Civil War of 1812

American Citizens, British Subjects, Irish Rebels, & Indian Allies

By: Alan Taylor

Narrated by: Andrew Garman

Length: 20 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's Summary

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Alan Taylor tells the riveting story of a war that redefined North America. In a world of double identities, slippery allegiances, and porous borders, the leaders of the American Republic and the British Empire struggled to control their own diverse peoples. Taylor’s vivid narrative of an often brutal—sometimes farcical—war reveals much about the tangled origins of the United States and Canada.

©2010 Alan Taylor (P)2010 Recorded Books, LLC

A proper history of an obscure epoch

The only things missing in this book are an in-depth treatment of the burning of Washington DC, the "rockets' red glare" in Baltimore harbor, the shelling of Stonington, CT, and the Battle of New Orleans. But most of these things were minor sideshows to the real war, and of course New Orleans happened after the war had officially ended.

Otherwise I can't praise this enough as a compelling and informative history. Its thesis is that the American Revolution did not really end in 1781 or 1783; that certain British interests saw the USA as a temporary aberration, and sought to exploit its disorganization and economic slump during the 1780s-90s.

The real origins of the War of 1812 were not the usual background causes we are told about--impressment of seamen, trade with France--but rather the British government's basic failure to comply with its undertakings in the Treaty of Paris (they did not actually give up the western and Great Lakes forts they were supposed to evacuate) and their persistent harassment of American settlers on the western frontier. Added to this was the British attempt to siphon off thousands of Americans into Upper Canada by offering 200 free acres to anyone who wanted it.

This is where most of the early 19th century Ontario settlers came from, by the way: they were Americans from New England and Upstate New York who took the free-land offer. They were not Brits and they were not exiled Tories. (Very few Revolutionary War Tories went to Canada in any event; Tories had mainly gone to the Acadian provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, which were not part of Canada.)

Most of the War of 1812 was about the Americans' attempt to take over Upper Canada, or Ontario, which then as now thrust itself like an arm into the north-central USA. The Americans had a very good case. Most of the inhabitants were actually Americans, the British had no clear claim on the land, and in fact the only real interest the British had in the region was to use it as a staging area for taking America back.

So what happened? Why was Ontario not taken? The answer is that the American forces were poorly prepared and slightly provisioned, no match for the seasoned Redcoats at Detroit and York and Niagara. That's really all it was. But this loss paid off big dividends in the development of the American forces. The new academy at West Point was quickly transformed into a serious institution of military training after 1812, as a direct result of the woeful experiences during the war.

Refreshing...kinda

What did you love best about Civil War of 1812?

Well, written and more balanced than usual.

What three words best describe Andrew Garman’s voice?

Measured, well-enunciated, but with occasional mispronunciations,

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

No

Any additional comments?

Given that the author is an American historian, he is reasonably even-handed and does not portray the War of 1812 in the usual starry-eyed, "it was a glorious victory really" style of most American history. He does, however, occasionally fall into that habit Americans have of portraying the British as a mere foil against which Americans tested their fitness for greatness. He also makes some annoying mistakes which a serious historian should not make, even when talking about a foreign power - he keeps referring to the "imperial lords" (I think he means the British Government) and on one occasion refers to "Lord Wellington". Who? The real strength of the book is to point out the complexities of American motives for the war. He places front and centre the objective of breaking British power in North America, the destruction of Indian resistance (both closely interconnected) and the possible windfall outcome of those objectives, the absorption of Upper Canada. He does not sugar-coat the fiasco that was the American Army's performance on the Canadian frontier. For those looking for a general history of the war, they will be disappointed that he does not cover the naval war or British amphibious operations against American shores in any depth (for this, from a British perspective, see Latimer, "The Challenge"). Similarly, although he is excellent on the internal politics of Canada and the US, he does little to explore the economic effects of the war on the US, probably the key issue of the time.He is also very good on the conclusion to the war, and in particular the British Government's sudden switch from holding out tough terms from the Americans to essentially giving the US everything it wanted. Interestingly, he suggests this switch came after Wellington advised to give the US whatever it wanted, and concentrate on the real issues in Europe. Perhaps Mr. Taylor should have subtitled his book "How the Duke of Wellington Saved the Republic"!

Must Read

Although I have been reading books on American History for the past 40 years, this book showed me how little I knew about the war of 1812. Once I started listening to material presented, I found it hard to stop listening and put the book away. The author presents the material such that their is nothing booring or dry about this book. I found the intertwinning of historial facts and stories about the people and things being discussed enlightening. In my opinion, if you intersted in more than the "Burning of Washington" and the "Battle of New Orleans", this is a good book to read to follow the events of the other 3 years of war in North American.

What you never knew about the War of 1812

Great story . So much more to this war then I understood. Must read or listen.

