4 ms·
What I find amusing about both countries is that neither spends time on what was bloody obvious at the time. Namely that the reason why the US picked then to s
by btilly 7y ago
What I find amusing about both countries is that neither spends time on what was bloody obvious at the time. Namely that the reason why the US picked then to start a war was that Great Britain had their hands full with Napoleon.
Still the outcome was that Washington was burned to the ground, the US sued for peace, Great Britain granted it because the US had already proven to be ungovernable. However it was the last war where natives could fight open battles against the US, and with the decimation of the Iroquois the Western border was open. Also Andrew Jackson's victory in New Orleans (after the peace treaty was signed but before anyone knew about it) meant that the USA kept Louisiana rather than possibly giving it back to France.
So it was a net loss at the time, but set the stage for westward expansion.
Incidentally one of the things that the USA was upset about is now international law. Namely the pressing of US citizens into the British navy. But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it.
- vkou 7y agoThe US will also happily draft non-citizens. https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Non-Citizens-and-Dual-Nationals https://www.sss.gov/About/History-And-Records/Non-Citizens-a...
- kd5bjo 7y ago> But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it. I imagine that they might have something to say about it if the other country considered all US citizens to also be citizens of that other country. It's been a long time since I got this in school, but I also seem to recall that they weren't conscripting US citizens visiting Britain, they were boarding US merchant ships at sea to conscript the sailors.
- btilly 7y agoIt was not all US citizens. It was ones who were also UK citizens by Great Britain's laws. That said, there were a lot of problems with how impressment worked. But that was separate from the question of whether becoming an American citizen made someone no longer a British citizen.
- kd5bjo 7y agoI admit that I don’t know the details of how citizenship was handled after the American revolution, but that was only about 30 years prior. My understanding is that the vast majority of American citizens were considered by the Crown to be British citizens. It was definitely pitched to me that way in grade school, that until 1812 England basically considered the US to be a self-governing piece of the empire instead of an independent country.
- btilly 7y agoMy understanding is that Americans born in America were recognized not to be British citizens, but those born in Britain who later emigrated were considered British citizens. That said, over a third of sailors on American ships were British citizens who were pursuing higher pay and better conditions. And then per https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/summer/1812-impressment.html https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/summer/1... there is the case of Charles Davis, an Englishman impressed into the US navy. We have no records of how common that was.