Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History

"From the halls of Montezuma | To the shores of Tripoli | We will fight our country's battles..."

I have previously given exactly zero consideration to the meaning behind the famous lyrics of the Marine song. Encountering Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History in an airport bookstore recently, I was intrigued and bit. Well, sort of: I put myself on the waitlist at the library and then bided my time while a dozen people ahead of made their way through Brian Kilmeade and Don Yaeger's book.

Here's the story: in the early nineteenth century (and for some time before that), pirates owned the seas around the Barbary Coast - essentially North Africa. Many of the European powers paid hefty annual "tributes" to encourage the pirates - who operated openly under the flags of their countries and whose bounty became part of the national treasury - to seek alternate targets. The U.S. was young, poor, and also temperamentally opposed to following suit. Thus, U.S. ships were regularly boarded, plundered, and the sailors enslaved, frequently for years and years. Only those who converted to Islam escaped slavery, religious difference being one of the pirates' justifications for their actions. (That old history-repeating-itself bit again.)

Ultimately, after years of failed diplomacy and debate within the U.S., Thomas Jefferson resolved to make war on the pirates, and the Barbary powers that backed them. Perhaps not surprisingly for a country that had no navy and whose only previous experience with war was during the Revolution (and, some might argue, against the Native tribes), it didn't go well at first. The earliest U.S. "navy" was undermanned, outmatched, and frequently poorly led. As time passed and Jefferson's and Congress's resolve grew, better men were appointed, better strategies developed, and better ships built. The end result was a full and complete victory over the pirates (no "shores of Tripoli" lyrics otherwise, right?) such that the European powers sought to imitate the Americans for the first time.

Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates is a fantastic read. Kilmeade and Yaeger take a little known moment in American history and flesh it out, giving it color and context, and also providing the reader with a greater history of U.S. involvement and intervention in other countries. (Part of our plan was to depose one leader and replace him with his "friendly" brother, a pattern we still seem fond of some two centuries later.) History buffs rejoice, this is another great one!

Five stars.