Neither Victor Nor Vanquished: America in the War of 1812 by William Weber
Neither Victor Nor Vanquished: America in the War of 1812 by William Weber
In 1812, less than forty years after breaking from Britain, the United States found itself in another war with its former colonial master. Now, during the two hundredth anniversary of the War of 1812 comes Neither Victor nor Vanquished, William Weber's reappraisal of this critical, but frequently misunderstood, conflict.
In the book's first half, Weber reexamines the war's military aspects, highlighting the asymmetrical nature of the conflict as the world's foremost naval power, with a credible professional army, stood against an idealist republic that had commercial and agricultural aspirations, but not an adequate navy and army. Weber also attempts to recalibrate popular conceptions of the U.S. forces' generally poor performance during "Mr. Madison's War" and frames the war in the context of both the Jeffersonian Revolution that preceded it and the accelerated postwar territorial expansion and consolidation of the United States that eventually led to the American Civil War.
The book's thought-provoking second half presents alternative outcomes for the War of 1812, reminding us that history is made, not predetermined. Various scenarios arise from differences in two key factors -- the quality of leadership in both forces and the direction of the Napoleonic Wars, which Britain was simultaneously fighting. Weber imagines a worst-case scenario for the young republic, an ending worse than simple military defeat. Indeed, history might have provided a different answer to Francis Scott Key's central question: "O! say does that star-spangled banner yet wave/ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" A final what-if explores a nineteenth-century America that chooses to avoid the War of 1812 and, consequently, the rise of Andrew Jackson.
Potomac Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2013
THIS IS A BRAND NEW BOOK.