Author, �The Barbary Pirates�

News flash: Cocky Muslim pirates prey on merchantmen from small boats and ships. Crews and cargoes are held for ransom. Powerful warships are unfit to find and intercept elusive raiders. A shore sanctuary for piracy is frustratingly immune.

No, this news isn�t just about 21^st Century Somalia. The same scenario was Barbary piracy at the dawn of the 19^th Century, and fighting it marked the coming of age of the American navy.

�There�s nothing new under the sun,� Ecclesiastes observes, and the proverb certainly applies to Somalia. Just as Napoleon Bonaparte�s 1798 invasion of Egypt experienced many of the military and political problems that would plague America�s invasion of Iraq, Somali piracy is an echo of the irritation that in 1805 drew American Marines �To the shores of Tripoli.�

Piracy thrived in the Mediterranean in 1800 because tolerating thievery was cheaper than fighting it. The powerful French, British and Spanish fleets fought back just enough to win immunity � through paying tribute � for their own merchant vessels. The vessels of weaker nations had no protection. This gave the flag vessels of the great powers a competitive advantage.

Like Somali pirates, the Barbary pirates did not sail forth in search of galleon treasure. They were more interested in capturing people than loot, because people could be enslaved � one basis of the Barbary economy � or ransomed for what the Muslims really wanted: money, food, and ordnance. The Barbary States filled outrageous shopping lists, such as cannon to protect their harbors from retaliation by the very people they were extorting.

European powers went along with the corruption. Tribute was far cheaper than naval expeditions. Merchant captains learned surrender meant the possibility of ransom, while resistance meant death.

The result was a business � piracy � that flourished for centuries. Miguel Cervantes, who wrote Don Quixote, and Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, were among those taken prisoner by the Barbary States. The expulsion of the Moors from Spain, a process completed in 1492, crowded Muslim North Africa with jobless refugees. With little arable land, sea raiding was a way to get enough money to import food.

All successful pirates need a secure land base. In the Caribbean it was the island of Tortuga and the English colony of Jamaica, from which pirates like Henry Morgan could sally forth to sack the Spaniards.

In North Africa, port cities such as Tripoli and Algiers bristled with artillery. The larger Western ships drew so much water that they were in danger from fringing reefs, and when America pledged �millions for defense but not one cent for tribute,� its frigate Philadelphia went aground off Tripoli and had to be burned.

Somalia, of course, depends on its reputation as a failed state and the memory of the butchered Americans of �Black Hawk Down� to dissuade far more powerful nations from trying to engage pirates ashore.

Even when European powers seized parts of Africa, they found the task wearying. Portugal controlled Tangiers for two centuries but never profited, gratefully giving it to England as part of a princess dowry. England, harassed by the Muslims, tired of ownership in a generation. It was cheaper to pay the sea-going Muslim mafia off, just as shipping companies are doing in Somalia today.

In 1784, American ships lost the protection of the British navy because of independence and the Barbary pirates were emboldened by the Algerian repulse of a Franco-Spanish fleet. Piracy worsened, American ships were seized, and in 1795 the United States agreed to a humiliating $600,000 tribute to Algiers. Tunis and Tripoli soon demanded similar extortions, and Thomas Jefferson won election in part by promising to fight instead.

The result was a seesaw war of four years with an ambiguous �victory� over Tripoli purchased for a ransom of $60,000. Sea-borne terrorism proved hard to completely eradicate, however, and the American navy launched another punitive attack in 1815. Britain did the same in 1816. Only the colonization of North Africa that France began in 1830 eliminated Barbary piracy once and for all.

What lessons can be drawn? Piracy is a risk vs. reward calculation that flourishes when sailors are desperate and retribution is limited.  Sustained piracy needs state support to flourish, meaning the ultimate solution is usually ashore, not at sea. And paying ransom usually just leads to more extortion.

Is the solution a Marine march to the shores of Somalia? This only had temporary success in the Barbary wars. What Somali sailors really need is a realistic alternative. In the 19^th Century, Europeans �nation built� through colonization. In the 21^st Century, a new means has to be found to bring failed states back into the world economy that makes an honest living safer, and better-paying, than piracy. Otherwise this sorry history repeats again and again.