IV. Anthony Merry and the Anglo-American Dispute about Impressment, 1803–6

Abstract

It is a traditional view among historians that nothing so be-devilled Anglo-American relations in their early days as the British wartime practice of impressing seamen. True, the British never asserted any right to impress persons who were not British subjects, but on the other hand such persons often claimed to be American citizens, and it was frequently very difficult to determine whether they really were so or not. Moreover, alleged British subjects were pursued by the Royal Navy on to neutral ships, not only in British ports and waters but also on the high seas, as well as on to British merchant ships and privateers, even when these were lying in neutral harbours. Finally, American naturalization papers were not respected by the British before 1870; until then the rule was, ‘once a British subject always a British subject’. The result was that, according to American official estimates, at least 2410 genuine Americans were impressed by the British between 1792 and 1802, and a further 6057 between 1802 and the beginning of 1812. The latter figure is probably an underestimate, and the grand total of impressed men for whom some colour of American citizenship existed may perhaps reach 10,000. Very many contemporary Americans believed it to be five or six times as much—with no shadow of doubt about the citizenship—but most American historians would now admit that such beliefs were ill-founded.