Stacy E. Holden
sholden@purdue.edu
The Cold War in Barbary: Re-Casting the Tripolitan War in Kenneth Roberts's Lydia Bailey
In 1947, Kenneth Roberts published a work of historical fiction that recycled captivity
narratives dating to the Barbary Wars in the early-nineteenth century. In Lydia Bailey, Albion
Hamlin finds himself a captive in North African Tripoli and must use his Yankee wiles not only
to free himself but also to help end the war between the United States and this Ottoman polity.
The publication of this book occurred as the United States emerged from World War II, and as it
began its forty-five year Cold War with the Soviet Union. Within this context, the author's
celebration of Hamlin's support of William Eaton--an actual historic figure who tried to replace
the Tripolitan government with one more friendly to American interests--cannot be discounted as
a mere adventure story. In embedding fictional characters in the midst of real events, Roberts
explores political issues that were of critical importance to Americans in the mid-twentieth
century.
In my chapter, I will show how Roberts appropriates nineteenth-century Islamic
captivity narratives for a new political purpose. In re-casting the stories of Americans held
hostage in the Islamic world, the author raises critical questions about the nature of American
government as well as the appropriate objectives to be pursued in the international arena. And
so, I argue that Lydia Bailey is a Cold War text encouraging Americans to pursue an
internationalist agenda in which the spreading of American values in the Third World--even by
military might--is recognized as a legitimate means of protecting the country's strategic interests.