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French History Advance Access originally published online on December 16, 2008
French History 2009 23(1):1-21; doi:10.1093/fh/crn060
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of French History. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Commerce before crusade? France, the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary pirates (1661–1669)

Philip McCluskey*

* Philip McCluskey is a doctoral student at the University of St Andrews; email: pm257{at}st-andrews.ac.uk


  Abstract

French and Islamic forces clashed with an unprecedented frequency during the first decade of Louis XIV's personal rule. This article examines France's troubled relations with the Ottoman Empire and the Barbary States in the 1660s, with the aim of shedding light on the real motives of Louis XIV in sending his forces against those of the ‘Infidel’. It finds that far from having a single policy towards their Muslim neighbours in the Mediterranean, the French government's behaviour was in fact characterized by chronic inconsistency. In essence, French strategy was driven by the Bourbon government's long-term objective of developing commerce in the eastern and southern Mediterranean, but this programme of commercial expansion was frustrated—and repeatedly jeopardized—by issues of power politics, in particular the king's avid pursuit of prestige and personal gloire.


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