American Norh Africa

The United States went to war with the Barbary States in North Africa multiple times in the early 1800s. Is there any way that instead of just destorying the Babary navies as the US did OTL, America lanches a land invasion. Now lets assume that the Americans win fairly quickly, is there anyway America annxes some Barbary territory or make the Babary States protectorates.
 
Tough proposal. US was very adverse to anexing land at this period. Their aim was to free other countries, not rule them. They might try this in South America, but not in Africa.
 
True, but the US went to war with the Babaries multiple times last one was in 1815 after which the Babaries stopped large scale raiding of US ships. But, what if they hadn't after fighting so many naval wars would the US assumee the only way to stop the raiding was to destory or conquer the Babary Sates?
 
The United States went to war with the Barbary States in North Africa multiple times in the early 1800s. Is there any way that instead of just destorying the Babary navies as the US did OTL, America lanches a land invasion. Now lets assume that the Americans win fairly quickly, is there anyway America annxes some Barbary territory or make the Babary States protectorates.

I can maybe understand the protectorates, but actually annexing parts of North Africa? Sorry, but that's just ASB.
 
Contiguous

Louisiana Purchase.


The LA Purchase was next to the lands that the US claimed in 1803. In 1800 we did not have the ability to project enough power to annex any lands that were not contiguous to the US.
 
Most of the manpower for a land invasion would likely be supplied by Arab and Greek mercenaries, whose fealty in the face of adversity was fickle at best. I don't think the USN (especially after Jefferson's restructuring of the fleet to favor smaller, coastal defense vessels) was well equipped to logistically manage the transport a substantial expeditionary force, which necessitates the employment of local mercenaries augmented by smaller much units of American marines and shipborne infantry.
 
Scaling back a bit from OP's proposal, suppose that a group of Americans goes to the Barbary States with the idea to educate the populace and have them stage an American-style rebellion against the Ottomans, and persuades the French to lend them aid? Could such a plan succeed given enough time, or is it just a pipe dream?
 
In 1823 William Shaler proposed this very idea. I posted a thread on it before here.

It would have been helpful in that thread 4 years ago, or this one now, if you'd post a link to Shaler's arguments at the time.

Googling, I was amazed to find that not only does Wikipedia not come up first, it doesn't appear on the front page at all! I have to go to work now, but I did find a free online version of Shaler's 1825 book Sketches of Algiers, and I'm jumped to the chapter, VI, on "the probable destiny of this fine region."

Other links I did find seem more focused on Shaler's earlier role in maneuvering toward US hegemony in Texas.

Without more specific information like this, the question "WI US North Africa" just comes out of a blue sky; one wonders "why not US Borneo or Zanzibar while we are at it?" The fact is, in the 1820s the idea of US action specifically in Algiers was a bit in the air, at any rate in the air around Shaler. He seems to be saying that the USN is going to need some base or other in the Med, as no other power can be relied upon to protect American shipping there, so it might as well be Algiers.

OTL of course the British largely took over the role of power projection to maintain general order on the high seas; as long as a power was not actively at war with Britain they could rely on the British to suppress piracy. In this era of course there was a bit of conflict of interest for Americans in promoting British supremacy on the high seas; for one thing, the slave trade. It was illegal of course, by our own acts of Congress as specifically permitted in the Constitution, for Americans to import slaves from overseas, but lots of them in the South were still doing so anyway in the 1820s--which is a major reason the budget of the USN was in such a poor state; a fully equipped and significantly sized Navy would be expected to enforce the anti-slave trade laws and from the US Southern slaveholder's point of view it was bad enough that the Royal Navy was interfering, without the embarrassment of their own government doing so too.

It's unclear to me, having read just a few paragraphs so far, of Shaler's own words and a couple sketch articles about him, just where he stood, but his apparent annexationist interests, including early approaches to Texas, make me suspect he was on the whole pro-slavery.

While the Mediterranean trade was not a completely obscure US interest, I don't see it as commanding enough of a priority in the USA as a whole to justify a major national investment in an enterprise to seize a base there by force, let alone to subdue and colonize the whole hinterland of that base.
 
