Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates: The Forgotten War That Changed American History
by Biran Kilmeade and Don Yeager
Author's Description:
“This is the little-known story of how a newly independent nation was challenged by four Muslim powers and what happened when America’s third president decided to stand up to intimidation. When Thomas Jefferson became president in 1801, America faced a crisis. The new nation was deeply in debt and needed its economy to grow quickly, but its merchant ships were under attack. Pirates from North Africa’s Barbary coast routinely captured American sailors and held them as slaves, demanding ransom and tribute payments far beyond what the new country could afford. Over the previous fifteen years, as a diplomat and then as secretary of state, Jefferson had tried to work with the Barbary states (Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco). Unfortunately, he found it impossible to negotiate with people who believed their religion justified the plunder and enslavement of non-Muslims. These rogue states would show no mercy—at least not while easy money could be made by extorting the Western powers. So President Jefferson decided to move beyond diplomacy. He sent the U.S. Navy’s new warships and a detachment of Marines to blockade Tripoli—launching the Barbary Wars and beginning America’s journey toward future superpower status. As they did in their previous bestseller, George Washington’s Secret Six, Kilmeade and Yaeger have transformed a nearly forgotten slice of history into a dramatic story that will keep you turning the pages to find out what happens next. Among the many suspenseful episodes: ·Lieutenant Andrew Sterett’s ferocious cannon battle on the high seas against the treacherous pirate ship Tripoli. ·Lieutenant Stephen Decatur’s daring night raid of an enemy harbor, with the aim of destroying an American ship that had fallen into the pirates’ hands.
·General William Eaton’s unprecedented five-hundred-mile land march from Egypt to the port of Derne, where the Marines launched a surprise attack and an American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil for the first time. Few today remember these men and other heroes who inspired the Marine Corps hymn: “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.” Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates recaptures this forgotten war that changed American history with a real-life drama of intrigue, bravery, and battle on the high seas.”
·General William Eaton’s unprecedented five-hundred-mile land march from Egypt to the port of Derne, where the Marines launched a surprise attack and an American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil for the first time. Few today remember these men and other heroes who inspired the Marine Corps hymn: “From the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli, we fight our country’s battles in the air, on land and sea.” Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates recaptures this forgotten war that changed American history with a real-life drama of intrigue, bravery, and battle on the high seas.”
My Review - Rating - 4/10
Thomas Jefferson and the Tripoli Pirates is an exciting read, but it fails as a history book. The authors described it as a “blockbuster” and “thrilling read,” which is pretty accurate - the book does do a good job of recounting some of the important events, and is written in an interesting, action-packed style few history books have. Unfortunately, the reason that this book succeeds in interesting a wide range of readers is that it’s not really a history book (or at least not a good one). It’s not historical fiction per se, but it’s far too committed to showing the story through an inaccurate lens and fails to give anything more than a surface-level account of the Tripolitan wars. The book tries to tell the story of the First Barbary War as foreshadowing the War on Terror, a middle eastern U.S. conflict two hundred years before its time. That narrative is inaccurate and unfounded, and destroys the book’s historical accuracy, making it an unpleasant read for me. The authors try to portray the cause of the war as the Islamic Barbary Pirates intimidating and bullying the US, and the US fighting a righteous war against piracy and for national pride. The U.S. was fighting a war to stop the Barbary States’ attacks and extortions, but the authors then try to fit the book into a narrative of the U.S. fighting Islamic militants, which is completely inaccurate. They thankfully don’t do this too much (mainly because there’s few spots where they can fit in their narrative, since it’s so far detached from the reality of the Tripolitan War). On its own, I’d take off at least a point or two from my rating for the author’s attempts to make this book ‘relevant’ to the modern era by connecting it to the war on terror instead of just looking at how the war created a proper, permanent U.S. Navy. But the authors’ contrived narrative isn’t the only problem with the book, it’s just the one that annoyed me the most. Another, even bigger problem with the book is that it goes into almost no depth and has pretty poor research. There are nowhere near as many quotes, footnotes, or references as you’d normally expect from a history book (even one that’s just two hundred pages), and the lack of research shows. While some of the more well-known/publicized events of the Tripolitan war, such as the raid and burning of the captured USS Philadelphia, were written about in detail, most events of the war and its overall impact on the navy were barely covered and the claims made about the war’s impact were poorly supported. While I can understand that keeping the book broad and mostly ignoring analysis can increase its popular appeal (the main thing this book seems to be going for), there was definitely some sub-par research involved. The best example of this is that Kilmeade and Yeager mention that U.S. Marines marched to the Tripolitan capital overland, capturing some strategic objectives and the city of Derna along the way, and gained several hundred Tripolitan allies, who were supporting the marines in overthrowing the Pasha (leader of Tripoli) in favor of the Pasha’s brother. Sadly, the book went into almost no detail about this seemingly fascinating campaign - if they wanted to push the Tripolitan war’s importance and similarities to today, why not look at how the marines successfully campaigned and won over the populace. Sadly, the book didn’t go any further into depth on this topic, and I could find all the same information that the authors put in the book on Wikipedia - an experience symbolic of the level of research and effort that I saw across the whole book. While I was pretty entertained reading this book the first time, it’s research is subpar at best, the authors’ give a superficial summary of the war, and the only thing the authors added to the story I couldn’t find within five minutes of google searches was their anti-Islamic spin on an interesting part of history they didn’t do credit to.
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