Key Battles of the Barbary Wars, Episode 4: The First Barbary War (1801-05)

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History Unplugged

Society & Culture, History

4.2 • 3.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 November 2024

⏱️ 41 minutes

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Summary

The First Barbary War began in response to decades of harassment of American traders by North African pirates. Before becoming president, Thomas Jefferson faced renewed Barbary pirate attacks, with the Pasha of Tripoli threatening war unless more tribute was paid. Despite being known for his frugality and opposition to a naval buildup, Jefferson deployed a naval squadron, believing military force was cheaper and more effective than paying tribute.

In 1801, after the U.S. failed to meet the Pasha’s demands, Tripoli declared war, leading to naval skirmishes, including a decisive early victory by the USS Enterprise. Jefferson's efforts to blockade Tripoli faced setbacks, including the capture of the American frigate Philadelphia and its crew. This loss raised the stakes, with the Pasha demanding an even larger ransom, complicating efforts to resolve the conflict.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Noble gold investments is the official gold sponsor of History Unplug, a company that specializes in gold IRAs and physical delivery of precious metals.
0:07.9	Learn how you can protect your wealth with noble gold investments.com.
0:19.4	Hello and welcome back to Key Battles of the Barbary Wars.
0:22.6	This is your co-host James Early, as always.
0:26.2	And as always, I am accompanied by my good buddy and my co-host Scott Rake.
0:31.6	Scott, how are you doing, sir?
0:34.0	All right.
0:35.2	Ready to go after some pirates.
0:37.0	Yeah, you're ready for some honest of goodness combat?
0:39.9	Yeah, it's not going to quite be battle Trafalgar, thousands of cannons in the air, but we're
0:44.2	going to hopefully see one or two cannons firing.
0:46.4	We've had a lot of build up.
0:47.3	I think we, yeah, we just might.
0:49.4	Now, so let's recap what we've done so far, listeners, in case you haven't been listening to this for a while.
0:55.2	It may have been a week.
0:56.1	It may have been more since you listened to the last episode.
0:58.7	Hopefully you did listen to the last episode.
1:00.8	So we started out by just giving an overview of what the Barbary Wars were, and we talked about American independence and its conflicts over whether to have a military and particularly a Navy or not
1:12.3	and how they tried to establish free trade in the European region, the Mediterranean, as well as
1:18.2	other parts, and the challenges they faced. Then we talked about the U.S. Navy and how it really was
1:24.2	it grew out of the British Navy and in many ways was a copy of the British
1:29.0	Navy, but in many ways it had its own unique features.
	...

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