The Causes of the War of 1812

Reginald Horsman

sept 2018 · Pickle Partners Publishing

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In the years immediately preceding the War of 1812, England was dominated by a faction that pledged itself not only to defeat Napoleon but also to maintain British commercial supremacy. The two main points of contention between England and America—impressment and the restrictions imposed by the Orders in Council—were direct results of these commitments. America finally had no alternative but to oppose with force British maritime policy.

In addition to tracing the gradual drift to war in America, Professor Horsman shows that the Indian problem and American expansionist designs against Canada played small part in bringing about the struggle. He examines the efforts made by America to avoid conflict through means of economic coercion, efforts the failure of which confronted the nation with two alternatives: war or submission to England.

This volume offers the first analysis of the causes of the war from both the British and American points of view, showing clearly that, contrary to the popular misconception, the war’s basic causes are to be found not in America but in Europe.

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Reginald Horsman (October 24, 1931) is an English historian and Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

He was born in 1931 in Leeds, Yorkshire, England to Alfred William Horsman and Elizabeth Thompson. He married Lenore Lynde McNabb on September 3, 1955, and the couple have two daughters, Janine and Mara, and one son, John.

Prof. Horsman received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Birmingham in 1952 and 1955, respectively, and was awarded his PhD from Indiana University Bloomington in 1958. He became Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee in 1958. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1965.

Prof. Horsman is a member of the Organization of American Historians, Society of America Historians and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. He is also a fellow of the Guggenheim Fellowship (1965).

He is best known for his book, The Causes of the War of 1812, which was first published in 1962. His other history works include: Expansion and American Indian Policy, 1783-1812 (1967); The Frontier in the Formative Years, 1783-1815 (1970); Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo-Saxonism (1981). He has also authored several biographies, including Matthew Elliott, British Indian Agent (1964) and Frontier Doctor: William Beaumont, America’s First Great Medical Scientist (1996).