War of 1812 - Causes and Consequences

Economic nationalism tended to dominate U.S. foreign trade policy throughout the long 19th century, from the end of the American Revolution to the beginning of World War I, owing to a pervasive American sense of economic and geopolitical insecurity and American fear of hostile powers, especially the British but also the French and Spanish and even the Barbary States. Following the U.S. Civil War, leading U.S. protectionist politicians sought to curtail European trade policies and to create a U.S.-dominated customs union in the Western Hemisphere. American proponents of trade liberalization increasingly found themselves outnumbered in the halls of Congress, as the “American System” of economic nationalism grew in popularity alongside the perceived need for foreign markets. Protectionist advocates in the United States viewed the American System as a panacea that not only promised to provide the federal government with revenue but also to artificially insulate American infant industries from undue foreign-market competition through high protective tariffs and subsidies, and to retaliate against real and perceived threats to U.S. trade. Throughout this period, the United States itself underwent a great struggle over foreign trade policy. By the late 19th century, the era’s boom-and-bust global economic system led to a growing perception that the United States needed more access to foreign markets as an outlet for the country’s surplus goods and capital. But whether the United States would obtain foreign market access through free trade or through protectionism led to a great debate over the proper course of U.S. foreign trade policy. By the time that the United States acquired a colonial empire from the Spanish in 1898, this same debate over U.S. foreign trade policy had effectively merged into debates over the course of U.S. imperial expansion. The country’s more expansionist-minded economic nationalists came out on top. The overwhelming 1896 victory of William McKinley—the Republican party’s “Napoleon of Protection”—marked the beginning of substantial expansion of U.S. foreign trade through a mixture of protectionism and imperialism in the years leading up to World War I.

The War of 1812 has been called America’s second War of Independence.2 This paper takes up that view, and it aims to elucidate the war objectives and geopolitical perspective of the Madisonian Republicans who launched the War in June of 1812. Given that the Revolutionary War was America’s anti-colonial war, which successfully removed Great Britain’s direct political and economic control, then, taking account of the geopolitical circumstances of the early republic as outlined below, it is reasonable to view the War of 1812 as America’s war against neo-colonialism—understanding neo-colonialism as a matter of economic, political or cultural policies designed or functioning so that a greater power maintains indirect control over another area or people.

This article explores who was ultimately responsible for the War of 1812. By applying the three-phase model of the emergence of nationalism (from an elite to a mass phenomenon) to the political situation in the United States from 1809 to 1812, it seeks to reconcile the historiographical debate between those who consider President Madison the driving force behind the movement toward war and those who argue that the war movement was anchored in the legislature. Though Madison and Jefferson had since 1803 taken an uncompromising stance toward the former mother country in order to promote an Anglophobic American nationalism, thereby escalating Anglo-American tensions, they wished to avoid outright war, as they feared that the requirements of war could overwhelm the young and fragile American republic. By 1811, however, public opinion, incited by the Republicans' persistent anti-British foreign policies, clamored for armed confrontation. A majority of Americans consequently elected Republicans to Congress who were willing to vote for a declaration of war. Yet Congress was reticent to declare war until Madison officially recommended this step, believing that a war waged without the administration's support would not succeed. Against his personal inclination, Madison opted to seek war to remain in control of American nationalism and to ensure, as a wartime president, that the waging of war would not undermine America's republican form of government. American nationalism had become a mass movement, assuming a dynamic of its own that became increasingly difficult to control. The onset of the War of 1812 was thus partly due to the pressure exerted by a rising populist nationalism that brought the so called war hawks into Congress, and partly due to the Madison administration's bid to remain in control of the political process.

This dissertation is a comparative study of the establishment of settler colonies in the American Midwest (1778-1795) and French colonial Algeria (1830-1848). It examines how interactions between the Indigenous populations, colonists, colonial administrators, the military, and the métropole shaped their development and advances the theory of settler colonialism. This study centers on the first fifteen to twenty years of conquest/occupation in the American Midwest, focusing specifically on southern Illinois and Indiana, and the province of Constantine, Algeria. Despite differences in geography, relative size of the military presence and Indigenous demographics, the process of establishing settler colonies in both locations followed similar trajectories. The study analyzes the founding moment of initial military occupation in Indiana/Illinois in 1778 and Constantine in 1836-1837 as well as subsequent land policies, settlement, and Indigenous resistance movements. I argue that settler colonies in the American Midwest and Algeria resulted from a bottom-up process in which settler desires for land and greater economic opportunities compelled them to migrate (or emigrate) and stake their claim to these territories. This movement then served as a catalyst for initially makeshift colonial policies that only became systematized over time. The relationship between settlers and the Indigenous populations in both locations, as well as administrators' responses to prevailing circumstances on the ground shaped the establishment of stable settler governments. This research broadens our conceptions of American history and deepens our understanding of the processes by which settler colonies formed and "worked." Settler colonialism's legacy continues to influence geopolitics, national policy decisions, and people's daily lives. Hence, the formation and eventual structures of settler colonies help researchers explain the founding of many contemporary societies and, taken together, recast empire, settler roles, and Indigenous actions within colonial contexts.

Mariners Mirror, 2013

The lecture provided an overview of scholarship as it stood as bicentenary celebrations were just beginning in 2012. At that point there remained a notable difference between American, British and Canadian historical interpretations about why this war was fought, what the effects were of military and naval operations, and to what extent such operations affected the ultimate political results. The lecture pointed out that the war was caused by long-term underlying irritations on both the British and American sides and that the results of military and naval operations during the war resulted in a stalemate that was eventually resolved by public opinion during the peace negotiations.

Prior to 1755, British-American colonial forces and American Indians (hereinafter Indians) predominantly conducted the military campaigns in the North American theatre of European conflicts. From 1755 to 1815, however, the British Army itself became heavily engaged and had to consider its use of Indians as allies or auxiliaries. Indian War customs, such as torture, mutilation and killing of prisoners and civilians, were at odds with an emerging, although uneven, consensus against these practices in Europe. Therefore, British officials often had to decide if the use of Indians was compatible with their concept of military honour. The purpose of this inquiry is to determine whether the British concept of military honour hindered the effective use of Indians in the era of the Sixty Years' War (l755-1815). The author will attempt to persuade the reader that it did and it ultimately cost the British Empire its direct control of, then even its influence in, the American midwest.