Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815 by Robert J.AllisonReview by: Michael A. PalmerJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Winter, 1995), pp. 670-671Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3124025 .

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JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

of geography books but not highlighted or examined in depth. Scho- lars who treat this subject usually feature Morse as a prime personal- ity of this movement. His contributions to the development of an American consciousness were profound.

Massachusetts Historical Society Louis Leonard Tucker

The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815. By Robert J. Allison. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp. xviii, 266. Illustrations. $35.00.)

The Crescent Obscured is a well-written and researched history of early American interaction with the Muslim world, principally with the

Barbary states of the North African coast. This is not a history of the

Barbary Wars, nor of American-Barbary diplomatic relations, al-

though neither is ignored. Robert J. Allison has written a history of American perceptions of the Islamic World, perceptions that reveal more about the nature of Americans than of their North African pro- tagonists.

The American response to the Muslim world was, in Allison's view, fraught with paradox. In their reaction to Barbary attacks, Americans simultaneously evidenced both a sense of triumph and

tragedy: the growing vitality of their new state and the pervasiveness of an institution that would ultimately tear the state apart. As Ameri- cans wrestled with the Barbary challenge, they made the final transi- tion from colonial subservience to nationhood. In the early accounts written by Americans held as "slaves" in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the captives usually looked to death or Divine interven- tion for release from their sufferings. In accounts written during or after the Tripolitan War, hostages instead expected deliverance to come at the hands of the American government. The author discov- ered evidence of this new national spirit (and the title for his book) in the words of a song written in 1805 by Francis Scott Key, who in 1814 drafted new lyrics for what would become the national anthem.

"And pale beam'd the Crescent, its splendor obscur'd by the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation, Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war, and the turban'd head bowed to the terrible glare" (205).

While Americans found the national will to free their brethren from Barbary slavery, they proved unable to tackle an even more per-

of geography books but not highlighted or examined in depth. Scho- lars who treat this subject usually feature Morse as a prime personal- ity of this movement. His contributions to the development of an American consciousness were profound.

Massachusetts Historical Society Louis Leonard Tucker

The Crescent Obscured: The United States and the Muslim World, 1776-1815. By Robert J. Allison. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Pp. xviii, 266. Illustrations. $35.00.)

The Crescent Obscured is a well-written and researched history of early American interaction with the Muslim world, principally with the

Barbary states of the North African coast. This is not a history of the

Barbary Wars, nor of American-Barbary diplomatic relations, al-

though neither is ignored. Robert J. Allison has written a history of American perceptions of the Islamic World, perceptions that reveal more about the nature of Americans than of their North African pro- tagonists.

The American response to the Muslim world was, in Allison's view, fraught with paradox. In their reaction to Barbary attacks, Americans simultaneously evidenced both a sense of triumph and

tragedy: the growing vitality of their new state and the pervasiveness of an institution that would ultimately tear the state apart. As Ameri- cans wrestled with the Barbary challenge, they made the final transi- tion from colonial subservience to nationhood. In the early accounts written by Americans held as "slaves" in Morocco, Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli, the captives usually looked to death or Divine interven- tion for release from their sufferings. In accounts written during or after the Tripolitan War, hostages instead expected deliverance to come at the hands of the American government. The author discov- ered evidence of this new national spirit (and the title for his book) in the words of a song written in 1805 by Francis Scott Key, who in 1814 drafted new lyrics for what would become the national anthem.

"And pale beam'd the Crescent, its splendor obscur'd by the light of the star-spangled flag of our nation, Where each flaming star gleam'd a meteor of war, and the turban'd head bowed to the terrible glare" (205).

While Americans found the national will to free their brethren from Barbary slavery, they proved unable to tackle an even more per-

670 670

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nicious variant of that institution at home. The sense of hypocrisy that permeates Allison's work is not that of a late twentieth-century historian imposing his views on the past. The author demonstrates that contemporary Americans, too, recognized the pretentiousness of a country holding millions of African slaves denouncing states that over the course of twenty years held all of seven hundred Americans captive. As Secretary of Congress Charles Thomson warned Thomas Jefferson (after reviewing his Notes on the State of Virginia), Americans had more to fear from the continuation of the institution of slavery in the United States than they did from the spoliation of the Barbary corsairs.

Allison weaves these themes of triumph and tragedy together in his final chapter: "James Riley, the Return of the Captive." Riley survived a terrible shipwreck, a nightmarish Saharan trek, and an oppressive stint as a slave to Moroccan Bedouins. Riley's was a tale of the personal triumph of a white Christian American over adversity. But, as Allison points out, Riley also drew a moral lesson from his captivity. "Though the United States had triumphed over Tripoli and Algiers," Allison writes, "it had not triumphed over its own sins. Any loss of liberty was slavery, and Americans could accept neither the 'slavery' of their citizens in Algiers or Morocco nor the slavery of Africans or African-Americans in their own land" (224-25). Over the next three decades, publishers printed over a million copies of Riley's widely read work. In 1860, presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln listed the book along with the Bible and four others as those he con- sidered most influential.

To Allison, the Barbary experience is an allegorical tale, a sym- bolic warning, a shot across the bow of the new ship of state. When that ship returned fire off the Barbary coast, shot and smoke obscured the crescent, but the report of the cannon drowned out the cries of millions of African-American slaves held below. By failing to heed James Riley's warning, America's helmsmen missed their chance to alter course, and allowed the ship of state to sail on until, in 1861, like the frigate Philadelphia off Tripoli in 1803, the country ran hard aground and looked to heroes to set things right.

East Carolina University

BOOK REVIEWS 671

Michael A. Palmer

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