![]() Towards the end of the book there is, for me, a particularly enlightening passage. The book’s title is 1812-The Navy’s War, written by George Daughan. There is a very interesting new book out. And the corollary of seeing the War of 1812 as a series of free-standing events is that tactical matters inevitably overshadow strategic matters. One of the biggest problems with the current narrative of the War of 1812 is, I believe, that there has been a tendency to focus on the main events as if they were free standing, rather than parts of a stream of interconnected campaigns, battles, policies, and decisions. But I’ll come back to that particular point towards the end of my remarks. And those gains and losses had long term, geopolitical implications for both the United States and Great Britain-and in fact for the world. But while it’s true that there was no unconditional surrender by either side, and in a compilation of the results of individual actions there was no clear winner, there were indeed some very important, bottom line gains and losses for each side. But on the other hand, the Royal Navy was able to apply a punishing blockade and a series of successful expeditionary warfare raids against America’s Atlantic coast.Īnd so the discussions have rolled on. Navy won the critically important fleet actions on Lake Erie and Lake Champlain and American privateers had a significant effect on Britain’s vital sea lines of communication. And along the Canadian borders there were bloody battles won and lost but no major change in the border. Navy won thirteen and the Royal Navy won twelve. For example, of 25 noteworthy naval actions, the U.S. ![]() ![]() Those two latter conclusions are easy to slide into if one simply concentrates on the war’s military actions. ![]() Then in recent years, it became fashionable to claim that the war was a stalemate, with the further claim that it was simply a horribly stupid waste of life. ![]() In the past there have been heated-and mostly partisan-arguments about who won. ![]()
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