It's the Economy, Jemmy

The War of 1812 has become something of a minor industry to a number of historians hoping to cash in on bicentennial celebrations. It was a murky conflict, and every side seems to claim victory, with Americans and Canadians foremost among these. The only people who never make this claim are Native Americans (First Nations in Canada). Until recently, Britons remained almost entirely aloof from what they regarded as a sideshow to the wars against Napoleon. Brian Arthur has now stepped up, in his provocatively titled How Britain Won the War of 1812, to assert Britannia's triumph. Sweeping aside the folklore of frigate duels and Andrew Jackson's victory at New Orleans, his approach focuses on the economic aspects of the war. His conclusion is blunt and difficult to refute: Britain crushed the United States economically, much as it had Napoleon, and felt little or no repercussions itself. By the last year of the war, the American government was completely bereft of funds; its maritime trade had almost entirely ceased and, with it, the bulk of its tax base. New federal taxes were burdensome and incited resistance to the war effort; domestic efforts to raise loans came far short of the mark, and no foreign power was willing to provide loans to the beleaguered republic. Fortunately, Britain proved willing to grant a generous peace treaty. The United States had achieved none of the war goals set forth in Madison's 1812 speech, in which he asked Congress to declare war. Simply put, the war was a disaster for the United States, and the American interpretation of it as a victory a singularly strange conclusion and one that required a strange brew of twisted facts, emerging mythology, and republican ideology to concoct.

Arthur does not dwell on American historical fancies. He is determined to present the war as an economic struggle, one of several examples of British economic might strangling opponents surely and steadily. In Arthur's take on the war, the bland responses of Dutch financiers to the American government's requests for loans play a more important role than the rather puny battles in the North American forests in delivering victory to the British. In the face of overwhelming British naval might and an increasingly strict blockade, the export-driven American economy almost ceased to function. The predictable and feeble response by President James Madison (known as "Jemmy" to some) was an embargo in 1813 that utterly failed, just as had Jefferson's Embargo of 1807-9 and the other various forms of Non-Intercourse before the war. To be fair to Madison, according to Arthur, the republican ideology which he promoted and followed weakened seriously the American ability to fight a war because it had a very narrow tax base. Ninety percent of the federal government's income was derived from customs duties, which of course withered as the United States went to war against the world's greatest naval power and also suffered from Madison's self-inflicted embargoes.

Arthur's focus is admirable: he sets forth the problem, defines it and considers alternative viewpoints, sets the background, provides analysis and a conclusion. His take is data-driven, and he generates lots of it, providing eight chapters of concise text for a total of just over two hundred pages, plus forty pages of valuable appendices. Chapter one gives the background to maritime blockades as a form of economic warfare. Chapter two considers the operational difficulties of sustaining a blockade in the age of sail. Chapter three gives the background to the War of 1812. Chapter four looks at the operations of the early years of the British blockade up until 1814, while chapter five considers blockade operations from 1814 to 1815. Chapters six and seven mirror the previous two chapters in chronology but consider the blockades' impact on American merchants and trade and on the federal...