War Of 1812 History Today Summary

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A Review of Jeremy Black Article “War of 1812” History Today

By Arshdeep Singh Virk

The war of 1812 is a remarkable part of history. The war was fought between two world super powers of that time i.e. America and Britain. The war was declared on 18th June 1812 . The Americans started the war because they wanted to end the Britain blockade trade with Napoleon’s France and in the hope of conquering Canada. In this Review, I am going to critically analyze the major aspects of the war and going to conclude the results at the end.

The war of 1812 was a total loss for America as the economic burden was rising,” US exports fell from $45 million in 1811 to $7 million in 1814,with grain export hit really hard, falling from 972,000 barrels in 1813 to a little over 41,000 barrels in 1814” (p.11). The US ships were not strong enough to challenge the British in sea. American’s also planned to invade Canada, they planned to capture Upper Canada because they thought that Upper Canada is more easy to take over. Upper canada was guarded by 1600 British troops , mostly from the 41st Regiment. Lake Ontario was controlled by provincial marine. Major general sir Isaac Brock played a major role in training militia units and developing alliances with the first nations.

Brock sent the orders to the
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By the mid September, British forces held Maine coast, which was given back to the US when they signed the peace treaty in December 1814. Also, British invaded Northern New York and led 11,000 British veterans of the Napoleonic wars to Plattsburgh on lake Champlain. However, defeat of British in Plattsburgh Bay by the american commodore, Thomas MacDonough, on 11 September led Prevost to withdraw his troops. This withdraw of troops later led to signing of peace treaty however the last battle of the war is the Battle of New Orleans ( 8 January