ABSTRACT
On November 8, 1814, the Prince Regent opened the parliamentary session with a speech that left no doubt about the context of the War of 1812. “[T]his war originated in the most unprovoked aggression on the part of the government of the US, and was calculated to promote the designs of the common enemy of Europe [Napoleon], against the rights and independence of all other nations.” Was he correct? All wars sit within multiple contexts, with the international context always being one of the most signifi-cant. This is particularly the case for the War of 1812 because Britain, one of the two major combatants, was also involved for most of its course in a more major struggle, and one that it saw as more important. This was the arduous war with Napoleon’s France, one that, with one short gap in 1802–03, had been going since 1793. To a degree, the War of 1812 was a part of the Napoleonic Wars, just as other small conflicts have been subsumed within umbrella wars, notably the two World Wars and the Cold War. That was certainly the perception of the people and government in Great Britain. To them, the War of 1812 was nothing more than an inconvenient sideshow of the Napoleonic Wars.
