Early+American+Foreign+Policy+and+the+Barbary+Pirates

Event Summary
[|Barbary Wars, 1801-1805 and 1815-1816], from Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State

[|The First Barbary War] from Thomas Jefferson Foundation

For background on the beginnings of American Foreign Policy, see[| America and the Barbary Pirates] from the Library of Congress.

See also [|How Did the United States Defeat the Barbary Pirates?]

[|Avast! How the U.S. Built a Navy, Sent in the Marines, and Faced Down the Barbary Pirates], Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

See this article in the New York Times for a view of the [|Barbary Pirates as an earlier form of state-sponsored terrorism].




 * Primary Sources**

[|Treaty of Tripoli (1796)] Also known as the Treaty of Peace and Friendship

[|George Washington and Barbary Coast Pirates] from the Papers of George Washington Project

[|The Barbary Pirates: Letter from Tripol]i from Teaching American History.org



Multimedia Resources

 * First Barbary War on YouTube**

The United States and the Barbary Pirates from Constitutional Rights Foundation
 * Lesson Plans**


 * In Barbary Wars, Did the U.S. Declare War on Islam? from Politifact**
 * Historians have established that religion did not play a dominant role in the Barbary wars.
 * "Very little of this had to do with Islam," said Adrian Tinniswood, author of //Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean //. "It had much more to do with trading opportunities and economics."
 * 



Stephen Decatur
Commodore Stephen Decatur: An Early American Naval War Hero, from White House Historical Association

**See United States History I.22 for more on the Presidencies of George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson**