Jefferson's war: America's first war on terror, 1801-1805

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Average Rating
Publisher
Carroll & Graf Publishers
Publication Date
2003.
Language
English

Description

Two centuries ago, without congressional or public debate, a president whom we think of today as peaceable, Thomas Jefferson, launched America's first war on foreign soil - a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, encrypted intelligence, and launched from foreign bases under short-term alliances. For nearly two hundred years, the Barbary pirates had haunted the Mediterranean, enslaving tens of thousands of Europeans and extorting millions of dollars from their countries in a mercenary holy war against Christendom. Sailing in sleek corsairs built for speed and plunder, the Barbary pirates attacked European and American merchant shipping with impunity, triumphing as much by terror as force of arms. As a newly independent nation, America and her merchant fleet became a frequent target of such piracy. After his inauguration, instead of negotiating worthless treaties and paying tribute, Jefferson chose to fight.Readers who enjoy military and naval history, presidential biographies and accounts of the early American republic, will find that Joseph Wheelan's spirited narrative of Jefferson's war provides as important new perspective on America's struggles with terror - then and now.

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ISBN
9780786712328

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Kirkus Book Review

Lively recounting of the crusade, 200 years ago, that brought the Marines to the shores of Tripoli. It is a stretch, one that former AP reporter Wheelan strains to make, to equate the American war on the pirate states of the Barbary Coast in Thomas Jefferson's day with the American war on various terrorist bands and disfavored regimes today; real corsairs do not equal weapons of mass destruction actual or supposed, and profit, not millenarian ideology, drove the Muslim buccaneers of yesteryear. It is less of a stretch to call that war Mr. Jefferson's, even though American efforts to rid the Mediterranean Sea of those pirates took place over the better part of two decades; it was Jefferson, after all, who remarked of the affair, "I very early thought it would be best to effect a peace through the medium of war," and it was Jefferson who rejected the accommodations of the European states, who paid annual tribute or outright ransom to the Barbary pirates, in favor of grapeshot. Fought on land and sea, the campaign was a curious affair involving more than 2,000 sailors and much of the Atlantic fleet, as well as a motley collection of fighters recruited in the souks of North Africa; as Wheelan observes, "a more diverse army probably never assembled under U.S. auspices. There were Greeks, Italians, Tripolitans, Egyptians, Frenchmen, Arabs, Americans, and British--eleven nationalities in all," making up a commando unit that crossed overland to invest the pirates' lair. Wheelan's account of the skirmishes and major engagements that made up the war is full of whistling shells and falling masts, and his overview of the international politics of the time serves to orient readers to the bigger issues of the day--some of which would present themselves in the War of 1812 and Napoleonic wars that soon followed. The stuff of good historical fiction--and a treat for military buffs. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
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