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The Algerine Corpus

What problems was the Regency of Algiers actually trying to solve, 1785–1816? The American texts below are evidence, not object. Each is cut into morning sessions of about forty-five minutes at an annotating pace — tap a row to see them, tick a session when it's done. A text marks itself read when its last session is.

📖 The Handbook — start here if you have been away The whole project in one read: aims and endgame, why the corpus is locked until January, what the two filters are, what the ledger is and how to work it, a map of the site, and what a working morning looks like. Written to be read cold.

Before the corpus — the gate

The gate — Merouche & Belhamissi, then the brief Two books, Sept–Dec, then a five-page brief on how the Regency's captivity economy actually worked. Nothing below opens until it is written. Grammont 1887 is a document quarry inside, not a frame. The claims ledger — source criticism, filter two Every corpus claim logged unverified, adjudicated later by the counter-sources. Now records both filters and computes the verdict: what survives both is testimony. The generic template — filter one What the captivity form required, so it can be told from what the author saw. Build by 5 Jan, before the corpus opens. This is the contribution only a literary scholar can make.

The corpus, in order of printing

The Algerian shelf — counter-sources

The road to Article 1

The rule: every publication must require at least two scholarly traditions, both load-bearing. If the Algerian side could be cut without damaging the claim, the article isn't yours yet. Session cuts follow the texts' own divisions — letters, chapters, volumes — measured from the PDFs. Page spans are the ORIGINAL printing's pages (what you cite); the sessions were sized on the PDF text.