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Alan Taylor. The Civil War of 1812: American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels and Indian Allies. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2010. 620 pages, two maps, 77 illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth. $25.50 CA ISBN 9781400042654
To demonstrate his case, Taylor concentrates on events along the borderlands of Upper Canada. He believes that through the three campaign seasons neither Britain nor the United States was capable of asserting its vision of North America, either imperial or republican, over the other and both decided to co-exist. This argument assumes that Britain’s ultimate goal was to smash the new republic, which is false. Because the author limits the British perspective of the war to events around Upper Canada, much of the British context of the war is lost. For example, British political leaders are reduced to an anonymous group known as the “Imperial Lords,” (examples appear at pp. 78, 150, 172, 403, and 435). George III, who was ill at the time and had no direct bearing on the war, is mentioned four times, while the Prince Regent, who assumed many of the monarch’s responsibilities in 1811, only appears in passing. Prime Minister the Earl of Liverpool is missing while Earl Bathurst, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies and the cabinet official responsible for the conduct
of the war, is mentioned once (p. 290). Unlike their nameless British counterparts, American political and military leaders, such as James Madison, James Monroe, James Wilkinson, Jacob Brown, Thomas Jefferson, and even George Washington appear throughout the text. Thus British strategy, at least until 13 October 1812, is presented as a struggle between the dashing and powerfully built Major-General Isaac Brock and the cautious Captain General and Governor-in-Chief of British North America, LieutenantGeneral Sir George Prevost, while the rationale of the massive reinforcement of 1814 is not fully explained. The war in Europe against Bonaparte is barely mentioned. The Prince Regent’s instructions to Prevost written in 1811 were clear in that he was to avoid any situation that would cause a large-scale diversion of resources from Europe and when the circumstances dictating that strategy changed, Britain did send substantial reinforcements to North America in 1814, not so much to humble the Americans (p. 413), but to secure the frontier of the Canadas in anticipation of the coming peace talks. While Upper Canada was certainly the cockpit of the war, author’s decision to restrict the discussion to Upper the Canada ignores the remainder of British North America. Little consideration is made of Lower Canada’s largely French population, which totalled about half of British North America’s 600,000 people. Lower Canada is described as “a Catholic country occupied by British troops” that “resembled Ireland with a French twist” (p. 77). Yet that province played an important role in the war effort. In the Maritimes, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick shared strong cultural and economic ties with New England, so why is there no consideration of the republican-imperial dynamic that occurred in that region? The Native peoples figure prominently in the text and as the author acknowledges, were instrumental in defeating American plans during 1812 and 1813 (p. 435). With the peace, many of Britain’s Native allies found themselves in American territory and the author contends that the Americans exploited the “ambiguous” (p. 437) peace treaty to consolidate their dominion over Natives within their territory, ending British influence over them, allowing the Americans to gain continental predominance. The apparent abandonment by Britain of its Native allies is a common theme in War of 1812 historiography, however little acknowledgement is made of British efforts to secure Native rights in the ninth article of the treaty and the American decision to ignore them. There is a nagging host of minor errors throughout the book. None is terribly serious but there are enough to distract the reader’s attention and to question the author’s understanding of the British perspective of the war. Quebec’s defences did not include a citadel in 1785 (p. 14); Guy Carleton would certainly not have described himself a “loyal Irishman” (p. 17); the number of British subjects in “Canada” in 1785 is said to be 100,000 people (p. 27), but the geographic extent of this territory is undefined. Why not use census data from the early 1800s? Peter Hunter is wrongly identified to as the governorgeneral of Canada, when he was in fact, lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada between 1799 and 1805 (p. 87); the wrong
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