington decided to take them out at the source in their homelands.
Also, the Barbary Coast slave trade of millions of white slaves into Africa by people of color is a thing leftists like to pretend never happened.
Yeah, it was millions of Europeans enslaved, over a couple of hundred years. Until the US freed the slaves and France took control of the region.
They raided all the way up to Iceland.
There were millions more enslaved in the Crimean-Ottoman trade. That was bigger than the African-American trade, until close to the end of the latter.
The trade of European women to the Middle East and Turkey, went on for nearly a century, after slavery was ended in the USA.
It's weird how common becoming a Muslim slave was, and for how long, in Europe, but it never really comes up in any histories or novels. Nobody knows about it.
Piratennester.