The cause of the U.S. participation was pirates from the Barbary States seizing American merchant ships and holding the crews for ransom, demanding the U.S. pay tribute to the Barbary rulers. United States President Thomas Jefferson refused to pay this tribute. Sweden had been at war with the Tripolitans since 1800.

$1.25 million

The United States agreed to pay $642,500 plus annual tribute of naval supplies and presents to the dey. In exchange, the dey promised to release of the American captives and protect American shipping. The United States had to borrow money to make the primary tribute payment.

What happened when Jefferson refused to continue paying the Barbary States of North Africa for protection of American merchant ships? Barbary pirates resumed their attack on American ships. Barbary and the United States began a decade-long war.

European slaves were acquired by Barbary pirates in slave raids on ships and by raids on coastal towns from Italy to the Netherlands, Ireland and the southwest of Britain, as far north as Iceland and into the eastern Mediterranean. The Ottoman eastern Mediterranean was the scene of intense piracy.

The Poles (Polish: Polacy, pronounced [pɔˈlat͡sɨ]; singular masculine: Polak, singular feminine: Polka), also referred to as the Polish people, are a West Slavic ethnic group and a nation that shares a common history, culture, the Polish language and is identified with the country of Poland in Central Europe.

The traditional division into two distinct sub-branches (i.e. Slavic and Baltic) is mostly upheld by scholars who accept Balto-Slavic as a genetic branch of Indo-European. There is a general consensus that the Baltic languages can be divided into East Baltic (Lithuanian, Latvian) and West Baltic (Old Prussian).

Origins. The Balts or Baltic peoples, defined as speakers of one of the Baltic languages, a branch of the Indo-European language family, are descended from a group of Indo-European tribes who settled the area between the lower Vistula and southeast shore of the Baltic Sea and upper Daugava and Dnieper rivers.

After the First World War the term “Baltic states” came to refer to countries by the Baltic Sea that had gained independence from the Russian Empire. The territories of the Baltic states were ruled by the Russian Empire until the end of the World War I when Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania gained their sovereignty.

Latvians (Latvian: latvieši; Livonian: lețlizt) are a Baltic ethnic group and nation native to Latvia and the immediate geographical region, the Baltics. They are occasionally also referred to as Letts, although this term is becoming obsolete. Latvians share a common Latvian language, culture and history.

The most active ethnic communities in Latvia are Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews and Roma. People of foreign descent mainly live in the seven major cities of Latvia: Rīga, Daugavpils, Jelgava, Jūrmala, Liepāja, Ventspils, and Rēzekne.

Since joining the European Union in 2004, Latvia – one of the Baltic states – has lost one fifth of its population. Economic migration has been the biggest factor behind this decline. Demographers are warning that unless the government takes specific steps to tackle the problem, the exodus will continue.

Etymology. The name Latvija is derived from the name of the ancient Latgalians, one of four Indo-European Baltic tribes (along with Couronians, Selonians and Semigallians), which formed the ethnic core of modern Latvians together with the Finnic Livonians.