The Descent into War

The origins of the changed relationship between Britain and the United States, from interdependent trading partners to enemies in the War of 1812, can be found in the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which had ended the previous Anglo-American War. Heated debate in Britain over future trade with its former American colonies often focused on the extent of American trade with the British West Indian ‘sugar islands’, as did the influential writer Lord Sheffield. Nevertheless, in time, a mutually beneficial ‘Atlantic economy’ had reasserted itself – each country became the other's major customer and source of supply. American wheat, flour, rice, timber, tobacco and raw cotton found outlets in Britain and its overseas territories, while the United States, as a predominantly agrarian economy and growing market for British manufactures and re-exports, became crucially important to Britain's economic development. By 1810, although America had an adverse balance of trade with Britain, often resented by contemporary American commentators, its merchant navy of over a million tons carried over 90 per cent of its overseas trade, and earned more than enough to produce a favourable balance of payments for the United States.

However, a French declaration of war on Britain in 1793 meant more frequent contact between American merchant vessels and warships of the Royal Navy, as Britain imposed maritime blockades on France, and neutral American vessels sought to gain the trade denied to French shipping. American shippers increasingly maintained that ‘Free Ships’ meant ‘Free Goods’ which were not subject to British ‘stop and search’, or confiscation of cargoes as broadly defined contraband. Furthermore, the Royal Navy would soon seek to ease its perpetual manpower shortage by impressing apparently British seamen – but often, in fact, American citizens – from American merchant vessels, sufficiently often to strain diplomatic relations . By 1807, of the 55,000 seamen engaged in American overseas trade, no less than 40 per cent were British born. Between 1803 and 1812, the Royal Navy may have impressed as many as 6,000 Americans. Neither nation could afford the loss of so many trained seamen. The forcible British seizure of four men from USS Chesapeake, a United States warship leaving an American port in June 1807, brought war very close.