The American Embargo, 1807-1809, Vol. 8 (Classic Reprint): With Particular Reference to Its Effect on Industry - Softcover

Excerpt from The American Embargo, 1807-1809, Vol. 8: With Particular Reference to Its Effect on Industry

The instinct of the American people has always been averse to war. Whenever a serious national crisis provocative of war has threatened and diplomatic methods have failed, the tendency of the American people has been to resort to measures of commercial coercion rather than to armed force. The philosophy underlying such action is clear enough: since the most fruitful cause of oppressive conduct among nations is the desire for economic advantage in some form or other, the remedy of a peaceful people is to be found in the application of an economic counter-irritant more powerful than the original exciting cause. If there be a fallacy in this position, it is dual in character. In the first place, the economic weapon is always two-edged and, in a world closely knit together by commercial and financial ties, may inflict more injury upon the people wielding it than upon the power against which it is directed. Secondly, it is based upon too naive an assumption. Granting that the roots of oppression are generally economic in character, any effort to combat that oppression by economic means is likely to arouse nationalistic feelings and instincts that entirely transform the nature of the dispute. Thus economic coercion loses its efficacy as a pacific weapon and leads inevitably to the appeal to arms that it was designed to prevent.

Americans first used economic coercion on a widespread scale in the ten years' controversy preceding the outbreak of the War for Independence. The non-importation and non-consumption regulations of the colonists during the Grenville and Townshend acts proved successful in bringing about modifications of British policy; but the more comprehensive boycott adopted in the later years of the controversy touched deeply British national pride and helped to precipitate the war.