Abstract
Aside from her continental warfare against Napoleon England was involved in 1813—’14 in a war with the United States. This had broken out in the summer of 18121) as a consequence of the European contest, evolving from controversies over the conditions of neutral trade and the belligerent right of search as exercised by Great Britain. Much irritation had arisen in the United States over Britain’s paper blockade and the practice she had adopted of impressing for service in the Royal Navy American seamen found on merchant vessels under search for contraband, on suspicion of their being British subjects. Since American naturalization brought no protection and as the language provided no proofs of nationality, this claim of Great Britain, of the right to dispose of her subjects for military purposes, had given rise to a great deal of arbitrariness and injustice, and of usurpation of the neutral rights of Americans2).
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References
A valuable account of the political side of this war from the British point of view, in The Cambridge history of British foreign policy, vol. I, 1783–1815, Chapter V by C. K. Webster: The American war and the treaty of Ghent, 1814.
An exposition of this controversy in S. E. Morison, The Oxford history of the United States (1927), I p. 256 f.
Clauder p. 238 f. Cf. Julius W. Pratt: James Monroe, Secretary of State, p. 233.
Only this perception may account for the fact that the war was declared on Great Britain, and not on France.
The United States refrained from any closer relation with France (Updyke, The diplomacy of the war of 1812, p. 144).
Morison p. 284 f., Pratt p. 223.
Compare a contemporary description of American life, by le Chevalier Félix de Beaujour: Aperçu des Etats-Unis, au commencement du XIXe siècle, depuis 1800 jusqu’en 1810...., Paris 1814, p. 208: “Les Américains sont encore anglais dans la plupart de leurs habitudes”. Même language, “mêmes lois, mêmes usages, mêmes moeurs.”... “De-là leur penchant aveugle pour les Anglais”. — This spiritual connection was mutual, although shown by Great Britain in a different attitude. We find the Dutch ambassador at London, on Jan. 9 1818, writing home to Van Nagell on the subject of the President’s Annual Message: “Les relations de tout genre qui existent entre ce pays-ci et l’Amérique Unie sont si étroites que ce Document annuel cause toujours ici une assez grande sensation”. (R. A. B. Z. Inv. B I London embassy, Letter-book No. 28.)
As Webster, I.e. p. 527, briefly states: “The commercial states, who had most to lose from the war, were mainly Federalists, and were, moreover, bound to England by greater ties of affection and community of outlook than the other portions of the United States”.
Webster p. 523, 529.
R. A. B. Z. 1: bur. I. S. No. 413, Exh. 9 June 1814, end.
John B. McMaster, A history of the people of the United States.... IV p. 130.
McMaster p. 230.
McMaster p. 252, 253, 320.
Dec. 29 1813, Clancarty to Castlereagh, F. O. 37/65. Hoekstra p. 111.
R. A. B. Z. 1: bur. I. S. 1813 No. 4: London Dec. 19 1813, Fagel to Van der Duyn: “Lord Castlereagh m’a aussi prié de vous faire observer, que malgré la bonne volonté qu’on manifeste ici pour ne gêner en rien le rétablissement de nos relations avec l’Amérique Unie, il est cependant clair, que de l’état de guerre dans lequel ce pays-ci se trouve avec l’Amérique, doivent nécessairement résulter des entraves au commerce des deux nations, qui sont inévitables tant que la guerre dure....”.The same in Van Hogen-dorp, Brieven en Gedenkschriften V p. 209.
Ibid. No. 413, London June 3 1814, Fagel to Van Nagell.
Ibid, enclosure.
R. A. B. Z. 2: bur. I. S. 1814 No. 609.
R. A. B. Z. 2: bur. U. S. 1814 No. 383, June 6. — Zwart, De Kamer van Koop-handel en Fabrieken te Amsterdam, 1811–1911, p. 62.
R. A. B. Z. 2: bur. I. S. 1814 No. )0, Bourne to Van Nagell, Aug. 19. 4) D.o. S. Consular Desp. Amsterdam, Sept. 20 1814.
