The Hemp War of 1812

“Herer's most expansive historical claim: that the War of 1812 was primarily fought over access to Russian hemp, and that Napoleon's invasion of Russia had the same commercial motivation. The argument is colorful and not completely wrong.”

Chapter 11 of The Emperor Wears No Clothes is titled 'The Hemp War of 1812 and Napoleon Invades Russia.' It is one of Herer's most sweeping historical claims: that the War of 1812, fought by the United States against Britain, was primarily motivated by American need for access to Russian cannabis hemp, the primary material for naval rope, rigging, and sail canvas, which Britain's naval blockade had cut off.

The historical evidence for hemp's economic importance in this period is real. The Royal Navy's demand for hemp was enormous, a single warship required dozens of tons of hemp rope, and hemp's primary source was Russia. British control of the seas threatened American access to this supply. The Congress of 1812 debated commercial grievances alongside the impressment of American sailors that was the stated cause.

Whether hemp was the primary cause of the war, as Herer claims, is a different question. Military historians have generally concluded that the war had multiple causes, trade rights, impressment, British support for Native American resistance to American expansion, Canadian territorial ambitions, and that reducing it to any single commercial motive overstates the case.

But Herer's broader point, that hemp was so commercially essential in the pre-industrial era that wars were fought over its supply, is documented in the naval and commercial records. The British Navy's dependence on Russian hemp, the Russian hemp trade's importance in European diplomacy, and the American colonies' early hemp cultivation as both commercial and strategic activity are all historical facts.

The War of 1812 chapter is Herer doing what he does throughout the book: assembling real historical evidence for a conclusion that the evidence supports but doesn't exclusively determine. Hemp mattered enormously to the early industrial world. The leap from 'mattered' to 'was the cause' is where his argument exceeds what the documents can bear.

Sources

• Herer, The Emperor Wears No Clothes (1985)
• Wikipedia, War of 1812
• Herer, Hemp for Victory chapter