On 22 June 1807, HMS Leopard hove to alongside USS Chesapeake with its guns primed and ready, despite being at peace. The British captain demanded he be let aboard the U.S. ship to examine the crew for British deserters. When the Americans refused, the British unleashed their broadsides, forcing the Chesapeake to surrender. British Marines paraded aboard the U.S. ship and hauled away four U.S. citizens to be tried for desertion from British service. They were each sentenced to receive 500 lashes, a de facto death sentence.[1] Of his treatment of the Chesapeake, the British captain wrote that he did “most sincerely deplore that any lives should have been lost in the execution of a service, which might have been adjusted more amicably.”[2] The bloodshed was regrettable but necessary to safeguard British rights.
Two hundred years later, in April 2017, in the international waters off Union Banks of the Spratly Islands, a Filipino fisherman cast his nets in the traditional fishing grounds to which he returned every year. However, Orlan Dumat noticed a grey-hulled naval ship approaching him. When it dispatched a speedboat, he became concerned, and when that speedboat began machine-gunning the outriggers and waters about his craft, he cut his anchor line and abandoned his nets to run as fast as his little ship would allow. Dumat later identified the vessels and uniforms of the aggressors as members of the Chinese Navy.[3]
While our forefathers rallied under the cries of “Free trade and sailors’ rights,” maritime tensions today focus on “Spratly rights” and the sovereignty of the rest of the South China Sea. By studying the similarities between Great Britain in the lead up to the War of 1812 and China today, the United States may gain insight into maintaining naval dominance. And, in considering how to respond to China’s claims of Spratly rights, the U.S. Navy would do well to remember its fledgling ancestor’s role in the war for “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”
Great Britain’s Evil Necessities
With Napoleon’s armies triumphant throughout much of Europe, the early 19th century British Royal Navy was the bulwark that kept the island nation free of invasion. It therefore needed every available man. Unfortunately, conditions aboard British naval vessels were such that volunteers were scarce.
For the common sailor, life on board a British ship was a miserable experience. Pay was meager, and it was withheld for months at a time, lest a man desert in foreign ports. Seamen were always confined to the ship and disease was common. The slightest infraction was met with the lash. As a result, desertion was rampant. Even so, the traditionalist Royal Navy refused to enact reform, and the British turned to impressment to maintain its manpower at sea.[4]
Officers led gangs of men—themselves previously impressed—in hunts through port cities in search of merchantmen, other sailors, or otherwise healthy men. Once found, these men could be instantly torn from families or occupations by bribery, trickery, and violence. Of greatest importance was securing men with prior sailing experience, frequently proved by the state of their tar-stained and rope-callused hands.[5]
Opinions on the practice varied. Parliamentarian and War Clerk Philip Francis wrote, “I lament the unhappy necessity, whenever it arises, of providing for the safety of the state, by a temporary invasion of the personal liberty of the subject.”[6] Others were glibber. Admiral Phillip Cavendish said of impressed seaman that “they are all Voluntiers [sic] as soon as they find they can’t get away.”[7] But all were in agreement that, as a necessary evil, it was the right of Great Britain to impress British seamen wherever they could be found, at home or abroad, even on board ships of another state. Judge Sir Michael Foster described the matter when sentencing a murderer of a press-gang member: “The Practice of Pressing is one of the Mischiefs War bringeth with it . . . And as no greater Calamity can befall Us than to be weak and defenceless [sic] at Sea in a time of War, so I do not know that the Wisdom of the Nation hath hitherto found out any Method of Manning our Navy, less Inconvenient than Pressing; and at the same time, equally Sure and Effectual.”[8]
Even the pressgangs, however could not fulfill Great Britain’s desperate need for sailors. As a result, it expanded impressment to neutral ships on the high seas. The greatest target were vessels of the United States, many of them merchantmen. James Stephen, MP, articulated the common belief: “The worst consequences, perhaps, of the independence and growing commerce of America is the seduction of our seaman.”[9] Indeed, the British feared, with some justification, that the high wages offered by U.S. ships had tapped into the base greed of British seaman, overcoming their patriotic loyalties. It was a British right to take them back.
