Thanks, your a really pal. On the American side the war could be a Congressional Pork Barrel Project. In Britain it could just be Pig Headedness. In Canada the Canadian Bacon industry was sizzling hot over American tariffs. I'll see what I can do about the course of fighting, so we'll see if this pig can fly.
'1859 Pig War' leads to an Actual War Between the British Empire and United States?
- Thread starter Iron_Lord
- Start date
Thanks, your a really pal. On the American side the war could be a Congressional Pork Barrel Project. In Britain it could just be Pig Headedness. In Canada the Canadian Bacon industry was sizzling hot over American tariffs. I'll see what I can do about the course of fighting, so we'll see if this pig can fly.
Ficboy
Banned
Well on the Wikipedia page of one British officer and some books there was talk of sending a full blown military force to San Juan Island to beat the Americans.
The whole thing could be as simple as the Admiralty including in Rear-Admiral Baynes's instructions that he should place himself at the disposal of James Douglas, unsuspecting that Douglas is a serious hawk who will tell Baynes to clear the island off by force. Follow that with a tit-for-tat border incursion into Canada by American vigilantes , and you're getting into the space where a couple of extra misunderstandings could push the powers over into a war that neither of them really wants. It's certainly nowhere near as implausible as people keep suggesting.
Personally, I think its clear that modern campaigns of occupation operate under such completely different technological and ideological circumstances that trying to infer any parallels between the two are impossible. Interesting, though, that you choose not to infer from your example that the U.S. couldn't hold Canada in any meaningful sense, thereby negating its only advantage in land warfare.
The problem is that only one side is posting actual numbers, whereas the other is relying on far-reaching claims about "things work differently for the United States". For instance:
Why? There's no reason why the US should have a perfectly equitable distribution of every important natural resource - not least because its size means that such deposits might go undiscovered or be otherwise inaccessible. It's like arguing that 'it's borderline absurd to argue that Europe lacks common substances like oil'. It also takes the rather simplistic, almost Minecraft-based assumption that iron is iron. In fact, we know from the detail of the US struggles to replicate British Marshall iron during the Civil War that factors such as the content of phosphorous and the distribution of slag particles makes a considerable difference - and that the US is going to have to go to a phenomenal amount of trouble to establish that whatever ore they find has these properties before they even attempt to work out if the deposit is large enough to make its exploitation worthwhile.
Moreover, you're ignoring the other side of the coin: that Britain isn't equivalent to a small European country economically. We're talking here about a power that a few years before produced two-thirds of the world's supply of coal and half its iron and cotton.
Again, the sober look with actual figures is coming from only one perspective. The jingoistic posters arguing that their country can survive having 50% of its export trade cut off, that it can simply replace British imports in a way it completely failed to do historically despite both strategic imperatives and a tariff policy geared towards domestic production, or refusing to admit that the realities of distance, logistics and internal communication are somewhat different to their preconceptions - they're all on one side. These debates about potential Anglo-American wars would fizzle out in a matter of minutes if the people advocating the cause of the US were prepared to admit basic historical realities like 'training soldiers makes them better at fighting,' 'it's a bad idea to go to war with the person who sells you guns,' and 'just because you have a lot of natural resources doesn't mean you have all the ones you need at the drop of a hat'.
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So how quickly are you expecting the US to start exploiting these natural resources? And what is the country to do in the meantime to defend itself?
And, to rebut the obvious response, no, I'm not suggesting that Britain is going to occupy the whole of the US. But there are plenty of things the British can do to harm the US with the forces they already have/can raise in the early stages of the war. They can occupy or blockade key trading ports; launch raids to destroy important industrial centres (which would also slow the US' attempts to get enough equipment for its armies); support Confederate rebels in the South; support a slave rebellion in the South; seize some coastal ports in the South and offer freedom to any slave who can get there; give weapons and aid to Indian tribes to help them fight off US settlers; occupy the west coast (which would be feasible, there weren't many people living there); and probably loads of other things, as well.
