Overview

New ideas of security spelled the end of piracy on the Mediterranean Sea during the nineteenth century. As European states ended their military conflicts and privateering wars against one another, they turned their attention to the 'Barbary pirates' of Algiers, Tunis and Tripoli. Naval commanders, diplomats, merchant lobbies and activists cooperated for the first time against this shared threat. Together, they installed a new order of security at sea. Drawing on European and Ottoman archival records – from diplomatic correspondence and naval journals to songs, poems and pamphlets – Erik de Lange explores how security was used in the nineteenth century to legitimise the repression of piracy. This repression brought European imperial expansionism and colonial rule to North Africa. By highlighting the crucial role of security within international relations, Menacing Tides demonstrates how European cooperation against shared threats remade the Mediterranean and unleashed a new form of collaborative imperialism.

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9781009364140

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Reviews

'Menacing Tides exposes the extraordinary politics that took place on the high seas of imperial competition through the 19th century. Erik de Lange offers us a thick revelatory history of the Mediterranean as a critical site in the negotiation and transformation of the modern international order.' Glenda Sluga, European University Institute 'This deeply researched and engrossing account of the diplomacy and warfare surrounding the Barbary corsairs in the years after Napoleon highlights both individual actions and larger global contexts. The book offers much for debates about the interrelationships between the rise of multilateral diplomacy, humanitarianism, and Western imperial expansion.' Brian Vick, Emory University 'Erik De Lange's elegantly written book is an 'entangled' history of cross-cultural encounters between North African 'corsairs' and Europeans in the Mediterranean in the era after the Napoleonic Wars. He demonstrates convincingly that there was a close link between the new European security culture which included the regulation of the High Seas, the fight against piracy, and the rise of intercultural violence and imperial expansion along the Mediterranean, which resulted in a true clash of civilizations.' Matthias Schulz, University of Geneva

Author Information

Erik de Lange is an Assistant Professor at Utrecht University. He completed his PhD within the ERC-funded research project 'Securing Europe, Fighting Its Enemies. The Making of a Security Culture in Europe and Beyond, 1815–1914'. In 2022–2024, he was a visiting research fellow at King's College London.

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