The Pirate City: An Algerine Tale, or simply The Pirate City, is a novel written by R. M. Ballantyne that was published in 1874. It is a work of juvenile fiction and adventure fiction which follows the Rimini family. The family disembarks from Sicily on a trading expedition only to be captured by Barbary Pirates and taken to the pirate city of Algiers, which is the present-day capital of Algeria.
The work was published by James Nisbet & Co. in London, England. The original location was 15 Castle Street in London, but in 1836, the location moved to 21 Berners Street. Nisbet & Co. also published works such as The Wide, Wide World by Susan Warner and was associated with Edinburgh University Press. This company was known for its biographies, as well as religious, children's, and juvenile texts. [1]
The Pirate City was written shortly after Ballantyne spent several months in Algiers, learning of the city's history. The lawlessness of this setting was based on historical fact. Large amounts of navy deserters from the powers involved in the Napoleonic Wars gathered in Algiers in the early 1800s. Criminals of all countries used the town as their haven, joining one another in order to conduct piratical raids on ships near the north coast of Africa, leading to the city being deemed the 'Pirates Nest' by the seafarers of the time. [2] The Pirate City's climax occurs when Britain's Lord Exmouth (a.k.a. Edward Pellew) attacks the city of Algiers to rescue the city's Christian inhabitants and disband the pirate forces. This event, known as the "Bombardment of Algiers" happened in August 1816, when British and Dutch forces, led by Exmouth and Van de Cappelan respectively, destroyed the harbored corsair fleet. This attack was prompted by a massacre of several hundred fishermen under British protection by pirates hailing from the city. [3] It is said that the Dey had managed to gather over 40,000 men to protect his city with the British attack. Exmouth gave the Dey demands, such as the abolition of Christian slavery and the delivery of all Christian slaves from Algiers. Upon failing to receive a reply, the forces opened fire upon one another. After the fighting was finished, over twelve hundred slaves were released and $385,000 of ransom money was repaid. The bombardment settled little and piracy had returned within the year. In 1830, when the French annexed Algeria, piracy from the city came to an end. [4]
The Pirate City follows the three members of the Rimini family on their adventure to the African city of Algier, Algeria. The story begins in the Remini abode in Sicily, where Francisco and his two sons Lucien and Mariano are contemplating their trading expedition to Malta. Upon leaving Sicily on Signor Bacri's boat, the family is attacked and captured by Barbary Pirates led by one Sidi Hassan. The ensuing scene shows the family putting up a worthy fight against their adversaries, but they are eventually overcome after Hassan threatens to kill an injured Mariano if they do not come peacefully. Hassan takes the Rimini family and Signor Bacri's ship for his own and heads toward the city of Algiers. On their way to the city, Sidi Hassan captures another Sicilian vessel along with two sisters, Angela and Paulina. The pirates also sail by a ship sailing the Union Jack, but they leave it alone as the British are said to be "protected". Hassan takes all of the characters to the pirate city and sells them into slavery alongside thousands of other Christians in the Bagnio, the slave prison. The family resists enslavement initially until a warning from Signor Bacri that describes terrible torture unless they remain passive. The Rimini family listens to Bacri's advice and remains docile until an escape attempt presents itself.
The Riminis are eventually saved from manual labor, torture, and various inhumane acts by Signor Bacri, the wealthy Jewish merchant who was captain of the trading vessel that was captured initially by Hassan. Bacri bribes the Dey (king of the pirates) to get Lucien assigned as his scribe. This allows Lucien to garner influence from Dey Achmet in hopes that he would eventually be able to save his family from slavery. Paulina, one of the captured sisters, is given to the British Consul in the city, Colonel Langley. He keeps her as a maidservant in his household alongside an African woman named Zubby and an Irishman named Ted Flaggan; both of these characters portray racial stereotypes and act as comic relief for the rest of the text. Mr. Langley spends the rest of the text attempting to rescue various slaves, namely Paulina's sister Angela who has been sent to the slave market to be sold only to be rescued by Signor Bacri at the last moment.
The position of Dey in the city is precarious, as all pirates covet the position. This is because the Dey takes tribute from all the consuls within the city in return for their country's ships remaining unscathed on the sea. This leads to internal strife and infighting among the pirates of the city; peace is rare. Pasha Achmet and his rivals battle for the position of Dey, leading to Dey Achmet's decapitation. A new Dey, Hamet, gains the throne only to be removed from it on that same day by Sidi Omar with the help of Sidi Hassan. During this time, martial law is declared in the city and pirates begin looting everywhere there is not secured or protected.