E.g. G. F. de Martens, Précis du droit des gens moderne de l’Europe fondé sur les traités et l’usage (Goettingen 1801 2d. éd.) § 314: “Quant au point important du commerce en tems de guerre, une puissance belligérante peut.... défendre tout commerce vers une place, forteresse, port ou camp ennemi qu’elle tient tellement blocqué ou assiégé qu’elle se voit en état d’en empêcher l’entrée”. “Mais la loi naturelle n’autorise point les puissances belligérantes de défendre en général aux neutres le commerce avec l’ennemi....”.The 3d edition (Göttingen 1821) adds a footnote after the first sentence saying: “C’est à quoi la loi naturelle semble borner le droit d’une nation belligérante sur le fait du blocus; une simple déclaration.... ne peut pas.... suffire pour imposer la loi aux nations neutres....”. In the same sense a case was decided in 1804 by a United States court, under the following opinion, that “the entry of a neutral, after being warned, [is not] a breach of his neutrality, if blockading force be not before the port” (quoted in Jon. Elliot’s American diplomatic code, 1778–1834, II p. 295 No. 238).
For the treaty see chapter V. Article 24 stipulates that all goods may be transported in perfect liberty from and to places belonging to the enemy, “excepting only the places, which, at the same time, shall be beseiged, blocked or invested; and those places only shall be held for such, which are surrounded nearly, by some of the belligerent power”. A project treaty draughted by the Dutch government in preparation of negotiations with the United States in 1817 (See chapter XII) contains the stipulation, Art. 15 sub a (Ec. Hist. Jaarb. I p. 225): “Seront réputés bloqués les ports, rades, rivières, baies etc. qui sont réellement investis par des vaisseaux de guerre”.
In 1803 Great Britain had declared “that no blockade would be legal, which was not supported by an adequate force, and that the blockades which it might institute should be supported by an adequate force”. (Quoted by Updyke I.e. p. 149 f.)
Dec. 25 1816, Adams to Chr. Hughes (Writings VI).’
E. de Vattel, Le droit des gens, ou principes de la loi naturelle, appliqués à la conduite et aux affaires des nations et des souverains, book III chapter VII § 111. (Contemporary editions: Lyon 1802, Paris 1820. English translation: 4th ed. London 1811.)
Dec. 23 and 27 1813, Bourne to the Secretary of State (D. o. S. Cons. Desp. Amsterdam).
See Chapter XIV p. 289 f., where the reasons for this course are more fully discussed.
The President considered the desirability of acquainting with it the minister sent out to Holland, in 1815: “It may be proper also that he should be apprized of the con-discention of the Sovn. Prince to the British Government in forbidding Dutch vessels to sail for the U. S. as being under a blockade, and of the light in which that fact was viewed here” (March 27 1815, Madison to Monroe, L. o. C. Monroe Papers XV). But this suggestion was not given effect.
Compare Adams’ exaggerating words (Nov. 6 1817, to Richard Rush, Writings VI): “The maritime nations were.... so subservient to her [Great Britain’s] domination, that in the kingdom of the Netherlands a clearance was actually refused to vessels from thence to a port in the United States, on the avowed ground that their whole coast had been declared by Great Britain to be in a state of blockade; while the British commerce upon every sea was writhing under the torture inflicted by our armed vessels and privateers, issuing from the ports thus pretended to be in blockade”.
Seep. 5 and 69.
Wait’s State Papers, 2d. ed. (Boston 1817), vol. IX p. 305.
Ibid. p. 306.
Updyke p. 146 f.
Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken VII, 1813–1815, No. 12.
Webster, British foreign policy I p. 394, ascribes to him a “sense of reality and a certain broadness of view which few of his Tory contemporaries possessed”. Cf. Webster, The foreign policy of Castlereagh, 1815–1822, p. 437; Dexter Perkins, John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, p. 88.
Webster, British foreign policy I p. 531.
Updyke p. 157 f. For instance July 14 1813, Castlereagh to Cathcart: “It is of great importance to strip any negotiation between America and us even of the appearance of foreign intervention”. (British diplomacy 1813–1815, ed. by Webster, p. 14.)
