The approaching bicentennial of the War of 1812 has led to the publication of several important studies that have the potential to become a deluge over the next few years. Of particular importance, scholars are increasingly using long-forgotten archives in the United Kingdom to reassess the war through the lens of America’s British opponent. Brian Arthur certainly fits into this group with his rather grandiosely titled volume: How Britain Won the War of 1812: The Royal Navy’s Blockades of the United States, 1812–1815. The entire aim and organization of the book becomes an attempt to prove the title. In the process, Arthur does not write a complete history of the War of 1812 or even a complete history of the British naval war. Instead, he focuses on Britain’s use of sea control with particular reference to convoys and blockades. With the latter, Arthur develops the heart of his argument and devotes the greatest amount of text focusing on the design, execution, and effects of Britain’s commercial blockade. It is in this respect that Arthur does a great service and adds significantly to the understanding of the War of 1812.

Arthur sets the stage with the first three chapters of his book. In these, he addresses the development of British convoy and blockade practices, along with the challenges of conducting period naval warfare. He devotes one of the three opening chapters to prewar background, with particular reference to maritime and economic issues involving the United States and Britain. Even at this point in the book, Arthur’s writing becomes the most detailed and most analytical when addressing blockades and economics.

The next two chapters address the War of 1812 from the British perspective, with particular reference to the Royal Navy and its attempts to blockade the United States. In the process, Arthur makes some of his most persuasive arguments, detailing the effectiveness of British naval operations under the leadership of Admiral Sir John Borlase Warren. Arthur concludes that it was during Warren’s tenure of command from September 1812 to April 1814 that the British navy inflicted significant economic damage on the United States, which Warren’s successor, Vice Admiral Sir Alexander Cochrane, benefited from in 1814. In fact, Arthur argues that Cochrane was in fact less effective than his predecessor, given his poor showings at Baltimore and New Orleans and the strategic ramifications these setbacks had on the British war effort. However, Arthur fails to fully exploit one source that could make his argument truly compelling. Although he makes extensive and effective use of Warren’s personal papers as well as those of his secretary, he makes only cursory use of Cochrane’s papers found in the National Library of Scotland.

The final two chapters of the book attempt something very difficult—the assessment of the effectiveness of a commercial blockade. Economic blockades take years for their slow and grinding effects to yield strategic results. This was in some respects Warren’s problem. The blockade he implemented did not bear its greatest fruits until after Cochrane assumed command. Arthur uses significant statistical information from the United States to assess the various effects of the blockade from the immediate result on commercial shipping to the impact of the blockade on the overall economy of the United States. One particular area of importance dealt with the blockade’s impact on tax receipts and thus the ability of the US government to fund the war. Although at points tedious, this argument is essential to proving Arthur’s thesis, and by the end of the book, the author has made a convincing argument that by the end of hostilities the American government was on the verge of financial collapse. If hostilities had continued well into 1815, the prospects for the United States appeared particularly bleak.

Arthur’s conclusion that Britain won the War of 1812 might be hard for some to swallow. After all, the Americans ended the war on a high note with the Battle of New Orleans; however, Arthur argues that “the Americans had gained none of the aims they had hoped for at the outset and had bankrupted themselves in the process” (206). Arthur might have made his argument stronger if he had given more detail to demonstrate why the British decided to conclude the war when they did and settle for what was essentially a stalemate rather than continue hostilities so as to achieve more unlimited objectives. Given Arthur’s explanation of the American financial situation, Britain certainly had the ability to obtain a more punitive peace by continuing the war into 1815, but instead, British governmental leadership chose to terminate the war.

Arthur recognizes that the use of economic warfare by Britain during the Age of Sail had become highly sophisticated by 1812. When the United States declared war on Britain in that year, economic warfare eventually became the tool of choice for a British state already mired in a long war against Napoleonic France. Although the application of economic warfare took time, the United States was, as Arthur recognizes, fiscally vulnerable given its tax system, poor internal communications, and sectional differences. The blockade by British warships only magnified these problems and, in Arthur’s conclusion, proved the significant factor in driving the United States toward peace.