Hegemonic peaces: The domestic moral economy of national ideology and national interest. Great Britain and the United States in 1812 and 1846.

Abstract

Contrary to the wide-held assumption in the field of International Relations that countries have quite similar national interests, I find out that states form very distinct conceptualizations of national interest that reflect the particularity of each countries' experience as a nation. Moreover, I find out that countries view their security environment not by assessing the predisposition of their potential adversaries, which is another assumption in security studies, but through the domestically defined national interest. It is the economic interests, ideology, and popular culture within a nation that define that nation's national interest through the production of a hegemonic ideology. An ideology, from among many, becomes the national hegemonic ideology of a country by transforming the ethical beliefs of the people so as to conform to the interests of the most powerful socioeconomic groups in the country. This process of redefining morality assuages people's everyday concerns while presenting the existing political and economic structure in the country as legitimate. The national interest is a distillation of a country's national hegemonic ideology. I examined the evolution of the national ideologies in the United States and Great Britain from the 1790s through the 1812 and 1846, in order to explain why the two countries fought a war in 1812 but solved their next diplomatic dispute in 1846 amicably. I found that in early 1800 the American ethos of republican virtue painted Great Britain as a pre-eminent enemy, which necessitated the declaration of the War of 1812. By 1846, the popular belief in the U.S. in Anglo-Saxon superiority made Americans discount the need to confront Great Britain militarily over Oregon due to the two countries' common Anglo-Saxon heritage. By early 1800, Great Britain' reconfigured morality of British patriotism had the unintended effect of portraying the U.S. as an enemy. By 1846, the ethos of evangelical free trade in Britain had persuaded the nation to practice pacifism abroad, including over the disputed Oregon territory.