In the ensuing confusion of this looting period, Francisco and Mariano escape the Bagnio and meet up with Signor Bacri, who takes them to a safe house to wait out the looters. While being transported, Mariano is captured again and sent to the Bagnio. This leads Lucien, Francisco, and Bacri on a rescue mission that fails. Lucien and Francisco then head to a hidden cave a short way from the city to hide from being enslaved once again. As Dey Omar takes the throne, he angers all of the European consuls due to his lack of respect and political knowledge. He attacks a Greek ship and a Danish ship and refuses to listen to the country's consuls' requests to relinquish them. After Dey Omar refuses to negotiate with the consuls, Colonel Langley calls a meeting of all the consuls in the city. In a unanimous vote, they decide the pirates must be dealt with. Colonel Langley then sends for the British fleet. The fleet, which was previously too busy fighting other countries to deal with the pirates, arrives and saves the day. The British Navy arrives with Lord Exmouth at the helm, and with the help of Irish sailor Ted Flaggan, destroys the city and the pirate fleet. The city is liberated all the Christian slaves are freed. The text ends happily with the Rimini family united in their abode with Mariano and Angela happily married with children.
During his publishing career, Ballantyne's writing style was both praised and criticized. In 1858 a publication titled The Athaneum commented on Ballantyne's work by stating "The illustrations to [his] work[s] are beautiful, the descriptions of scenery are excellent, the adventures wonderful enough to satisfy the most inordinate wonder-seeker". [5] In 1893, Review of Reviews mentions that Ballantyne's works deal too much with religion. To this, Ballantyne himself replied "I believe in the necessity for salvation, and I will always bring religion into my books, no matter what others may say." [6] Shortly after The Coral Island was published, The Scotsman praised him, saying "Mr. Ballantyne ought to be a decided favourite with young readers, for not content with introducing them to far distant lands- ranging from the cold and cheerless regions of North America to the beautiful islands of the Pacific he makes young boys the heroes of all his stories, endowing them with wonderful fortitude and perseverance. [The Coral Island] has all the advantages of Mr. Ballantyne's former works; it is both instructive and amusing". [7]
Contemporary critics view Ballantyne's work alongside that of Daniel Defoe and Robert Louis Stevenson. Ballantyne writes in an easygoing and accessible style. The details in his work are factually accurate, and he gives his readers clear and stern messages about moral purity and godliness. By today's standards Ballantyne's heroes are sober, farsighted, and without a sense of humor. [8]
This work of juvenile adventure fiction, also known as a Robinsonade, is a take on the foreign cities of Africa by one of the 19th century children's literature novelists. The writing style is dialogue-driven with action-packed sections in every chapter. The story moves along at a quick pace and uses exciting and exotic descriptions, to avoid becoming too dull for his young audience. Eric Quayle, the author of "Ballantyne the Brave", states that Ballantyne's work "could be relied upon to stir romance and danger into humdrum affairs of everyday life and whose stories never failed to tingle with the steel of dramatic suspense and the bloodthirsty incidents so beloved by boys of all ages". [9]
The males are different variations of acceptable masculinity in 19th-century Britain, they are "hero[s] [with] God, certainty, the power of the knowledge of right, and English Imperialism as unquestionable guides" in their adventure. [10] Ballantyne is careful to refrain from the sexes showing anything other than platonic interests in one another. His strict Presbyterianism made him hesitant to mention sex at all. Even Ballantyne's villains "never permitted themselves to be anything but perfect gentlemen in their encounters with [women]". [11]
The women in the text are portrayed as unintelligent and infantile, not yet the "New Woman" that would emerge in British culture during the fin-de-siècle. All of the Christian characters encounter great peril, but remain unscathed. Contrasting sharply with this are the "Mohammedans", who torture one another without mercy.
Algiers is the capital and largest city of Algeria, located in the north-central part of the country. The city's population at the 2008 census was 2,988,145 and in 2020 was estimated to be around 4,500,000.
The Barbary Wars were a series of two wars fought by the United States, Sweden, and the Kingdom of Sicily against the Barbary states and Morocco of North Africa in the early 19th century. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800 and was joined by the newly independent US. The First Barbary War extended from 10 May 1801 to 10 June 1805, with the Second Barbary War lasting only three days, ending on 19 June 1815. The Barbary Wars were the first major American war fought entirely outside the New World, and in the Arab World.
The Second Barbary War, also known as the U.S.–Algerian War and the Algerine War, was a brief military conflict between the United States and the North African state of Algiers in 1815.
The Treaty of Tripoli was signed in 1796. It was the first treaty between the United States and Tripoli to secure commercial shipping rights and protect American ships in the Mediterranean Sea from local Barbary pirates.
