Synopses & Reviews
Lasting for over twenty years, the conflict described in Pig War is more than the story of how a dispute between a burgeoning imperial power and an empire on the wane was resolved. This book gives us insight into the strategies that Washington would use in its future conquest of foreign markets. Pig War marks the emergence of a new national superpower from out of a dispute over a contested colonial territory. This work is essential reading for those interested in nineteenth century American and British history, the history of foreign diplomacy and Western imperial history.
Synopsis
Very few people have heard of the 'Pig War, ' since this episode in American history was overshadowed by the U.S. Civil War and the beginning of mass immigration from Europe. Yet this diplomatic conflict between the United States and Great Britain, resulting from the shooting of a single pig, lasted more than twenty years, and greatly impacted the relationship between the two nations. Scott Kaufman carefully examines, and places into both an American and an international context, the origins and the resolution of this tense stand-off over contested colonial territory. His story not only reveals a tense dispute between a burgeoning imperial power and a waning empire but also highlights the changing Reconstruction-era U.S. national ideology, foreign diplomacy, and control over foreign markets. The Pig War contributes greatly to nineteenth-century American and British diplomatic history and sheds new light on the emergence of the United States as an international superpower