This topic is interesting to me because it kicked off one of the US' first overseas adventures which further led to one of the seminal moments of USMC history (to the shores of Tripoli). I'd love to read further. More on reddit.com

Interesting fact: Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quijote, was captured after the Battle of Lepanto and made a slave in Algeria. More on reddit.com

W alaykoum al salam, and thank you for the interesting questions! For your first questions, local Algerians pre-1830 did not see an issue with piracy in general. People lived their reality within the context of the time, and the fact that most slaves where Christian Europeans whose sole enslavement was to get ransom money, was a plus. Funny fact, some of the male slaves converted to islam and became pirates themselves (check the story of Mourad Reis). جهاد البحر was what brought food to the table, and it was what the policies the state promoted at the time. Slavery must also be understood within the time and era. While in this modern time and era we see it as absolutely justified, unethical and beyond the dignity of the human soul, it was understood within Algeria and most parts of the world at the time as reasonably normal. As to question 2. France's invasion of Algeria is an overly complex topic. Piracy was not among the top reasons of why the invasion occured, but should have contributed. There is the argument of debts France had that it needed to pay Algeria, and the invasion worked as a way not only to avoid paying the debt, but also gets Algeria's resources for itself. There is also political motivation of Charles X who made the invasion of Algeria somewhat of a destraction from his internal political issues in mainland France. Question 3: I am not a big fan. It is somewhat glorified when we go through elementary and middle school, but this is one of the first myths i busted that made me re-think my whole look at history in general, and the fact that you can carve it whichever way you want, and make the narrative you want. Relying on piracy made the Algiers regency heavily reliant on it, and did not develop other skills or technologies. We became stagnant while Europe started undergoing massive technological, philosophical and cultural advancement that left us easily colonisable. More on reddit.com

At what stage in their history? In the sixteenth century, the Barbary corsairs were de facto agents of Ottoman colonialism in North Africa. Aruj and Khizir Barbarossa nominally ruled Algiers on behalf of Istanbul and contributed ships and men to the imperial navy. Khizir finished his career as Grand Admiral (Kapudan Pasha) of the Ottoman fleet, and bested Charles V's pet admiral, Andrea Doria, for control of the Mediterranean, which was something of an Ottoman lake up to his demise. By the nineteenth century, conversely, Ottoman power in North Africa was very much on the decline, if not outright broken, and the Barbary corsairs were pretty much on their own. More on reddit.com