Absract The project is a history of the Anglo-American War of 1812. Although a subject that has been marginalized by scholars, the War of 1812 played a major role in determining the fate of North America and development of American, Canadian and British national identities. By taking a fresh, comparative transatlantic approach, the project breaks with the previous studies, which have generally focused on a single national perspective rather than a more global one. The result will be an examination of the conflict that emphasizes its global significance and its inherent postcolonial nature. A grant will provide crucial support for essential overseas archival research. The results of the project will be disseminated primarily through a scholarly monograph (the standard medium for my discipline), for which I have an advanced contract with Oxford University Press. 1
Project narrative 1 As its 200 th anniversary approaches, the Anglo-American War of 1812 remains one of the least understood conflicts in both North American and British history. Overshadowed in the United States by the American Revolution and in Britain by the epic struggles against revolutionary France, the War of 1812 has largely been overlooked by scholars and the public alike. James Madison may have lacked the dash of George Washington and Canada s little defensive force weighed less than the shadow of the armies Napoleon wheeled through Europe, but the War of 1812 s shortage of glamour does not merit such neglect. When scholars have investigated the conflict, they have done so almost exclusively from their own national perspective, typically from that of the Canada or the United States. Moreover, the historical scholarship consists almost exclusively of traditional elite political and military narratives. These are important to understanding any conflict, but on their own they lack the dynamism that scholars have brought in recent years to our understanding of the period as a whole. While the immediate military outcome of the War of 1812 proved inconclusive (the peace treaty in 1814 did not recognize a victor), the long-term psychological impact of the war was tremendous. Such issues as the national identities of the United States and Canada, the relegation of the British Caribbean to secondary status within the empire, the birth of a new and lasting Anglo-American vision for the Americas, and perhaps even the continuation of a unified United States were all tied far more to the private and public discussions prompted by the war than by any military outcome. This was largely because much of the noncombatant population could experience the war and the political wrangling surrounding it via the established newspaper and periodical press. Timely information and a forum for virtually uncensored expression created within ordinary citizens both a sense of investment and urgency that they expressed in private and public. In the United States, the war forged and publicly tested the idea of a loyal opposition in which citizens could remain patriotic Americans while opposing the actions of the government. Opponents of the war attempted to shield themselves from accusations of treason by declaring that the true criterion of patriotism was loyalty to the Constitution, which allows dissention, rather than loyalty to any government administration. Governments sensitivity to public opinion ensured their participation in the debates that raged in North America, the British Isles, and the Caribbean. Thus the war s most significant role was as a catalyst for the creation of regional, national and international forums that attract peoples across the Atlantic to debate and exchange ideas about their respective pasts and futures. My approach has been to examine the conflict from a transatlantic perspective, giving due attention to the motivations and experiences of the relevant peoples in North America, the Caribbean and Britain. A transatlantic approach to the War of 1812 re-emphasizes it as an Anglo-American conflict. The historical scholarship s almost exclusive focus on North America has wrongly led to the U.S. becoming the war s sole protagonist. According to the accepted line 1 The quoted portion of the title is from the Jamaica Magazine, July 1812, p. 70. 2
2 of thought, U.S. expansionism and concerns about its legitimacy among nations compelled it to go to war against its Canadian, American Indian and Spanish neighbors in separate actions during the 1810s. The war of 1812 is increasing treated as an umbrella under which these conflicts transpired and North America s inhabitants played out the latest episodes in the violent history of the struggle for the continent. But such an interpretation undervalues the significance and uniqueness of the War of 1812. U.S. hunger for Canadian, American Indian and Spanish territory was ongoing. Before 1812 the U.S. had readily acquired large chunks of North America, such as through conquest of American Indian lands and the Louisiana Purchase, which most Europeans and many Americans recognized as an underhanded acquisition of Spanish territory. This would not change after the war. In fact, Britain s involvement via the War of 1812 temporarily checked U.S. expansion, thus distinguishing it from the rest of the era. This was no accident, but instead a result of a carefully planned British attempt to in the colonial language of contemporary British officials manage North America. Viewing Britain as a protagonist thus stresses the importance of the War of 1812 as a postcolonial conflict. The correspondence between Britain s cabinet ministers and their agents in North America makes clear that the British government believed it could manage the U.S. as if it were still part of a loose empire, dictating its overseas trading practices and manipulating its borders. The tone of discussion rarely saw the U.S. as proactive, rather the British government saw itself as setting policies and managing U.S. responses. During the war the British government regularly discussed slicing off portions of the U.S. and reconfiguring them into colonies in all but name. When negotiating peace terms, the British government doggedly pursued a plan that would boost Spain, create a sovereign American Indian state, and strengthen British Canada. The intended result was to stymie U.S. territorial ambitions by creating a balance of power dynamic in North America akin to that in Europe and South Asia, in which larger states like France and Mysore were offset by coalitions led by Britain. The introduction of Britain