Sea Power in its Relations to the War of 1812. Volume 1. Alfred Thayer Mahan
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#n106" type="note">106 This, however, was the sole great carrying trade of France; to the United States she sent from her home ports less than 13,000 tons.
It was the opinion of the British committee that the privilege conceded to American shipping in the French islands was so contrary to established colonial policy as to be of doubtful continuance. Still, in concluding its report with a summary of American commercial conditions, which it deemed were in a declining way, it took occasion to utter a warning, based upon these relations of America with the foreign colonies. In case of a commercial treaty, "Should it be proposed to treat on maritime regulations, any article allowing the ships of the United States to protect the property of the enemies of Great Britain in time of war" (that is, the flag to cover the goods), "should on no account be admitted. It would be more dangerous to concede this privilege to the United States than to any other foreign country. From their situation, the ships of these states would be able to cover the whole trade of France and Spain with their islands and colonies, in America and the West Indies, whenever Great Britain shall be engaged with either of those Powers; and the navy of Great Britain would, in such case, be deprived of the means of distressing the enemy, by destroying his commerce and thereby diminishing his resources." It is well to note in these words the contemporary recognition of the importance of the position of the United States; of the value of the colonial trade; of the bearing of commerce destruction on war, by "diminishing the resources" of an enemy; and of the opportunity of the United States, "from their situation," to cover the carriage of colonial produce to Europe; for upon these several points turned much of the troubles, which by their accumulation caused mutual exasperation, and established an antagonism that inevitably lent itself to the war spirit when occasion arose. The specific warning of the committee was doubtless elicited by the terms of the then recent British commercial treaty with France, in 1786, by which the two nations had agreed that, in case of war to which one was a party, the vessels of the other might freely carry all kinds of goods, the property of any person or nation, except contraband. Such a concession could be made safely to France,—was in fact perfectly one-sided in favoring Great Britain; but to America it would open unprecedented opportunity.
To the state of things so far described came the French Revolution; already begun, indeed, when the committee sat, but the course of which could not yet be foreseen. Its coincidence with the formation of the new government of the United States is well to be remembered; for the two events, by their tendencies, worked together to promote the antagonism between the United States and Great Britain, which was already latent in the navigation system of the one and the maritime aptitudes of the other. Washington, the first American President, was inaugurated in March, 1789; in May, the States General of France met. In February, 1793, the French Republic declared war against Great Britain, and in March Washington entered on his second term. In the intervening four years the British Government had persisted in maintaining the exclusion of American carrying trade from her colonial ports. During the same period the great French colony Santo Domingo had undergone a social convulsion, which ended in the wreck of its entire industrial system by the disappearance of slavery, and with it of all white government. The huge sugar and coffee product of the island vanished as a commercial factor, and with it the greater part of the colonial carriage of supplies, which had indemnified American shippers and agriculturists for their exclusion from British ports. Of 167,399 American tonnage entering American ports from the West Indies in 1790, 101,417 had been from French islands.
The removal of so formidable a competitor as Santo Domingo of course inured to the advantage of the British sugar and coffee planter, who was thus more able to bear the burden laid upon him to maintain the navigation of the empire, by paying a heavy percentage on his supplies. This, however, was not the only change in conditions affecting commerce and navigation. By 1793 it had become evident that Canada, Nova Scotia, and their neighbors, could not fill the place in an imperial system which it had been hoped they would take, as producers of lumber and food stuffs. This increased the relative importance of the West India Islands to the empire, just when the rise in price of sugar and coffee made it more desirable to develop their production. Should war come, the same reason would make it expedient to extend by conquest British productive territory in the Caribbean, and at the same time to cut off the supplies of such enemy's possessions as could not be subdued; thus crippling them, and removing their competition by force, as that of Santo Domingo had been by industrial ruin. These considerations tended further to fasten the interest of Great Britain upon this whole region, as particularly conducive to her navigation system. That cheapening supplies would stimulate production, to meet the favorable market and growing demands of the world, had been shown by the object-lesson of the French colonies; though as yet the example had not been followed.
At this time also Great Britain had to recognize her growing dependence upon the sea, because her home territory had ceased to be self-sufficing. Her agriculture was becoming inadequate to feeding her people, in whose livelihood manufactures and commerce were playing an increasing part. Both these, as well as food from abroad, required the command of the sea, in war as in peace, to import raw materials and export finished products; and control of the sea required increase of naval resources, proportioned to the growing commercial movement. According to the ideas of the age, the colonial monopoly was the surest means to this. It was therefore urgent to resort to measures which should develop the colonies; and the question was inevitable whether reserving to British navigation the trade by which they were supplied was not more than compensated by the diminished production, with its effect in lessening the cargoes employing shipping for the homeward voyage.
Thus things were when war broke out. The two objects, or motives, which have been indicated, came then at once into play. The conquest of the French West Indies, a perfectly legitimate move, was speedily undertaken; and meanwhile orders passing the bounds of recognized international law were issued, to suppress, by capture, their intercourse with the United States, alike in import and export. The blow of course fell upon American shipping, by which this traffic was almost wholly maintained. This was the beginning of a long series of arbitrary measures, dictated by a policy uniform in principle, though often modified by dictates of momentary expediency. It lasted for years in its various manifestations, the narration of which belongs to subsequent chapters. Complementary to this was the effort to develop production in British colonies, by extending to them the neutral carriage denied to their enemies. This was effected by allowing direct trade between them and the United States to American vessels of not over seventy tons; a limit substantially the same as that before imposed by France, and designed to prevent their surreptitiously conveying the cargoes to Europe, to the injury of British monopoly of the continental supply, effected by the entrepôt system, and doubly valuable since the failure of French products.
This concession to American navigation, despite the previous opposition, had become possible to Pitt, partly because its advisability had been demonstrated and the opportunity recognized; partly, also, because the immense increase of the active navy, caused by the war, created a demand for seamen, which by impressment told heavily upon the merchant navigation of the kingdom, fostered for this very purpose. To meet this emergency, it was clearly politic to devolve the supply of the British West Indies upon neutral carriers, who would enjoy an immunity from capture denied to merchant ships of a belligerent, as well as relieve British navigation of a function which it had never adequately fulfilled. The measure was in strict accord with the usual practice of remitting in war the requirement of the Navigation Act, that three-fourths of all crews should be British subjects; by which means a large number of native seamen became at once released to the navy. To throw open a reserved trade to foreign ships, and a reserved employment to foreign seamen, are evidently only different applications of the one principle, viz.: to draw upon foreign aid, in a crisis to which the national navigation was unequal.
Correlative to these measures, defensive in character, was the determination that the enemy should be deprived of these benefits; that, so far as international law could be stretched, neutral ships should not help him as they were encouraged to help the British. The welfare of the empire also demanded that native seamen should not be allowed to escape their liability to impressment, by serving in neutral vessels. The lawless measures taken to insure these two objects were the causes avowed by the United States in 1812 for declaring war. The impressment of American seamen, however, although numerous instances had already occurred, had not yet made upon the national consciousness an impression