Archive: The War of 1812

In Our Time

This episode examines the complex origins and far-reaching consequences of the War of 1812 between the United States and the British Empire.

Key takeaways

• The British 'Orders in Council' restricted American trade with France, acting as a primary catalyst for war.
• The Royal Navy's practice of impressment involved seizing sailors, often claiming naturalized Americans were still British subjects.

Main topics

• Causes of the War of 1812
• Maritime trade and impressment

Notable quotes

The biggest losers in this war were the indigenous peoples of North America.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how a conflict often dismissed as a 'sideshow'

Transcript preview

Speaker 7 (0:00) This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Speaker 8 (0:06) It's late 2007, and while attending a Christmas party, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg meets a woman who would change the course of his company forever. Speaker 6 (0:14) She joined Facebook as chief of operations in 2008 and has been credited for making the company profitable. And Speaker 8 (0:21) herself enormously rich. Speaker 6 (0:22) On Good Bad Billionaire, we're exploring the life and fortune of billionaire tech leader Sheryl Sandberg. Speaker 8 (0:27) Listen now, search for Good Bad Billionaire wherever you get your BBC podcasts. Speaker 7 (0:39) Welcome to the Haunted Library. Have you come in search of a tale? This podcast invites you to browse the shelves and find stories that will linger long after you've left this place. From gothic masterpieces to pulpy penny dreadfuls, join me, Colin Morgan, with new episodes twice a week. Find The Haunted Library wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 5 (1:07) This is In Our Time from BBC Radio 4, and this is one of more than a thousand episodes you can find in the In Our Time archive. A reading list for this edition can be found in the episode description wherever you're listening. I hope you enjoy the programme. Hello. In this episode of the Summer Selection of In Our Time, Melvin and his guests assess the War of 1812. After the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars, the British sought to restrict trade between the United States and Britain's enemy, France. Lacking enough sailors for its many naval engagements, the British also tried to press gang Americans to make up for that shortfall. Frustrated by British policy, The United States, only just over three decades old at this time, declared war in June 1812. The youthful country also saw this as an opportunity to try to absorb Canada into their federation. But the biggest losers in this war were the indigenous peoples of North America. Working with the British, who supplied them with arms, the loosely allied indigenous tribes suffered serious defeats. This enabled settlers to accelerate the bloody process of driving the indigenous people out of their traditional lands. In popular memory, the British long ago dismissed the war as an unimportant sideshow of the Napoleonic Wars, preferring instead to dwell on victories against the French Emperor like Waterloo. But for the US, Canada and the indigenous peoples, It remains a critical but highly contested subject of historical study. And there are some interesting quirks that you'll hear about in this episode. Did you know, for example, that the tune of the Star Spangled Banner, whose lyrics were written during this war, was an old British drinking song? I know I didn't. Speaker 4 (3:07) Enjoy listening. Hello, in 1814, a 35-year-old American lawyer, Francis Scott Key, wrote a poem which he called Defense of Fort McHenry. He'd just observed the shelling of Baltimore's fort by British ships during the War of 1812, a conflict between Britain and the USA which lasted for three years. The British were keen to capture Baltimore, but despite sustained bombardment, the city didn't capitulate. Scott Key's poem was later set to music and renamed The Star-Spangled Banner and became the USA's national anthem. Although this song is now famous the world over, the War of 1812, which inspired it, is today often forgotten and overlooked. It was the first foreign war to be declared by the recently independent USA and is widely seen among historians as having had a profound effect on how Americans and Canadians perceived themselves. It also had a devastating effect on the Native Americans. With me to discuss the War of 1812, its causes and aftermath are... Kathleen Burke, Professor of Modern and Contemporary History at University College London. Lawrence Goldman, Fellow in Modern History at St Peter's College, University of Oxford. And Frank Cogliano, Professor of American History at the University of Edinburgh. Kathleen Burke, the early 19th century was a very difficult period for European, particularly West European history. What was the international situation in the years immediately before this 1812 war? Speaker 2 (4:27) Well, the international situation wasn't very complicated. It was essentially a huge, long-lasting and devastating war between the greatest land power, which of course was the French Empire, and the greatest sea power, which was Great Britain. With the United States, it got caught in between. Speaker 4 (4:44) And the two major forces, Britain and France, used America in the sense that they wanted America on their side, but more than anything, they didn't want America against them. Can you just... Tell me how America came into this conflict. Speaker 2 (4:58) America came in because it was the major neutral power left and it was also a major international trading power, one might say. It supplied, was in the habit of supplying Great Britain with quite a lot of its trade. Half the imports it imported were from Britain, in fact, and it had links with West Indian colonies and so forth. France wanted to cut Britain off from this source. of goods, obviously. Britain wanted to cut France off, and essentially, poor United States was battered back and forth, almost like a shuttlecock, and always falling on the ground, trying to defend itself, being pretty ineffectual in it, and essentially was a victim of the larger war between the larger powers. Speaker 4 (5:42) Can you tell listeners more particularly how Britain and France hammered into America? at this time, what specifically they did. Speaker 2 (5:50) Specifically, they tried to control with whom the United States could trade. Britain, actually it starts with France in 1806, decrees saying that any power that trades with Britain is going to get their ships seized. Britain the following year have what many people consider the main cause of the war, what was called orders and council, which basically said... Any port that won't let British ships in, Britain isn't going to let any other ships in. And therefore, any attempts by the United States to trade with powers which weren't Britain were going to be stopped. But there was a little let out, one might say, which is that you could trade with other countries if you stopped in Britain first. We would then give a license. So what Britain did was to say, any American ships you want to trade, stop in Britain. We license, so we get a fee. And also we then control. So Britain essentially was using not only stopping the United States from giving any sorts of goods to their belligerent opponent, it also was wiping out any other, it was controlling neutral trade and trying to wipe out American trade. Speaker 4 (6:59) It seems an extraordinary thing, not just to say you'll do, but to be able to do. Speaker 2 (7:04) Well, that's the problem. You've got this little animal over in the United States trying hard. Britain almost had it by the neck and its legs were swinging fruitlessly. Fundamentally, it was an unmatched situation. There was nothing the United States really could do about it except try to say, OK, if you won't let us trade, you don't get trade from us either. Speaker 4 (7:28) Lawrence Goldman, the US United States were particularly angered by the British policy of impressment. Can you tell us what that is and why they were angered by it? Speaker 3 (7:39) Well, impressment is the way you get sailors, particularly when you're at war. In peacetime, you can hope for volunteers. But in wartime, you need to get hold of manpower, and the conditions are very bad. People won't volunteer. And so the press gang comes, and it tries to grab hold of men in ports and put them in the ships of the line. The Royal Navy, but indeed all navies, are trying to impress sailors during wars in the 18th and early 19th centuries. How many men Speaker 4 (8:10) does the British Navy need around the 1812? Speaker 3 (8:12) Well, it's a huge enterprise. The Royal Navy has... has something like 130,000 Speaker 4 (8:17) or Speaker 3 (8:17) 140,000 personnel round about 1810. It's fighting a global war against the French. It's trying to bottle up the French navy and... patrol the coasts of Europe and it's also, of course, bottling up American ports and it's chasing down French men of war across the oceans. It's an enormous enterprise. And the problem is it's losing some of its sailors. Some are simply deserting and they're finding work on American ships and others have actually become naturalised American citizens and they are aboard American ships. And so the Royal Navy is stopping and searching. American ships and taking off those it believes are deserters. And those who, though they may be naturalised American citizens, the Navy still takes them. The British say, once a British subject, always a British subject. It doesn't matter if you've been naturalised, we'll take you back and we'll put you to work. And the scale is large. It's estimated that perhaps... As many as 8,000 sailors are impressed by the Royal Navy at this time. And the Americans who were suffering the insult of having their trade interfered with now have an injury to their own citizens. And the cry goes up, free trade. and sailors' rights. That's what's heard across the American states. Speaker 4 (9:40) To get it straight, they're stopping ships, they're boarding them, they're taking people off. Why did 8,000 British sailors desert to the American ships? Speaker 3 (9:47) Well, not all of them were deserters. Some were. But some just decided, some were well-seasoned, experienced seamen who decided to work on American ships. And they'd become naturalised citizens and they thought they were Americans. But naturalised Asian papers didn't bother the British. The British wanted them back. Speaker 4 (10:04) But was there a lure, as I read in one of your papers, that the Americans paid five times more, they were in better conditions? Is all that true? Speaker 3 (10:12) That's probably true. I mean, the Americans wanted sailors for their commercial ships as well. But the British... felt that they had first call. They were fighting, in their view, a war of survival against the French Empire, and their need was the greater, and they were not prepared to put up with legal niceties. Speaker 4 (10:31) And they feared that Napoleon was going to come across the Channel and crush them, and they had every reason to be afraid of that. Absolutely. I mean, of Speaker 3 (10:36) course, at Trafalgar, the British had scored a remarkable naval victory, and the chances of invasion were the less. But to defeat Napoleon, to destroy the French Empire, which spread across Europe, was a gigantic task, and the British near had need of manpower. Speaker 4 (10:53) Were there any other big outstanding... causes sources of tension between the two? Speaker 3 (10:57) Yes, there are two, and they kind of interact. They concern Canada and also Native Americans as well. Canada, of course, is a fairly obvious weak point for the British. They can't defend it very easily. They haven't got a lot of soldiers in situ there. And once there is tension with the United States, there are some Americans, particularly in the West, who begin to talk about an invasion of Canada. even annexation of parts of British territory. They thought they'd Speaker 4 (11:27) just walk in and take it over. Jefferson did. Jefferson Speaker 3 (11:29) thought... Wonderful sentence, Speaker 4 (11:31) do you want to say it? Speaker 3 (11:32) I can't remember exactly what he says. Speaker 4 (11:34) Taking over Canada will be a mere march. Speaker 3 (11:37) Yes, he thought that they'd wander in, the Canadians would lay down their arms, and the point is, I think Jefferson believed the Canadians would willingly become Americans. Why wouldn't you want to become American Republicans? It wasn't as simple as that in the event. Some clearly want to annex it. Others think if we can get some territory, we can use it as a bargaining chip with