Pirates

Pirates and corsairs raided ships and coasts from the Mediterranean to the Caribbean. In 1390, attacks by Tunisian corsairs prompted a Franco-Genoese expedition against Mahdia. In the early sixteenth century, the corsair brothers Oruç and Hayreddin Barbarossa took control of Algiers for the Ottomans.

Caribbean pirates used ports such as Port Royal and Nassau, flourishing especially from the 1650s to the 1730s. Barbary corsair raids declined as European navies grew stronger, but continued into the early nineteenth century; the United States fought two Barbary Wars between 1801 and 1815.