Very well said. I've argued in this, and other threads that an Anglo/American war after 1815 makes little to no sense for ether side. They'd just be hurting each other, for little gain. It only made sense for each of them to get out of the others way. In the 19th Century the United States was interested in Western expansion, and internal economic development. Becoming a Pacific Power was their long term goal. The British were interested in the European balance of power, expansion in India, and increasing their global commercial power. There was some overlap in commerce, but no major conflict of interest.
I disagree... I think thr US wins and wins handily.
Remember that during the American Civil War, the Union managed to raise, arm, train, equip and deploy nearly two million men. Toss in another million from the South here.
The entire reason the UK formed Canada was they saw how rapidly the US went from no army to one of the largest and best equipped on the planet, and they feared what would happen if the US dared to do to British North America what we had just done to Dixie.
The same issues that always pop up with Anglo-American Wars occur here. Britian is a naval power burdened with maintaining a global empire and keeping a lid on Europe. America meanwhile can throw everything it has into the fight.
Britain will get some licks in, especially in naval matters, but they are held back that they cannot risk Bombay or Cape Town for Toronto.
Sort of like the American Civil War, every month the war goes on, it will increasingly favor the Union, as they raise more and more troops and the factories really get moving.
Remember that during the American Civil War, the Union managed to raise, arm, train, equip and deploy nearly two million men. Toss in another million from the South here.
The entire reason the UK formed Canada was they saw how rapidly the US went from no army to one of the largest and best equipped on the planet, and they feared what would happen if the US dared to do to British North America what we had just done to Dixie.
The same issues that always pop up with Anglo-American Wars occur here. Britian is a naval power burdened with maintaining a global empire and keeping a lid on Europe. America meanwhile can throw everything it has into the fight.
Britain will get some licks in, especially in naval matters, but they are held back that they cannot risk Bombay or Cape Town for Toronto.
Sort of like the American Civil War, every month the war goes on, it will increasingly favor the Union, as they raise more and more troops and the factories really get moving.
I mean, the obvious thing that they can do is to make it practically impossible for the US to invade Canada. With c.50,000 regulars supported by c.100,000 Canadian militia, and with sufficient time to fortify key areas like Queenston Heights and Montreal, the British can force the US to look at raising an army of 300,000 - 400,000 just to have a chance of making gains in Canada. Under those circumstances, without the key strategic resources that Britain provides, and with the blockade likely to increase in severity, the probability is that the US cuts its losses and asks for peace. The whole point is to end the war by putting the US in a position where coming to the negotiating table is a no-brainer, with the added bonus that impressing the US with Britain's ability to defend Canada decreases the likelihood that Britain will ever have to actually fight to protect it.
Who's threatening Bombay or Cape Town in 1859? Is the US willing to risk New York, or Boston, or Portland, for possibly holding Toronto for six months until the peace deal? Is Georgia willing to have men killed to bring another few free states into the Union?
No it didn't.
Toss them in the bin, more like: peak Southern deployment in the summer of 1863 was less than 400,000 men (1, 2, 3) This "the US can field three million men" claim came up two weeks ago - do people now see what I mean about "if the people advocating the cause of the US were prepared to admit basic historical realities"?
The idea of the British occupying centers of American production is just silly. The British Army isn't going to capture the greater NYC region, or Boston, or Philadelphia, or Pittsburg, or Springfield, or Harpers Ferry, or Norfolk, or Richmond. Their not capturing, Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans, Detroit, Albany, Baltimore, or Washington. So the British are going to be trying to support a Southern Succession movement, while at the same time supporting a slave rebellion? In 1859 the Great White Mother will give Enfield's to all the American Indians, then they'll all join up in a new Confederation, and go on the warpath? In 1860 California had 380,000 people, Oregon over 52,000, Washington territory over 11,000. The British could land somewhere on the West Coast, but not occupy it. The things your talking about are just not realistic.
Ficboy
Banned
Britain would likely occupy any nearby American towns and cities that were close to the Canadian border such as Rochester, Augusta and Detroit in an Anglo-American War. If there is even a Southern secession, the Anglo-Canadians would support it albeit for pragmatic reasons specifically to weaken and split the Union in two.
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This issue comes almost perennially to who is precisely going to attack British interests in the period?
Russia has just gotten a treaty neutering their influence in the Med and discovered it's army was woefully deficient at fighting a contemporary European opponent.