as a protagonist also highlights the deep anxiety many Britons publicly expressed about the war and the direction the nation was taking. Just as during the American Revolution, large numbers of Britons were loathe to go to war against a people they had come to see as kin in culture if not in fact, thus demonstrating that such feelings had not been erased by American independence. The printed discussion about the war also reveals British fears about their own political future. Although the British had popularly embraced that idea that they were the champions of liberty against a tyrannical France, many began to worry that two decades of total war had transformed Britain into the epitome of its absolutist enemies for whom constant war and taxation had become a way to control the people. Such underlying fears intensified in 1814 when Britain greatly expanded its war efforts against the U.S. and simultaneously replaced the defeated Napoleon Bonaparte with a monarchical, rather than republican, government. A central theme of my findings has been the pervasiveness of sectionalism (or regionalism) throughout the Anglo-American Atlantic. For example, encrypted letters I have identified between the lead British diplomat in the U.S. and his superiors in London reveals how New England Congressional leaders secretly encouraged Britain to go to war in hopes that it would either remove their Southern rivals from power or enable New England to secede. Sectionalism was not limited to the U.S. The British Caribbean planting and mercantile elite lobbied in 3
Britain and America for policies that benefited themselves at the expense of the rest of the British Empire. Many planters also saw the U.S. South as a potential ally in the fight to continue 2 slavery. In Canada, the war highlighted the differences between the Francophone colonists, the old American loyalist communities, and the recent influx of land-hungry immigrants from the U.S. In Britain, the war further exposed the sectionalism between the manufacturing-minded north, which relied on the U.S. as a leading market, and the mercantile-minded south, whose ships competed with the U.S. merchant fleet. Thus in many ways London s role as manager of various domestic and overseas colonial sectional interests had not changed since American independence. The War of 1812, therefore, emerges as a last gasp of metropolitan administration of North America. The effort failed when enough sectional interests within the British Empire opposed the war on self-interested, largely local reasons. This, rather than any U.S. success on the battlefield freed the U.S. of British control and removed the most credible obstacle to U.S. dominance over North America. Specific use of grant funds My project is at an advanced stage of research, and I have begun to write up my findings. A grant would enable me to conduct essential overseas archival research that will allow me to finish my project. Unlike with much of the U.S. and Canadian materials related to my project, relevant British and Caribbean sources generally have not been printed, digitized or microfilmed. In Britain I would complete my examination of British and British-Empire document collections I have identified at such institutions as the National Archives, British Library, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, Rhodes House, and the Gloucester Records Office. These materials include private and official government correspondence, tax records, private diaries, and a large collection of transatlantic political cartoons. British Library also maintains an unmatched collection of Caribbean and Canadian newspapers and magazines. External funding for midcareer scholars in my field for archival research and travel in Britain is rare, if not impossible to secure, so support via a Scholar and Creative Activities award is crucial to the success of my project. Anticipated outcomes and dissemination of results My findings and conclusions will take the form of a scholarly monograph, which is the primary medium for disseminating results in my field. I have an advanced contract to publish the book with Oxford University Press. With the support of a grant, I will be able to meet my goal of publishing the book in 2012. 4
TAMU BUDGET INFORMATION 2 Investigator(s) Salary: $0.00 Investigator(s) - Fringe Bene- $0.00 Investigator 2 Salary: $0.00 Investigator 2 - Fringe Bene- $0.00 Investigator 3 Salary: $0.00 Investigator 3 - Fringe Bene- $0.00 Investigator 4 Salary: $0.00 Investigator 4 - Fringe Bene- $0.00 Graduate Student(s) Salary: $0.00 Graduate Student(s) - Fringe $0.00 Bene Postdoctoral Employee(s) $0.00 Salary: Postdoctoral Employee(s) - $0.00 Fringe Bene Other Employee(s) Salary: $0.00 Other Employee(s) - Fringe $0.00 Bene Other Research Professionals: $0.00 Services: $0.00 Scientific equipment and sup- $0.00 plies: Equipment: $0.00 Travel: $2100.00 Accommodations: $5650.00 Meals: $1750.00 Other: $500.00 Total: $10000.00 5
Budget Justification As described in the project proposal, the grant funds would support a five-week trip to the United Kingdom, where I would conduct primary archival research. The materials I would consult exist exclusively in archives in the United Kingdom. They have not been duplicated and are not available via interlibrary loan. Lodging in self-catering accommodation in London and Oxford will cost $1,130 per week, which is considerably below the allowable maximum per diem lodging (currently $2,247 in London). I have allowed $50 per day for meals, which is again well below the allowable maximum (currently $182 per day in London). Travel costs include economy roundtrip airfare from College Station to London, public transportation (bus, sub- way, and train) around London and from London to other cities that have archives I plan to consult, particularly Oxford and Cambridge. It also includes the cost of a rental car for one week, which will allow me to visit the Gloucester County Record Office while remaining in the much- cheaper self-catering accommodation. The Other cost is for photographic reproductions at the British Museum and the British Library. Neither institution allows self-photography, and the material I am consulting may not be photocopied, as it is too old and fragile. The images I want to capture are of political cartoons and military recruitment advertisements, which I plan to include in my resulting book and article publications as ways to explore visual representations of the War of 1812. The current charge for the photographs is roughly $50 each. 12