The Barbary pirates, Barbary corsairs, or Ottoman corsairs were mainly Muslim pirates and privateers who operated from the largely independent Ottoman Barbary states. This area was known in Europe as the Barbary Coast, in reference to the Berbers. Slaves in Barbary could be of many ethnicities, and of many different religions, such as Christian, Jewish, or Muslim. Their predation extended throughout the Mediterranean, south along West Africa's Atlantic seaboard and into the North Atlantic as far north as Iceland, but they primarily operated in the western Mediterranean. In addition to seizing merchant ships, they engaged in razzias, raids on European coastal towns and villages, mainly in Italy, France, Spain, and Portugal, but also in the British Isles, the Netherlands, and Iceland.
The Bombardment of Algiers was an attempt on 27 August 1816 by Britain and the Netherlands to end the slavery practices of Omar Agha, the Dey of Algiers. An Anglo-Dutch fleet under the command of Admiral Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth bombarded ships and the harbour defences of Algiers.
The Regency of Algiers was a largely independent tributary state of the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period, located on the Barbary Coast of North Africa from 1516 to 1830. Founded by the corsair brothers Aruj and Hayreddin Barbarossa, the Regency was a formidable and infamous pirate base. First ruled by Ottoman regents, it later became a sovereign military republic that plundered and waged maritime holy war against European Christian powers.
Hugh MacDonell of Aberchalder (1753-1847) was a soldier and political figure in Upper Canada.
James Leander Cathcart was an American diplomat, slave, and sailor of Irish descent. He is notable for his narrative as a slave in Algiers, Ottoman Algeria, for eleven years.
Bombardment of Algiers is one of a number of oil-on-canvas paintings by British artist Thomas Luny depicting the heavy bombardment of the harbour of Algiers by a fleet of Anglo-Dutch ships under the command of Admiral Lord Exmouth, and the ensuing destruction. The exact date of the paintings creation is not known, but it is signed and dated to 1820 by Luny, four years after the events depicted.
The invasion of Algiers in 1830 was a large-scale military operation by which the Kingdom of France, ruled by Charles X, invaded and conquered the Deylik of Algiers.
Hamidou ben Ali, known as Raïs Hamidou, or Amidon in American literature, born around 1770, and died on June 17, 1815, near Cape Gata off the coast of southern Spain, was an Algerian corsair. He captured up to 200 ships during his career. Hamidou ensured the prosperity of the Deylik of Algiers, and gave it its last glory before the French invasion. His biography is relatively well known because the French archivist Albert Devoulx found documents that told of this charismatic character.
Omar Agha was the Dey of the Deylik of Algiers from April 1815 to September 1817, after the assassination of his predecessor Mohamed Kharnadji on 7 April 1815, who had been in office for only 17 days.
Elizabeth Dickson or Elizabeth Dalzac was a British woman who raised the British public profile of the Christian white slaves held in north Africa by the Barbary Slave Trade.
The bombardment of Algiers in 1682 was a naval operation by France against the Regency of Algiers during the French-Algerian War 1681–1688. Louis XIV sent Duquesne to bombard Algiers after the Dey declared war on France in 1681. Duquesne sailed from Toulon with a fleet of around forty vessels and reached Algiers in July 1682 after many delays caused by poor weather. Bombarded several times in August, the city suffered extensive damage. The danger of the corsair captains who managed to manoeuvre their ships so as to threaten the French position and bad weather forced Duquesne to retreat to French waters.
The bombardment of Algiers in 1683 was a French naval operation against the Regency of Algiers during the French-Algerian War 1681–88. It led to the rescue of more than 100 French prisoners, in some cases after decades of captivity, but the great majority of Christian captives in Algiers were not liberated.
The Battle of Moulouya took place in May 1692 at a ford on the Moulouya river in Morocco. It was fought between the armies of the Alaouite Sultan Moulay Ismail and those of the Dey of Algiers Hadj Chabane.
The French-Algerian War of 1681–1688 was part of a wider campaign by France against the Barbary Pirates in the 1680s.
The "Odjak of Algiers" was a unit of the Algerian army. It was a highly autonomous part of the Janissary Corps, acting completely independently from the rest of the corps, similar to the relationship between Algiers and the Sublime Porte. Led by an Agha, they also took part in the country's internal administration and politics, ruling the country for several years. They acted as a defense unit, a Praetorian Guard, and an instrument of repression until 1817.
Mohamed ben Hassan, also known as Muhammad III was during the reign of Baba Ali Chaouch khaznaji of Algiers before becoming Dey of Algiers from 1718 to 1724 as successor to Baba Ali I.