THE DUTCH CONNECTION: HOW SEVENTEENTH CENTURY DUTCH PRIVATEERS BECAME BARBARY CORSAIRS IN NORTH AFRICA – PART 2

(This post is a continuation of The Dutch Connection: How Seventeenth Century Dutch Privateers Became Barbary Corsairs in North Africa – Part 1. If you haven’t done so already, it’s probably best to read that post before continuing on here.)

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The carefully regulated Dutch privateer enterprise went on for the better part of forty years, generating consistent profits and training several generations of seafarers in the rough business of attacking and looting ships.

And then everything changed.

In 1609, the Republic of the Netherlands and Spain signed a truce—the Twelve Years’ Truce—and hostilities between the two countries ceased. As a result, Dutch privateers were no longer needed.

The whole enterprise collapsed (at least temporarily; it resumed again after the truce ended in 1621).

Dutch privateers at this time, remember, were inheritors of a long tradition; all their lives, the Republic of the Netherlands had been at war. They fought in that war; their fathers fought in it; in some cases, their grandfathers had fought in it. War defined life, one way or another, for their whole generation.

When the truce came into effect, most privateers bowed to the inevitable and returned to their home ports and took up life as merchant seamen, though likely with misgivings, for their future was uncertain, and also no doubt with a certain amount of regret, for they stood a far better chance of earning real money as privateers than they ever did as ordinary sailors.

A significant number of privateers, however, did not give up their trade. Perhaps they were reluctant to accept the relative poverty and poor conditions that life as merchant seamen offered. Or perhaps they had been at the game too long and simply could not imagine any other way of making a living. Whatever the reason, they were unwilling, or unable, to return to ordinary life. Instead, they stayed out at sea and became outlaw pirates, indiscriminately attacking whatever ships they came across.

These new pirates had a problem, though.

It is an easy thing to overlook, but without suitable ports, pirates simply could not survive. In order to make their enterprise profitable, they needed to be able to sell their booty, and they had to regularly revictual and refit their ships and repair any damage they sustained at sea. So they needed ports where they could have easy access to merchants who were not only able and willing to buy stolen goods but who also had extensive enough trade networks to export those stolen goods and to import the range of supplies required to repair and outfit pirate ships and crews.

The outlaw status of the new Dutch pirates prevented them from using ordinary European ports, so they had to search for new ones. For a time, they used Irish ports. Ireland in those days was a sort of maritime ‘wild west.’ English control was tenuous, small harbors and ports were plentiful, and the local people and their English overlords saw the profit in dealing with pirates, both in victualling their ships and entertaining their crews (who had ready cash to spend) and in buying the stolen goods they offered at cut-rate prices. The new Dutch pirates also made use of La Rochelle, on the Atlantic coast of France, a Huguenot port allied with the Republic of the Netherlands that Dutch privateers had been frequenting since the time of the Sea Beggars.

The multiple small ports and cooperative population that Ireland offered were convenient enough, but they contained limited facilities, and the Dutch pirates needed better markets for their booty and better sources of supply than those the little backwater Irish harbors could provide. Plus, English naval forces began to harass those Irish ports. La Rochelle, too, had its problems (it would eventually be besieged and captured by Catholic French forces). So the Dutch pirates went in search of new ports out of which they could operate.

They found those ports along the North African shore.

In fact, it was a natural choice. For the forty years or so of conflict that preceded the Twelve Years’ Truce, the Republic of the Netherlands and the North African Ottoman Regencies—Tripoli, Tunis, and Algiers—and Salé (which became an independent republic) had shared a common enemy: Spain. And though ships from the Republic and the Regencies and Salé regularly attacked each other, the relationship was not a purely antagonistic one. On the principle of “the enemy of my enemy is my ally,” privateers/pirates from the Republic and Barbary corsairs had sometimes operated, if not as outright allies, at least as fellow combatants against the common foe. Moreover, Dutch privateers who had gone rogue and become outlaws had been making use of North African ports all along.

Dutch ex-privateers were welcomed by the North Africans, especially if the newcomers converted to Islam—for North African Muslims eagerly welcomed European converts to their religion, fully accepting them as members of the Muslim community. In Europe, these converts were known as renegades and were universally detested as traitors to the true faith. Nonetheless, many Europeans did convert and made new and successful lives for themselves, plying their trades, marrying, and raising families, often becoming important and respected—and completely accepted—members of their communities in the process.

Since the Dutch ex-privateers had, so to speak, burned their bridges behind them, many (most) converted, were absorbed into the fabric of North African Muslim society, and began new lives as Barbary corsairs.

Despite their dark reputation, Barbary corsairs were not simply pirates. Like the Dutch, they too were privateers. Each Barbary corsair Captain carried the equivalent of a letter of marque from the official authorities of his home port authorizing him to attack and loot ‘enemy’ shipping and to bring back booty to be auctioned off. As with the Dutch, corsair expeditions were financed by consortiums, booty had to be adjudicated and declared legal before it could be sold, and profits were shared out on a pro rata basis to financial backers, the state, and the captain and crew.

This system was entirely familiar to the Dutch ex-privateers, and they fit right in—plying their old trade but with a new sponsor.

And so, with hardly a ripple, a generation of Dutch privateers morphed into Barbary corsairs.

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The early seventeenth century was a more primitive age than our own in some ways, much rougher, with a less sophisticated level of technology. But it was no less complex in terms of the social, political, and religious lives of the inhabitants. The conflict between European states and North African Barbary corsairs during this period was not the simple clash of violently antithetical civilizations—Christian versus Islamic—that most people imagine. Instead, the borders between the two sides were porous, as the example of the Dutch privateers shows.

History is fractal: no matter what level of detail you look at, things are complicated.