The Barbary Coast, or Barbary, was the term used by Europeans till the Algeria, Tunisia, and Libya. The name is derived from the Berber people of north Africa. In the West, the name commonly evokes the Arabslave traders based on that coast, who captured and traded slaves from Europe and sub_Saharan Africa. It also evokes the Barbary pirates, based on the North African coast, who attacked shipping in the Mediterranean and North Atlantic.
"Barbary" was almost never a unified political entity; from the sixteenth century onwards, it was divided into the familiar political entities of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, and the no longer extant Morocco, and a west-central Algerian state centered on Tlemcen or Tiaret, although powerful dynasties such as the Almohads, and briefly the Hafsids, occasionally unified it for short periods. However, from a European perspective its "capital" or chief city was often considered to be Tripoli, in modern-day Libya, although Algiers, in Algeria, and Tangiers, in Morocco, were also sometimes seen as its "capital" by Europeans of the era. The first United States military action overseas, executed by the U.S. Marines and Navy, was the storming of Tripoli to end pirate raids from Barbary.
The First Barbary War (1801–1805, also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War) was one of two wars fought between the United States of America and the North African states known collectively as the Barbary States.
They began a new identity as the "Knights of Rhodes" and began to engage the Barbary Pirates in naval warfare, as part of their greater war on the Ottoman Empire.
Distracted by the preludes to the War of 1812, the Americans were unable to respond to the provocation until 1815, with the Second Barbary War.
The First Barbary War (1801 - 1805, also known as the Barbary Coast War or the Tripolitan War) was one of two wars fought between the United States of America and the semi-autonomous North African city-states of Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, known collectively as the Barbary States.
Since the 17th century the Barbary pirate states of North Africa, although nominally governed by the Turkish Empire, had been largely independent kleptocracies, run by piratical military strongmen and supported by plunder, tribute, and ransom.
For them, the First Barbary War was one in a series of punitive wars that signalled their weakened status and foreshadowed eventual colonialization by France in the 1820s.
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