In terms of ASB concepts pretending to be serious this ranks pretty high up there. Have you wondered why Britain, France, Spain, Naples, Austria or anyone one of the other European powers who could project significantly more power into the Med didn't annex the region?

Because:

a.) It was dirt poor. Thus why just like Somalia today the locals took up Piracy. Meaning you wouldn't make any money of it.

b.) It would be incredibly hard to hold down. Look at the British with Tangiers or the Spanish and the Rif. Holding a fringe of coastline while the desert people can come riding in and burn and pillage before buggering off gets very expensive very quickly and chasing them into the desert is suicidal.

c.) How do you think Britain is going to react? Britain may have given up on holding down 3 million Americans and a land area 20 times the size of the home islands but the British view on other countries having possessions outside Europe during this era is well known. And some kind of conflict is coming over Canada, Impressment etc. and the survivability of American Barbary against the RN can be measured in weeks.
 
As I say, it would be nice if someone suggesting this as a possibility would spell out just what they think Americans of the time would see as the advantage to be gained by this extraordinary effort so extraordinarily far away from the regions of general American interest.

Now I've just gotten home from work, having taken time I didn't actually have (admittedly, just minutes) to find some indication of what an advocate of this course did say at the time. (Which by the way, in Shaler's case, was well after the War of 1812, though only a decade or so the British would still be extra wary of course!) So I still haven't read Shaler and frankly may never, as it seems like a pretty wacky, far-fetched sort of thing he's advocating. It's up to the OP here (and was up to danwild6 four years ago) to explain why anyone in the USA would even want this, and then to deal with the well-founded objections people raised both 4 years ago and now.

Shaler's idea seems to have been that since Yankee traders could not free-ride reliably on the protection of closer and greater European powers, Americans needed to have a base in the region for protecting their own shipping. Clearly for such a scheme to begin to have any traction in DC, the benefits to Americans would have to outweigh the estimated costs. Most Americans could care less if a clique of Yankee traders could sail safely to the Levant or not, and might suggest that these traders bear the costs themselves if they want the benefits.

In other words, the merchants could arm themselves, and if they needed a base of operations, they could bloody well filibuster one on their own hook--and take the chance that these private actions would get themselves labeled as pirates right along with the Barbary coasters.

What I recall of the earlier "millions for defense, not a cent for tribute!" brouhaha in the Jefferson Administration, from my general American history back in grade school (well, my extracurricular reading of it) was that generally the European powers did simply pay tribute to the Dey of Algiers; it was basically a protection racket, and apparently the British, French, Spanish and I guess everyone else reckoned that the bribes the Dey expected were cheaper than the cost of an invasion and trying to keep control of the place. I don't know to what extent they factored in trouble with the Sultan in Constantinople in counting those costs. But if the purpose of seizing control of Algiers would be to smooth the way for American shipping to the Eastern Med, the USA would not want to be on the Sublime Porte's bad list either, as the Ottomans controlled many of the ports Americans would want to trade with there (except those controlled by Western European powers, who presumably would not welcome Yankee competition there in any case).
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I took a few minutes to glance over Shaler's sixth chapter that I liked to above--there are a number of pages missing from this online version. Before the hiatus, however, Shaler was urging not the USA but Great Britain to seize control!

Perhaps the French read his rather glowing (and inflammatory, to the Ottomans--some diplomat this dude was, eh?) tributes to the potentials of the Algerian shore lands. Which by the way have been sold a bit short to be sure by some commentators here; clearly the Mediterranean lands of Algeria are a fairly decent tract of land, important to Carthage, to the Romans, and to the French who seem to have either taken Shaler's advice or figured it out on their own.

Anyway, despite coming to value Algeria to the point of declaring it an "integral" part of France, the French lost control of the place too. Shaler overstated the case when supposing the land would be more cost-effective for the British to hold than India or other possessions in America and elsewhere.

Anyway I'd have to read this whole book (which probably has other gaps in it, in this free online version) to get a sense of whether Shaler ever seriously considered the USA being the power to grab it or any part of it. Frankly I'd rather not.

So, Patton and danwild6, the ball is in your court, to try to make the case interesting. I think I've done enough, or too much, of your homework here.
 
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