Prussia/Austria are both mired in German issues. Austria is about to get involved in the Second War of Italian Independence, and Napoleon III is also looking for more war in Italy. So the only real maritime opponent Britain had in this period, France, is a non-starter.
The Indian Mutiny has been broken, and the only sources of unrest in India put down pretty brutally.
China can't fight Britain, and in 1860 Britain will put 10,000 men ashore and remind them of this fact, burning the Summer Palace to drive the point home.
So there's not really anything to 'keep a lid on' in the period in question. I tend to find this stance that "Britain has to keep a lid on the Empire" objectionable simply because no one ever really points out what burning fire will involve more British effort than a war in North America.
But like the question has been raised before, by arming them with what weapons and producing with what resources? None of these points are raised maliciously, just we have the pretty concrete evidence that the American economy was well behind that of Britain in a lot of fundamental technical ways, from relying on Bessemer produced iron from Brighton, to importing hundreds of thousands of tons of even rail iron to substitute their own industry and then saltpeter because the United States didn't have the large powder industry the more militarized European nations had. The economic imbalance is just very acute and it works against the US in the same way it worked against the Confederacy.
Ficboy
Banned
Britain already has the same resources as America but its an continent spanning empire. Most of the volunteers would be Canadians aside from some exceptions.
Personally I think modern campaigns of occupation show very much how "different technological and ideological circumstances" don't change that the deciding variables are number of occupying soldiers per person and number of occupying soldiers per area. I imagine were the U.S. to for some reason try to occupy Canada, they'd concentrate that occupation almost entirely in Southern Ontario. Which is small enough in area and population that occupation would be hypothetically possible.
This is twisting my words, I said common minerals and I meant that very specifically. Oil being the result of biological activity is geographically concentrated the same way rubber is. Iron, which is a very common mineral can be found in some supply anywhere that isn't a volcanic island. Various kinds of nitrates can come from mineral sources or organic ones, so likewise is fairly widely distributed, at least for this era's uses.
At what point have I ever ignored this? I've said repeatedly the U.S. has no way of punching at the British center of gravity. What I have implied, and here will straight up say is that Britain and the very nascent white dominions can between them assemble a force of what 4,000,000 men completely maxed out? Once you take into consideration that all these people will never be called up all at once, that they have to be supplied logistically and all the various need to garrison various out of theater areas and training and disease and all the other ways soldiers are waylaid, you'll have an effective field force of maybe 1,000,000 men max. That's enough to win the war, possibly, maybe even probably, but the expense of funding such a war, and the difficulty of managing it will break the Empire irreparably the same way WW1 did. And if you're going to accuse me of jingoism, the same thing applies to the U.S., I wouldn't expect the U.S. to be in any kind of shape to go on a foreign adventures for at least a generation.
Countries can, and have, survived and effectively fought in situations much worse than losing 50% of their exports. Once again my argument is simple: the British do not have the military forces to win a decisive victory in the short run. In the long run, the British have quite a few advantages (access to world markets, a slightly large population, a larger professional army) and the U.S. has some disadvantages (need to get local resource supplies up and running, the blockade), but the British also have the key disadvantage of fighting an offensive war against a foe with superior internal lines of transport and communication.
I swear, somewhere there's some American jingoistic shitposter who's just fucking with you guys for fun. Yes the American economy has deficiencies, are these more crippling than any other industrial power has faced since 1800? No. Can the U.S. win this war by grinding down the British until the British run out of manpower? Possibly. Can the U.K. win the war by grinding down the Americans until the Americans run out of manpower? Slightly more probably. Does either side have a way to win this war that isn't literally depopulating the military-age cohorts of their opponents? No. Unless we want to get into jingoistic arguments that a Briton is manlier than an American or vice-versa, I have no reason to believe that popular support on either side is going to fold like a house of cards. So once again - endless quagmire fought to exhaustion. A shitty pointless war if ever there was one.
This is not the same as:
Jumping from one to the other does not enhance credibility. You have good arguments to use, you don’t need to build straw men.
Well, there are a couple crimes against humanity.
Just look what I'm responding to, it's that "once the factories get going" which is the problem. It's been pointed out before that Britain is actively exporting the iron used by these factories and even owns the express means of mass producing it.
