After Barbary: Algeria's Roles in the French and American Empires

by Timothy Mason Roberts

Overview

After Barbary explores the connection between the United States and North Africa between the Barbary Wars of the early nineteenth century and the era of European decolonization after World War II. Timothy Mason Roberts offers a new approach to the study of empires, highlighting the significance of Algeria in French-American relations from France's first occupation of the country through the first years of independence of the Republic of Algeria.

As Roberts demonstrates, imperial authorities in Washington, DC, Paris, and Algiers rarely intentionally collaborated in institutional partnerships or alliances. Rather, American, French, and Algerian politicians, soldiers, writers, and revolutionaries, often acting at cross purposes and across political and cultural boundaries, sought power by imagining and constructing Algeria as a fissured, dynamic, trans imperial space. Focusing on issues of settler colonialism, irregular warfare, racialized citizenship, territorial incorporation, and pan-African identity, After Barbary shows how French Algeria helped make the American and French empires.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501784729
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/15/2025
Series:	The United States in the World
Pages:	222
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Timothy Mason Roberts is Professor and Chair of the Department of History at Western Illinois University. The Wall Street Journal, the Grateful American Foundation, and the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic have recognized his work for excellence.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. A North African Example for Early U.S. Expansion
2. The Civil War as a Razzia
3. The Limits of Republican Citizenship
4. A French Wild West
5. Algeria, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines
6. Algeria's Ambiguities Among American Pan-Africanists
Epilogue: The Politics of Post-Imperial Nostalgia

What People are Saying About This

Lawrence Peskin

A valuable contribution analyzing underexplored commonalities and interactions between the American republic and the French colonial project in Algeria. After Barbary will be of great interest to scholars of the US and North Africa, as well as of American imperialism and French History.

Andrew Priest

Fresh, original and at times surprising, After Barbary examines Algeria's underappreciated role in the history of political thought within the French and American Empires, exposing fascinating and under-researched aspects of nineteenth and twentieth century imperialism.