The War of 1812 - Essay Example

The War of 1812 is an armed conflict between the United States (including some territories of modern Canada) and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in the times of the Napoleonic Wars. The issue of the war was multiple and mostly was concerning economic problems between the countries. Among them were economic restrictions for American merchants on British territory, the complicity of trading conditions, and eventually, the main reason was the aspiration of the United States to become free from dependency on Britain. As far as Britain was busy with paying attention to Napoleon and his actions British authorities had to give up on their fighting for American colonies and this laid the main fundamentals of the United States as a young independent country. Ever since then the economic growth of the US started increasing rapidly.

First of all, the consequences of the war were quite ambivalent. On the one hand, Americans had great losses and demolition on their territory but on the other hand, they got huge economic compensation. Historical and economic researches stated that even though it is impossible to count the certain cost of losses still the United States got great economic impulse as their market became independent from foreign colonialists (Hickey 1989). In addition, the US got compensation from the United Kingdom which definitely increased national funds.

With the opening of the boundaries between the USA and the rest of the world economic growth started increasing rapidly. American merchants increased the number of their trading operations and it pushed the development of different industries. Thus, the production of goods grew and the national economy started to develop faster.
Furthermore, except for the economic independence the United States got from the war if to take a look at the consequences of the war to broaden we can see some great social-economic changes.

The war led to the start of the changes from the feudal system with its slavery to a more capitalistic formation of the state. Evidently, the decrease of the level of slavery by releasing and escape of a big amount of slaves during the war caused certain problems (as slave-owners were deeply unsatisfied with that). But in wider consideration, this had laid the framework of American capitalism and the development of the open market system which later made the US one of the most powerful economic states in the world.
The War of 1812 caused great changes not only in American society and strengthened the US political status but also laid crucial fundamentals of the country’s economy.