It's technical problems which would involve, at minimum, months of retooling, disassembly and reignition of production using purely local sources, which isn't a simple task. Half a year would be my bet, and that's half a year where the US is almost certainly stuck with what it has to hand. That's not insurmountable, but it certainly puts the ball in the British court when in any scenario we're looking at the Americans can't really afford it.
Mind you, I do really agree with the meat of what you're saying. The Americans can't really hit any of the British centers of power. They could march all the way to the gates of Quebec and still be no closer to winning the war from the British perspective. Meanwhile, the British have no realistic hope of doing much beyond destroying American naval yards and crippling their economy through the slow laborious process of blockade and causing the Federal government to read the balance sheet and blanch that they're losing more money than they can hope to make out of winning. The British though, outside a 'so-crazy-it-just-might-work' attack on Washington, don't have a way to really win the war quickly either. It would be an annoyingly grinding pointless war until someone cries uncle. As has been said, Britain and the US never went to war for very practical reasons, and you'd need a big threshold of misunderstanding to get it to happen.
Ficboy
Banned
I mean the Pig War would have evolved into a serious conflict had Robert L. Baynes complied with the orders to attack American soldiers near San Juan Island.
You can't make Canada impervious to invasion. It's not a WWI, or WWII type of war with continuous fronts. Parts of Canada are just indefensible, most notably the area north of Lake Erie, between Detroit, and Buffalo. The American captured some of this territory in the War of 1812. The British need to cover the lines of approach to Montreal, and Quebec. Just as in 1759 Quebec is the key to all of Canada, and will be the focus of British strategy. Everything West of Montreal is of marginal value, and will receive minimal defense forces. The Americans would first secure the area North of Lake Erie, and move around, and across Lake Ontario, to secure Toronto, and Kingston. Geography just works against the Canadians.
Please explain how the British can capture, or destroy New York, or Boston? The confusion about how many troops the United States can put in the field is the number of men who served between 1861-65. That's not all at one time, and some enlistments might be for the same person serving more then one tour of duty. Saying that the actual number is enormous. The British Army is also very large, but it has global commitments, and can't all be used in North America. Canada has limited resources of it's own.
Please explain how the British destroy American Shipyards? Please explain how the British attack Washington DC? If the British don't care if the Americans take Canada, they might as well join the United States.
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So many period links and peer reviewed sources later and you still make this claim? Sheesh.
Also, geography doesn't work against the Canadians as much as you presume. A period map (1863) shows that the British ability to concentrate along the St. Lawrence frontier is just that much greater than the Americans. The Union have precisely one railhead at Ogdensburgh to move men to, while the British can move men on the rivers, interior lines through Ottawa, and the Grand Trunk RR itself. Then further south the only advantage in geography the Americans have is what lets them cross the Niagara and the Detroit frontiers, they have to extemporize a flotilla to support anything more because the geography of Lake Ontario works against an invader.
The major American shipyards at New Orleans, Norfolk, Portsmouth and New York are some of the worst defended. The possible exception is Norfolk to this because I don't know whether it's circa 1861 armaments were the same in 1859. There were existing defences, but many were not fully armed or upgraded in this period. The defences of Portsmouth were practically empty, and most of the major fortifications in the United States were lacking their full armament, and the entire northern frontier is barren of any fortification which might even charitably be described as marginal. A steam powered British fleet would be able to engage these defences with relative impunity or (in the case of New Orleans) sail past them without consequence. If Norfolk and Fort Monroe fall to the British, Washington is open to attack and almost as defenceless as it was in 1814.
And I never said the British don't care if the US take Canada? It's the simple truth that the Americans could get to the gates of Quebec and they would be no closer to winning the war from the British perspective. Basically, even if the Americans can put Quebec under siege, they'll still be blockaded, Britain can muster a relief flotilla and force to drive them away, and still be in a position to demand it all back at the peace table for political, military, and economic reasons.
If the only way for the US to clearly win is to take, and hold, Canada first, and one wants to show the US clearly winning, then anything that shows that that won't or can't happen must be ignored.
(edited to be clear it's the idea I'm arguing against)
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