Ion Perdicaris
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Ion Perdicaris (1840 - 1925) was a U.S.-Greek playboy who was the centre of the infamous Perdicaris incident, a kidnapping that aroused international conflict in 1904.
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[edit] Family life
Perdicaris' father, Gregory, was a Greek who had emigrated to the U.S., married into a wealthy family from South Carolina, then returned to Greece as U.S. consul. In 1846, the family returned to Trenton, New Jersey where Gregory made a substantial fortune. He was among the organizers of the Trenton Gas Co. Ion lived the careless life of a dilettante until the American Civil War. By 1862, the family's property in South Carolina was in danger of confiscation by the government of the Confederate States of America. He travelled back to Greece with the intention of renouncing his US citizenship and acquiring Greek nationality so as to forestall any confiscation.
Ion ultimately emigrated to Tangier where he built a house known as the Place of Nightingales and filled it with exotic animals. In 1871, Perdicaris met Ellen, wife of the eminent telegraph engineer C.F. Varley in Malvern, England. Varley was absent on a cable-laying expedition and Ellen abandoned him for Perdicaris. The Varleys were divorced in 1873 and Ellen and Perdicaris settled in Tangier with the Varleys' two sons and two daughters.
[edit] The Perdicaris incident
On May 18, 1904, Perdicaris and Ellen's son Cromwell were kidnapped from their home by the bandit band of Mulai Ahmed er Raisuli who demanded of Sultan Abdelaziz of Morocco, $ 70,000 ransom, safe conduct and control of part of Morocco.
Despite the circumstances, Perdicaris came to admire Raisuli and the two became friends. Raisuli assured his captive that no harm would befall him, and that he would protected by Raisuli if he come into harm's way. He came to sympathize with his captor, saying: "I go so far as to say that I do not regret having been his prisoner for some time. . .He is not a bandit, not a murderer, but a patriot forced into acts of brigandage to save his native soil and his people from the yoke of tyranny." [1]
US president Theodore Roosevelt was angered and felt obliged to react and his Secretary of State, John Hay, described the demands as "preposterous". At the urging of Hay and the Counsel-General of Tangier, Samuel R. Gummere, Roosevelt despatched seven battleships and several Marine companies, under the command of Admiral French Ensor Chadwick, though with little idea of what U.S. forces could achieve on such hostile foreign soil. His resolve weakened still further when he was advised on June 1 that Perdicaris was not a U.S. citizen, in fact he had forfeited his American passport for a Greek one year earlier; but Roosevelt reasoned that since Raisuli thought Perdicaris was an American citizen, it made little difference. Roosevelt tried to get Britain and France to join the US in a combined military action to rescue Perdicaris, but the two countries disagreed. Instead, the two powers were covertly recruited to put pressure on the Sultan to accept Raisuli's demands which he agreed to do on June 21. Hay saw the need to maintain face so he issued a statement to the Republican National Convention:
- "This government wants Perdicaris alive or Raisuli dead."
According to all witnesses, the Convention, which had been lukewarm towards Roosevelt up until then, went wild at this remark. One Kansas delegate exclaimed, "Roosevelt and Hay know what they're doing. Our people like courage. We'll stand for anything those men do." (Edmund Morris, Theodore Rex, p. 335)
The true facts of the incident remained secret until 1933.
[edit] Later life
Perdicaris occasionally returned to Trenton where he maintained business interests. Perdicaris Place, off West State Street, is named for him and his father. Perdicaris died in London.
[edit] In popular culture
The story was retold in the 1975 motion picture The Wind and the Lion with Sean Connery in the role of Raisuli. However, to add some, perhaps spurious, glamour to the tale, Ion was replaced with Eden, played by Candice Bergen. The incident is referenced in the book In Mortal Danger by Tom Tancredo.
[edit] External links
- Account at Capital Century
- Hunt, B.J. (2004) "Varley, Cromwell Fleetwood (1828-1883)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 <http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/28114, accessed 23 July 2005>
