Review of Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 by Faye M. Ker

Bannerman, Gordon

English

Scholars Commons

Canadian Military History
Volume 25 | Issue 2 Article 4
11-4-2016
“Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of
1812 (Book Review)” by Faye M. Kert
Gordon Bannerman
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Recommended Citation
Bannerman, Gordon (2016) "“Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Book Review)” by Faye M. Kert," Canadian
Military History: Vol. 25: Iss. 2, Article 4.
Available at: http://scholars.wlu.ca/cmh/vol25/iss2/4
  5c a n a d i a n  m i l i ta ry  h i s t o ry
Faye M. Kert, Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812. 
Baltimore, MD: John Hopkins University Press, 2015. Pp. 224.
In recent years, historical work on the nature of the public-private 
partnership underpinning the fiscal-military state, and the role of 
merchant-contractors within it, have reached such a pitch that the 
term ‘the Contractor State’ has emerged as a scholarly concept. 
Privateering has received rather less attention. It is the purpose 
of Faye M. Kert’s Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 
1812 to remedy this deficiency. By examining the legal and political 
infrastructure and the economic imperatives and incentives behind 
privateering operations, Kert’s work complements recent research 
into the close and often militarily vital links between commercial 
activities and military operations. Drawing on a wide range of 
material, albeit with justifiable emphasis towards North American 
archives, Kert includes detailed geographic data on private vessels 
and number of prizes in the appendix and the bibliographical 
‘Essay on Sources’ accompanying each chapter testifies to the rigor, 
breadth and depth of scholarship. A prodigious body of empirical 
research is distilled into a concise and pointed account that will 
appeal to scholars, military professionals, and educated laymen 
alike (pp. 191-198).
The book is a lively account of an under-researched topic. In a field 
dominated by voluminous histories of naval battles, Grand Strategy, 
and the impact of new technology, privateering has often appeared 
as a sideshow to more important themes and events. Recent work on 
Salem indicates that belated attention is now being paid to it, albeit 
from slightly outside established scholarly circles.  The author has 
previously written about the inter-related mercantile communities of 
Canadian colonial privateers and her scholarly credentials are fully 
displayed by her carefully plotted account, underscored by crisp, 
clear prose and rigorous analysis. Six concise chapters examining 
different aspects of privateering during the war are book-ended by a 
commendably brief but incisive introduction and conclusion locating 
the subject within the wider history of the war. The divisions and 
rivalries between American states and their diverse geo-political and 
economic objectives provide important historical context allowing for 
measured evaluation of the granular detail of privateering operations. 
The legal, ethical, and philosophical framework is well drawn, 
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6 Book Reviews
accompanied by coherent and often colourful descriptions, though 
Kert commendably resists the temptation to romanticise her subject.
Privateering was a wartime activity with medieval antecedents, 
created and legally sanctioned by maritime states to protect and 
defend commerce from enemy attack. It was initiated by a declaration 
of war followed by a Prize Act. A Letter of Marque, effectively a 
governmental licence, differentiated privateering from piracy, its 
disreputable and unruly relation, in stipulating ships were to be 
legally “subdued, seized and taken”. As a temporary economic 
weapon privateering was deceptively anarchic, and was in fact highly-
regulated and prescribed by international law. The evolution of its 
legal and operational infrastructure was accompanied by theoretical 
justification with writers such as Vattel accepting that warring nations 
had the right to deprive their enemies of the means of waging war. 
Yet privateering sat uneasily alongside the rights of neutral states. 
The age-old debate on neutral versus belligerent rights assumed 
particular importance for the United States during the Revolutionary 
and Napoleonic wars, with British Orders-in-Council, legislative acts 
restraining international trade, and a constant threat to neutral 
shipping. While extolling the orthodox view that with repeal of the 
legislation, the 1812 war was an “unnecessary conflict” Kert correctly 
holds that the rationale for the war in American minds, exorcised by 
commercial restraints and naval impressment, of ‘Free Trade and 
Sailors’ Rights’ was a powerful one.
By the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, the 
capability of privateers was arguably greater, for larger armed forces 
not only meant greater military capability and strength but increased 
vulnerability. In 1812, the scale and scope of privateering was 
indeed impressive. Both sides inflicted and suffered losses but with 
638 American privateers, mostly operating out of Massachusetts, 
Maryland, New York, and Maine, against 45 British privateers, mostly 
from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, Britain faced potentially 
catastrophic losses. Presciently predicting the nature and course of 
the war, Thomas Jefferson stated in August 1812 that Britain’s fleet 
would “annihilate our public force on the water, but our privateers will 
eat out the vitals of their commerce” (p. 70). Kert demonstrates the 
weaknesses for a commercial nation conducting a maritime war, with 
extensive British losses reflected in insurance rates 30 percent higher 
in 1815 than in 1812 (p. 15). Equally, despite the cost of converting 