The grounds which led Russia to make this offer are viewed differently by different writers. Some understand it to follow from fears that, if no peace were concluded, England would defeat her competitor and maritime rival, and become the absolute master of the ocean. It was the Russian commercial interest to promote a reëstablish-ment of peace which would open the trade of both powers. A contemporary opinion of the Dutch minister in America e.g. (Oct. 23 1814, R. A. B. Z. 1: bur. I. S. 1814 No. 782) observes as follows the Russian attitude: “il est certain que cet Empire souffrant infiniment par l’interruption de son commerce directe avec l’Amérique qui dans ces derniers tems avait été porté à une grande latitude, doit désirer instamment la paix et croira devoir user de toute son influence pour en provoquer la conclusion”. Most modem historians however, see it as an expression of the wish to enable England to devote all her attention to the war against Napoleon (Pratt I.e. p. 266), and to prevent an alliance between the United States and France (J. C. Hildt, Early diplomatic negotiations of the United States with Russia, Chapter IV, The Russian offer of mediation, and p. 193). Cf. also B. P. Thomas, Russo-American relations 1815–1867, p. 11 f. The best account is given by Updyke I.e. p. 143 f.
W. Dökert, Die englische Politik auf dem Wiener Kongress, p. 69. Cf. Castle-reagh’s correspondence as published in: British diplomacy 1813–1815 (select documents ed. by C. K. Webster), p. 9 f., 14, 16, 31 f.
Before they started Gallatin, one of the American commissioners, tried another interview with Czar Alexander, “who told him he could give no help. ‘England will not admit a third party to interfere in her disputes with you’ and he intimated that this was on account of ‘the former Colonial relations’.” (Webster in British foreign policy I p. 534; quoted from the Diary of James Gallatin, A great peace-maker, p. 25.)
Ibid. p. 535.
Ibid. p. 523, 542. Updyke p. 363 f.
A survey in E. R. Johnson et al., History of domestic and foreign commerce of the United States, II p. 14–30. A good recent treatise: Anna C. Clauder, American commerce as affected by the wars of the French revolution and Napoleon, 1793–1812 (1932).
In 1793 the National Convention had declared the ports of the French colonies open to American vessels upon the same conditions as the national navigation (Clauder p. 28).
This accounts for the enormous amounts of so-called “foreign exports”, entitled to drawback of duties, in the statistical quotations of the period (Cf. Heckscher I.e. p. 104, 107). A valuable account of this trade in Clauder p. 67 f., 79 f., 132 f. Cf. our chapter II.
Report from the Dutch legation in the United States, Aug. 12 1815 (R. A. B. Z. 2: bur. I. S. 1815 No. 1545), published in Econ. Hist. Jaarboek I p. 210 f.
Aug. 7 1810, by Gogel, minister of the finances (Colenbrander, Gedenkstukken VI, 1810–1813 II No. 1691).
Keiler p. 36, Johnson et al. p. 28,29: In 1807 the deep sea tonnage of the American flag was greater than it was in 1907.
Clauder p. 25.
Buck I.e. p. 112 f. The ordinary credit given was 12 months and more, “from crop to crop”. The accumulated capital of Great Britain enabled her merchants more easily than those of any other country to grant this.
Acknowledged for instance in the so-called Fox blockade, of May 16 1806, by which Great Britain admitted under limitations neutral trade on the North sea (Clauder p. 58, 90).
Cf. Clauder p. 92 f.
Clauder p. 116.
Clauder p. 134 f.
Clauder p. 159 f., 188 f., 217 f. In 1811 139 American vessels visited the port of Cronstadt alone.
See the table in Chapter II; Pitkin passim (graphic charts of American exports of coffee, sugar, cocoa and pepper in clauder p. 73, 74).
The Macon bill of May 1810 was a sure sign hereof.
For a detailed exposition of the pre-war diplomacy we refer again to Clauder, Chapters VI, VII and VIII.
By a reëstablishment in February 1811 of the Non-Intercourse with Great Britain, which had been repealed together with that with France in May 1810. It aimed at a repeal of the Orders in Council.
Cf. Keiler p. 44 f.
Pitkin (1835) p. 363.
Cf. Johnson et al. p. 15.
