January 2011

In politics as in nature, opposites clash but are also attracted. At any event they cannot escape one another; and no two contrasting nations have ever been more fatefully linked than the United States and Russia.

The United States, as a newborn maritime nation, laced the age-old problem of securing safe passage lor its merchant ships, and we thus paid tribute to the Barbary States. A partial accounting of it follows.

Morocco 1786: £5,000 for a treaty guaranteeing “no future presents or tributes”; 1795: the same sum for renewal of the treaty plus consular presents, fieldpieces, small arms, and gunpowder; 1802: 100 gun carriages.

Algeria 1793: $40,000 for relief of prisoners; 1796: nearly $ 1,000,000 for a treaty—86.42,500 in cash, 821,600 annual tribute in naval stores, and 8300 in gifts to the Dey. A long delay in payment called for an additional 853,000 in presents and bribes and the promise of a gO-gun ship; 1797: frigate Crescent delivered; 1798: the Hamdullah and $8,000 in lieu of stores; 1799: the brig Sophia and two schooners in lieu of stores.