America’s first major war after gaining independence was not its rematch with Britain in 1812, or any prolonged war with a Native American people, but the Barbary Wars, a series of attempts to get North African states to cease piratical operations against American shipping. The states of Tunis, Algiers, and Tripoli (current day Libya), were Islamic Ottoman-supported states that, operating under the doctrine of Jihad, constantly attacked European shipping. The pirates would attack merchant and passenger vessels, seizing any goods and enslaving the crew and passengers. European nations would have to pay ransoms to free the slaves. The British government had willingly paid heavy sums to protect their merchant ships, which meant their economic competitors would suffer more seizures. Independent of Britain, the United States merchants were now fair game. After several humiliations, the US formed a proper navy and conducted the Barbary Wars, forcing the African states to stop.
This long paragraph provides background for Tripoli, a historical adventure film that, like many older Hollywood films, steers clear of the heavier elements of the story. We don’t hear about European prisoners being turned into slaves until they can be ransomed (the slave trade in this part of the world was actually quite massive, though by 1800 it had turned more into a ransom racket as the Islamic world was in decline) and there is nothing about the religious justification used by the state of Tripoli. Instead we get a typical, though exotic, adventure flick with a heavy infusion of ahistorical romance.
