The treaty With Tripoli

Submitted by Richard B. Parker (United States), Nov 10, 2006 at 12:57

The article about our treaty with Tripoli is interesting, although the language was somewhat more restrained than D. Pipes seems to think. We merely said we were not enemies of Islam . We did not say we were friends of Islam.

This was our third treaty with a Barbary power, not the first. Morocco was the first ( June 23 1786), Algiers the second ( September 5, 1795) The treaty was not negotiated by Joel Barlow, although he presumably composed the text. It was negotiated by Capt. Richard O'Brien, who had been one of our prsoners in Algiers and who succeeded Barlow as consul general in Algiers in 1797.

For more details see my book Uncle Sam in Barbary, a Diplomatic History. (Unversity Press of Florida, 2004).

Richard B. Parker

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Daniel Pipes replies:

Well, it is titled a "Treaty of Peace and Friendship" and includes the promise that "no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries." That seems to me to be more than what Ambassador Parker describes as simply "not enemies of Islam."

I don't see that I stated anywhere that this was the first U.S. treaty with a Barbary state.