Taussig (8th. ed.) p. 17. Cf. W. Smart, Economic annals of the nineteenth century I, 1801–1820, (London 1910) p. 495.
Victor S. Clark, in his able History of Manufactures in the United States I (1929) p. 234, contends that 1815 rather than the American revolution was a landmark in the development of industrial history.
Johnson et al, p. 33.
McMaster IV p. 321. The monthly export-average reached 5 millions of dollars; even in the great years before 1808 it had not been more than 4 millions.
A. Gallatin to Eustis: “We have been overwhelmed with importations of foreign linens and cloth and cotton goods to the destruction of many of our own new manufactures” (Oct. 9 1817, L. o. C. Eustis Papers).
A recent social study of this depression in The American Historical Review of Oct. 1933, vol. 39 p. 28 f., by Samuel Rezneck.
Cleverly noticed by Bourne, the consul at Amsterdam, in 1816: “the peculiar state of Europe, for many years amid disorder and convulsions, gave to the U. States an undue and extraordinary share of the trade of the world and naturally brought forward into the commercial line a much greater number of persons and amount of capital than can possibly be employed to advantage in ordinary times and when our trade is reduced to its integral portion in the general commerce of Nations of course many in the commercial community must retire from the scene that offers no further employ for their talents or money, and turn their views to other occupations. This is a process however that requires time and will inevitably incur great losses and sufferings; but the aggregate view of the U. States in all branches of industry and means of employ which lead to the happiness and prosperity of a nation has to me nothing in it of a desponding character” (D. o. S. Cons. Desp. Amsterdam). Niles’ constant advice to the American people was, writes Stone (Hezekiah Niles as an economist, p. 114), “to found a home market and to forego the uncertainty of European trade”.
Translated from memoranda to a treaty-project (in Dutch) drawn up at the end of the year 1815 (R. A. Coll. Goldberg No. 210). See p. 245.
Taussig, The Tariff history of the United States (8th ed. 1931, p. 17 f., 68 f.), places the starting point of the protective movement in the years after 1819, in consequence of the crisis: “After the crash of 1819 a movement in favor of protection set in, which was backed by a strong popular feeling such as had been absent in the earlier years’*, etc. Since the tariff of 1816 had only the temporary purpose of meeting the after-war conditions, he places it in a series of earlier legislation. He agrees, however, that it does in a way reflect the spirit of a new attitude. Although intended to be of a provisional nature, — to aid the country in financial-fiscal, but also in commercial, respects through the painful situation resulting from the aftermath of the war —, its provisions were continued and emphasized by the succeeding tariff acts of 1818, 1824, 1828, 1832. Industry, deprived of its wartime protection, needed more than temporary aid to enable it to exist. Already in the beginning of 1816 Niles in his Weekly Register demanded the adoption of consistent protection to manufactures (Stone I.e. p. 62). Not the crash of 1819 was the real cause of the protective movement, therefore, but the industrial development during the Napoleonic period, and the political events which had brought about a change of conditions in 1815. The question at what time this movement became conscious with the people, is of relative, not of principal value. The provisional act of 1816 is but a natural connection between the restrictions which had hatched industry and the general demand for protection which found expression after these restrictions had fallen away, or rather after their falling away had proved, by the crisis of 1819, to be detrimental to the welfare of the country. As such the act belonged to a new period of economic ideas. Cf. Edward Stanwood’s clever work, American tariff controversies in the nineteenth century (Boston-New York 1903, 2 vols.), chapters V, VI, who contends (p. 6) that the same statesmen who had led the United States into the British war, Clay and Calhoun, now urged a continuation of the wartime tendencies by securing to the nation a perfect economic independence.
The customs provided in 1812 80% of the federal revenue. See Stanwood p. 163 footnote.
Stanwood p. 138.
Stanwood p. 155 f. Cf. Stone p. 64 f.; this tariff, said Niles, was only an acknowledgement of the principle of protection (p. 71).
Stanwood p. 175 f. Taussig p. 24, 51.
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© 1935 Martinus Nyhoff, the Hague, Holland
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Westermann, J.C. (1935). The United States, and Their Relations with Great Britain. In: The Netherlands and the United States. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0999-2_4
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