ABSTRACT
The failure of authors to mirror the latest findings on the causes of the War of 1812 is understandable, for few events in America’s past have been so often re-interpreted. Historians over the past generation have ascribed the conflict to the violation of American neutral rights by England, impressment, the land hunger o f frontiersmen, Indian wars in the West and a desire to wipe out the Canadian bases of their operations, an economic depression in the Ohio Valley, the failure of com munications between Britain and the United States, and the hope that a conquered Canada could be used as a pawn to force England to relax her trade decrees. Today most scholars lean to the maritime interpretation as most logical, although recognizing that sentiment for war was bred by the depression, by land hunger, and especially by a desire to check Indian attacks.
