Security measures aimed at the repression of corsairing continued apace in the wake of 1816. ‘Barbary piracy’ remained a subject of negotiation and cooperation during the late 1810s and early 1820s. It was dealt with at ambassadorial conferences in London, during meetings of the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen), in combined talks with the Ottoman Porte, and through an Anglo-French expedition to the coasts of North Africa. Increasingly ambitious efforts to enact maritime security and an increasingly vocal opposition to such efforts marked the eight years following the Anglo–Dutch bombardment of 1816. The authorities of the regencies managed to thwart several European security practices, ranging from concerted communications to defensive alliances. To understand the starts, stops and reversals of the fight against Mediterranean piracy, local activity needs to be analysed. This chapter foregrounds the role of actors who were deemed piratical threats. The contestations of these threatening actors influenced the shape and success of European security practices.

The creation of a new order of security in the Mediterranean revolved around shared conceptions of threat and a common apparatus of cooperative repressive practices. This conclusion explains how the repression of ‘Barbary piracy’, which European contemporaries perceived as one of the most urgent and persistent threats to security, was used to bring significant changes to the traditional diplomatic and maritime practices of the Mediterranean region. In fact, the fight against this imputed piratical threat fostered new ideas of the Mediterranean as a regional whole that could be rendered secure through policing efforts and imperial interventions. As a result, the political appearance of the Mediterranean Sea and its shorelines changed profoundly between 1815 and the closing years of the 1850s, when the Mediterranean seemed perfectly secure from piratical threats.

The Anglo-Dutch bombardment of Algiers on 27 August 1816 indicated how, after the Congress of Vienna, a new order based on collective security was taking shape, not just on the continent, but also in the Mediterranean Sea. This chapter suggests that 1816 was a moment of departure from past traditions and signified the creation of a new Mediterranean order. Defining features of that order – such as modes of cooperation, the linkage to the Congress System, the use of security as a legitimizing discourse and the important roles of smaller and non-European powers – all came into play during the Anglo–Dutch bombardment. Additionally, this Anglo–Dutch cooperation shows how various states took the lead in the fight against piracy, dependent upon the situation. There was not a single naval hegemon who executed the repressive effort. At this early stage, smaller powers initially drove the repression of ‘Barbary piracy’, later to be followed by Great Britain, Russia and France. The effort became a truly pan-European reorganisation of security in the Mediterranean.

In order to appreciate the imperial impact of the new security culture, the French invasion of Algiers in 1830 ought to be seen within the framework of the post-1815 Congress System and the Concert of Europe. Though the invasion of Algiers was essentially a unilateral action undertaken under the national flag, it nevertheless took shape through extended multinational deliberation and involved a fair share of diplomatic concertation among the different European Great Powers. French imperial aspirations became intertwined with the repression of Mediterranean piracy, which was understood as a shared, European project. In attacking Algiers, members of the French government sought to reassert the country’s position as a nation on par with the other Great Powers of the European continent. The conflict with Algiers allowed French officials to assert status through the much more ‘disinterested’, ‘European’ goal of ending piracy and bringing security to the Mediterranean Sea.

The Congress of Vienna in 1814–1815 delineated territorial settlements, coronated several newly independent monarchs and resulted in an official declaration on the abolition of the slave trade, but it did not treat the issue of piracy. This paradox is the key concern of this chapter. Vienna’s Final Acts were the end product of these talks, and though they did not mention ‘Barbary piracy’, their conclusion would nevertheless have a great impact on the international treatment of this newly perceived threat to security. The years 1814–1815 were an important turning point because they initiated a period of transition. The congress created an international context in which North African corsairing could be reconceived as a threat to security. This new perception of threat hinged upon misconceptions of the supposed fanaticism and irrationality that allegedly characterised North African privateering. It also disregarded the long history of diplomatic and commercial contact between both sides of the Mediterranean Sea.