Complete history of The War of 1812

If you could sum up Civil War of 1812 in three words, what would they be?

Many details

What did you like best about this story?

I feel I have heard the complete story. I think I was a little mislead in school.

Any additional comments?

There are many details. Probably more than I wanted to know but at least I know what really happened.

Why Canada is not part of the United States

People may not remember but early Americans expected Canada to join the revolution. Thus the two times the U.S. Invaded Canada -- during the Revolution and the War of 1812 -- to liberate Canada from British rule. Canada declined to be liberated, expelling American forces both times. Taylor's topic is the confusing northern front in the 1812 war: A time when American loyalists filled much of North Canada, the British longed to prove their own ethical and military superiority over the greedy, hypocritical Americans,
Federalists feared the Jeffersonian hostility to commerce and the British, and Republicans longed to demonstrate the power of a citizen militia and purge the crypto-Tories of the Federalist party and Canada. By the end of the war, Canadians had built a new shared civic identity as not Americans and America had embraced the ideal of free, white manhood. Taylor is a fine writer who held my interest over the many chapters. The narrator speaks fluently and well. He also does aan amazibg job with names and words from the many different languages of the participants. I also strongly recomend The Enemy Within, the companion book which examines the war's southern front.

How My Country Came To Be.

If you could sum up Civil War of 1812 in three words, what would they be?

Interesting Educational Local

What did you like best about this story?

The story explained so much about the area that I live in and how it came to be.

Any additional comments?

I found the narrator, Andrew Garman, to have a tone of voice and presentation manner which held my interest and made it difficult to stop listening. Thank You.

Misnamed and misrepresented

The previous version of this review was overtly negative, but no one likes negative reviews, so here is the new version.

First, Professor Taylor writes what is called "micro history" gathering extremely detailed data from journals, newspaper reports, official papers, etc. The presumption is that such a collection of dubious sources will somehow bounce around the truth, and, even more important, that they are statistically representative. Neither assumption is generally true. While such an approach can sometimes help to provide an rich picture of the times, it cannot be taken to provide an accurate global picture of what happened. There is value in the minutia and a richness of detail (as seen in William Couper's Town), but all too often when the global issues must be understood, one is left uncertain whether to take the minutia as representative.

In addition, the author often mixes in sweeping unreferenced statements of generality with his mix of possibly (or even probably) unrepresentative minutia. The net is that the reader is not sure what to believe. It is not that he cannot see the forest for the trees (although that is certainly the case), he cannot determine whether he is seeing a tree or the forest.

Second, Taylor ignores many of the critical historical events in pursuit of an indefensible, by any other means, thesis that the War of 1812 was "Civil". It was not. Major, if not decisive, aspects of the war did not occur on the US/Canada border, in which locations the "civil" label cannot be remotely stretched to apply. It was a war between a massive empire and the fledgling US republic. The fact that some of the participants and one part of the war were ethnically, linguistically, and racially similar does not make it a civil war. There were clear boundaries and distinct not predominantly intermixed populations and political systems. Civil wars are between peoples of the same country. That was simply not the case in the War of 1812. Taylor repeatedly asserts, without convincing evidence, that most people on the US/Canada border were not interested in the war at all, which is hardly a sign of civil discord. In short, the "civil" adjective is at best a stretch that adds novelty, but does not constitute a useful encapsulation of the historical events.

Third, in contrast to the person-by-person minutia presented about the border war whole segments of the war are largely ignored, e.g., the sea war with warships and privateer, the war in the American south, the Battle of Bladensburg, etc. One suspects that this is more due to Taylor's familiarity with the sources relating to that region than with a conscious decision of its relative importance. Basically, Taylor has written in the style of a PhD dissertation.

Forth, contrary to the claims of other reviewers, the writing is average and not economical as one would expect from well presented popular history such as written by Tuchman and Churchill.

In short, if your expectation is a history or the War of 1812, then you will be disappointed. If you are interested in a quixotic, selective and irregular presentation of the Great Lakes theater of the War of 1812 (and accept that it was in essence "civil"), then you might find this a useful, but for me the book lacked too much to be recommended.

Too unfocused

This was the third book by Alan Taylor that I have read and the first that has been disappointing. He gets bogged down in too many insignificant details, provides too many insignificant names, and uses a strange chronology that makes the book both hard to follow and a bit sleepy at times.

Disorganized

Although this book provides a lot of detail from Canadian perspective pre-war of 1812, it repeats itself, verbatim To the point of distraction.

This book truly feels like extracts from the authors doctoral thesis; compiled into a book to make a little extra money.

Poorly written. Poorly organized, not compelling for any thing other than random perspectives from people living at the time.

Note: the author does explain that this is not a military history but I still expected a more linear timeline based on strategies and tactics to help me understand The time frame Better. Jumping around with random although interesting information is not helpful