PAPER Topics

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Over the course of the French revolutionary and the Napoleonic wars between France and Great Britain (1793-1815), both belligerents violated the maritime rights of neutral powers. The United States, endeavoring to market its own produce, was es ....

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... in council to blockade the coastlines of the Napoleonic empire and then seized vessels bound for Europe that did not first call at a British port. Napoleon retaliated with a similar system of blockades under the Berlin and Milan decrees, confiscating vessels and cargoes in European ports if they had first stopped in Britain. Collectively, the belligerents seized nearly 1500 American vessels between 1803 and 1812, thus posing the problem of whether the United States should go to war to defend its neutral rights. Americans at first prepared to respond with economic coercion rather than war. At the urging of President Thomas Jefferson, Congress ...