The Diplomacy of the War of 1812

BY FRANK A. UPDYKE, PH.D., Ira Allen Eastman Professor of Political Science, Dartmouth College. 8 vo. pp. 478. Baltimore. The Johns Hopkins Press.

This book embodies the Albert Shaw Lectures on Diplomatic History delivered at the Johns Hopkins University in 1914, and supplies what long has been needed within the compass of a single volume, a clear, comprehensive and discriminating account of the controversy which arose between the United States and Great Britain soon after the outbreak of the French Revolution, and which issued, after twenty years futile effort to settle it by diplomacy, in the War of 1812.

After describing the fundamental cause of that war as the irreconcilable conflict between the commercial policy of Great Britain as expressed in her Navigation Acts and the commercial development of the United States, the author devotes the first eight of the eleven chapters of his book to a narrative of the diplomatic discussion between the two governments from 1793 to 1812 respecting the more concrete causes of that war, namely, impressment by Great Britain of seamen on American ships and the British Orders in council establishing paper blockades and otherwise interfering with our neutral trade. The ninth chapter on the Ratification and Reception of the Treaty of Ghent which in 1814 ended the War of 1812 has special interest from the fact, well known to historical students, that both belligerents, though for different reasons, were so desirous for the restoration of peace that that treaty in its final form omitted all reference to the causes of the war. The tenth chapter on the Execution of the Treaty, like the preceding one, allows the author a freer treatment of his material than when limited to the text of diplomatic correspondence, and includes a description of the work of the four joint commissions which were appointed to give effect to the most important agreements contained in the treaty, those for the final determination of the disputed boundary between the United States and the Dominion of Canada, from Passamaquoddy Bay to the Lake of the Woods. The last chapter sketches the subsequent negotiations between the United States and Great Britain respecting the particular controversies which had caused the War of 1812 and others which long persisted, the North-east Boundary and the Fisheries, to the final settlement of most of them by peaceful diplomacy. The story of these negotiations which stretch oyer the century from 1814 to 1912 and discover each government at times reversing its original position upon some of the controverted questions, is likely to prove the most interesting part of the volume to readers who deem diplomatic history jejune and the War of 1812 the most inglorious of our wars. Thus the first cause of that war, the British claim of the right to impress seamen on American vessels is traced to its definite abandonment by that government in the Case of Mason and Slidell in 1862-3 and in the enactment by Parliament of the Naturalization Act in 1870, which recognized the right of voluntary expatriation. An outline also is given of the various attempts which have been made by the governments of Great Britain and the United States since 1814 to put paper blockades and the other belligerent practices interfering with neutral trade which formed the second cause of the War of 1812 under an international ban. Unhappily, that result which at last appeared to have been secured when these lectures were delivered, by a Convention of the Second Hague Conference in 1907 and an agreement of the powers represented at the Naval War Conference of London in 1909, has proved illusory, for both the German Imperial Government and that of Great Britain during the present European war again have resorted to what in effect are paper blockades under the names of Naval War Zone and Military Areas, and to other practices which interfere with the rights of neutrals as flagrantly as was done during the Napoleonic struggle. In fact, the diplomatic correspondence between the United States and Great Britain during the present war of 1914-15 respecting neutral rights often seems like a transcript with adaptation to new circumstances from the diplomatic correspondence of the War of 1812.

Prof. Updyke has had access in the preparation of his work not only to the ordinary printed sources, but also to much unpublished material, diplomatic dispatches and correspondence in the State Department at Washington and in the Foreign Office in London.

The preparation and publication of this volume whose last chapter records the growth of a better understanding, mutual respect and good will between the United States and Great Britain fittingly coincides with the completion of a Century of Peace between them. The work throughout bears evidence of thorough investigation, sense of proportion, careful weighing of evidence and of sound judgment.

Professor Warren C. Shaw is the author of "An Experiment with the Referendum" in volume I, number 1 of the Quarterly Journal of PublicSpeaking.

Professor T. C. Boggs contributes "Capital Investments and Trade Balances Within the British Empire" to the August number of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Professor F. E. Austin has just issued a second edition of "How to Make Low Pressure Transformers."

"Commercial Executives Training at the Tuck School", by Professor Alfred L. Smith, appears in the July number of Town Development.

Professor E. B. Woods reviews "The Middle West Side," by O. G. Cartwright, and "Mothers Who Must Earn" by Katherine Anthony, in the September number of the American Journal ofSociology.

"Galba's Assassination and the Indifferent Citizen," by Professor R. W. Husband, is published in the July numer of Classical Philology.

"The Progress of the Social Conscience," by Dr. W. J. Tucker, appears in the Atlantic Monthly for September.

Dr. F. H. Adler's "Herder and Klopstock, a Comparative Study", published by G. E. Stechert & Co., will be reviewed in a later issue.

Prof. H. D. Foster reviews Showerman's "The Indian Stream Republic," [N. H.] and Luther Parker, published by the N. H. Historical Society in the October American Historical Review. A review of Reyburn's "John Calvin," also by Professor Foster, appears in the Harvard Theological Reviezv for October.