merchant ships into privateers the prospect of potential gains appear 
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  7c a n a d i a n  m i l i ta ry  h i s t o ry
to have been worth the risk for many ship-owners, investors, and crew. 
Privateering required an intricate legal and administrative structure 
consisting of multiple officials and jurisdictions in adjudicating and 
presiding over prize claims. Revenue duties and legal costs diminished 
profit margins but Kert convincingly demonstrates that prize capture 
remained profitable especially early in the war.
The damage American privateers inflicted on British commerce 
was not sustained, for the naval blockade of New England in early 
1813 and compulsory convoys curbed early successes and halted 
American maritime traffic. The hordes of privateers at sea during the 
first six months of the war steadily dwindled thereafter. Privateering 
was only viable so long as there were ships to capture and money to be 
made, and the clear corollary between perceptions of profitability and 
number of active privateers underlines the view that profit generally 
trumped patriotism, and as the war developed “the combined risk of 
physical and financial loss proved a powerful deterrent” (p. 110). Only 
16 of 600 American vessels renewed their commissions throughout 
1812-1814. The ideal scenario of swift, non-violent capture by a 
larger force with easily achieved gains was atypical. Only a handful 
made fortunes; thousands more ended up injured, imprisoned, or 
dead. The vicissitudes of privateering, including accidents, disease, 
incompetence, ill-discipline, and insubordination all impinged on 
operations, and successful vessels and crew faced a constant threat of 
capture, destruction, and ruin.
The complexity of the subject often means that broad generalities 
are fraught with difficulty. For example, the strategic value of 
privateering is difficult to ascertain and Kert provides somewhat 
contradictory evidence. The absence of coordination with the Navy 
limited the strategic importance of privateering but seizure of goods 
always had the potential to undermine the enemy, and was a powerful 
and legitimate weapon against a commercial nation. The capture of 
a British transport ship in 1814 loaded with military items intended 
for the British fleet at Lake Ontario was a case in point, representing 
“a major setback for the British war effort on the Great Lakes” (p. 
133). Kert’s argument that privateer activity helped convince Britain 
that war was too costly is underpinned by the reasonable assumption 
that the small us navy would not have been able to prolong the war 
“had privateers not kept the war at sea alive” (p. 147). Yet Kert 
concedes that while episodically significant, the overall strategic value 
of privateering was highly-variable and somewhat limited. Indeed, the 
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Bannerman: Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Book Review)
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8 Book Reviews
commercial and strategic imperatives could work the other way, with 
the search for profits leading to extensive smuggling, and American 
merchants seizing the opportunity to supply British troops during the 
Peninsular War.
While somewhat implicit within the text, Kert may have 
considered privateering more closely alongside elements of ‘informal’ 
warfare. Recent work on logistics and provisioning has demonstrated 
the importance of non-military actors towards military operations. 
With a clearer understanding of the multi-faceted relationship between 
mercantile activity, in its many guises, and warfare, the ‘business 
of war’ has never been more pronounced in historical scholarship. 
Despite this conceptual omission, by offering new insights based 
on meticulous research, Kert convincingly accords long-overdue 
recognition and commensurate historical significance to her subject 
as a vital element of military activity in the war of 1812. Privateering 
appears in the guise of innovative entrepreneurship, albeit of an 
unpredictable, dangerous and potentially violent and destructive 
character. While the insightful biographical aspects may have been 
taken even further, the importance of human agency is forcefully and 
convincingly reiterated. In that sense, the book complements recent 
work on the economics of warfare in acknowledging the intricate 
blend of public and private interests, in addition to and alongside 
regular armies and navies, of militarized societies at war in the 
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.1 More broadly, the role of the 
Canadian dimension of the war in forging future Canadian identity 
ensures that the work is an important addition to existing literature 
on the historical legacy of warfare and the continuing reverberations 
of the 1812 war in the popular consciousness of Canada’s ‘collective 
memory.’
Gordon Bannerman, International Correspondence Schools Ltd.
1  Roger Knight and Martin Wilcox, Sustaining the Fleet, 1793-1815: War, the 
British Navy and the Contractor State (Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK: The Boydell 
Press, 2010); Janet MacDonald, The British Navy’s Victualling Board, 1793-1815: 
management competence and incompetence (Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell 
Press, 2010); David Parrott, The Business of War: Military Enterprise and Military 
Revolution in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 
2012).  
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“Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Book Review)” by Faye M. Kert

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“Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812 (Book Review)” by Faye M. Kert

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