This book tells the story of the birth, growth, and decline of the early American community in the Mediterranean world. Despite recent interest in American history outside of US borders, this is a subject that has received very little attention. The only monograph to address it, James A. Field’s America and the Mediterranean World, 1776–1882, was written nearly sixty years ago and focused primarily on issues of diplomacy. While some recent work has dealt with specific topics in the Mediterranean world such as naval activity, trading networks, missionaries, and above all the Barbary Wars and the interaction with Islam, these authors have not conceptualized their topics as particularly Mediterranean. In fact, the most authoritative recent study of the Barbary Wars is subtitled “American Independence in the Atlantic World”!1