Globalization of the United States, 1789-1861

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Stevens, James Wilson. An Historical and Geographical Account of Algiers; Comprehending a Novel and Interesting Detail of Events Relative to the American Captives. Philadelphia: Printed by Hogan and M’Elroy, 1797.

James Wilson Stevens. An Historical and Geographical Account of Algiers; Comprehending a Novel and Interesting Detail of Events Relative to the American Captives. Philadelphia: Printed by Hogan and M'Elroy, 1797. Title page.

Complaining that the Barbary States kidnapped American sailors, Stevens blamed Islam for causing north Africa’s descent from Carthaginian civilization into “barbarism.”

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Africa, though contiguous to the most commercial nations in the world, from whom one would naturally suppose it might derive some portion of refinement, is yet involved in a state of the most deplorable barbarism; and its very atmosphere seems fraught with the most detestable depravity in human nature. Hence the spirit of discovery will ever be retarded, and travellers will have but little inducement to explore a region where they must be exposed to such a constant succession of dangers.

Since the destruction of Carthage, civilization seems not an attribute of the kingdom of Algiers, or of any of the states of Barbary; and such is the virulence of Mahometan antipathy to every thing that bears the name of Christian, that their contiguity to Europe has perhaps tended to render them even more ferocious.