British effrontery was only increased by the United States’ commerce with France. America held that “free vessels made free goods,” meaning a neutral state should be free to trade with whichever combatant it pleased.[10] U.S. ships brought much-needed raw materials and trade goods to the ports of blockaded France. For the British, the concept of free trade was intolerable. “The illegality of this commerce is as certain as its mischievous tendencies. That to engage in it is to interpose in the war, for the purpose of rescuing our enemy from the pressure of our superior naval force.”[11] To curtail the practice, the British government enacted the Orders in Council, a set of economic restrictions on international trade. “The most egregious of the Orders were issued on 11 November 1807, requiring all neutral shipping to pass through a British port, obtain a license, and pay a duty before proceeding to any port in Napoleonic Europe, making all neutral goods more expensive than Britain’s own.”[12] Any goods without the proper paperwork could be seized by the blockading Royal Navy. Thus, the stopping of U.S. vessels on the high seas became a vital matter of national security for two purposes: to claim (or reclaim in the case of deserters) trained seamen for the Royal Navy and to halt the illegal trade with Great Britain’s enemies.
China’s Blue National Soil
As with Great Britain’s fervor for impressment as both a necessity and right, modern-day China relies on national security and sovereignty to lay claim to the South China Sea. China’s Foreign Ministry department recently declared that “China has indisputable sovereignty over Nanhai Zhudao (South China Sea) and the adjacent waters. China firmly safeguards its territorial sovereignty and maritime rights and interests.”[13]
The Chinese claims are based on historical precedent, and to better understand the legal implications of their argument, it is helpful to briefly analyze the state of international maritime law today, namely the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). UNCLOS establishes a 12-nautical-mile (nm) territorial sea from the shores of sovereign territory, meaning that with few exceptions, the coastal state has exclusive power over those waters. It also creates a 200-nm exclusive economic zone (EEZ) from the shores of sovereign territory in which only the coastal state is allowed economic exploitation. Finally, a country may lay claim to a territorial sea beyond 12 nm if the area is “historic” waters. This includes the waters in an archipelago or large bay, such as Canada’s Hudson Bay. China claims the entirety of the South China Sea as its historic waters.[14]
China argues that its fishermen and merchantmen have traveled to the Spratlys and Paracels as far back as the second century BCE. Maps indicating these archipelagos as part of Chinese territory date to the tenth century CE. During the Ming dynasty in the early 15th century, official armadas were dispatched into the South China Sea to “[make] known the proclamations of the Son of Heaven, and spread aboard the knowledge of his majesty and virtue.”[15] These voyages established trade and tribute systems throughout the South China Sea and to Southeast Asia. For centuries following, Chinese ships plied these trade routes and often landed in the Paracels and Spratlys, as China considered them sovereign territory. Historian Marwyn Samuels wrote on the results of this long history: “Though hardly the exclusive preserve of Chinese shipping, it became a veritable Chinese lake. And, along the way, the islands of the [South China Sea] became important traffic-divides to delineate the southeastern water margin of China’s maritime sphere.”[16]
Into the modern era, China has widely published their views on the sovereignty of the South China Sea, most notably through the declaration of the Nine Dash Line. In 1947, China released a map which laid claim to the territory within a U-shaped series of lines enveloping the South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel islands. Eventually, the two westernmost lines covering the Gulf of Tonkin were removed, and the official stance became the Nine Dash Line of sovereignty over the South China Sea.[17]
China also rests on necessity to secure its national security in these waters. Vast amounts of Chinese raw material imports and trade exports flow through here. Likewise, control over these seas provides a military buffer for China’s most densely populated south. Without control of the South China Sea, China risks both its economic wellbeing and safety of its mainland. Indeed, Beijing has declared the South China Sea “blue national soil,” and like Great Britain’s relentless impressment, China has supported these claims by limiting the Freedom of the Seas, violating others’ maritime rights as a means of preserving its own.[18]
In 1974, China landed troops on the Paracel Islands and beat off a Vietnamese naval squadron to seize control of the island chain. This was followed by a battle for Johnson South Reef in 1988. More recently, in December 2016, a Chinese warship confronted USNS Bowditch (T-AGS-62), an oceanographic research ship, and seized an unmanned drone out of the water, claiming it was conducting illegal surveillance. In March 2016, the Indonesian government seized a Chinese-flagged fishing ship for fishing within their EEZ; before it could be impounded, a Chinese Coast Guard vessel rammed the fishing boat free within Indonesian territorial seas. On several occasions, China has escorted oil rigs into the Vietnamese EEZ and drilled. Against Vietnamese, Filipino, Indonesian, and other foreign vessels, the Chinese have employed water cannons and machine guns, threats, ramming, and sinking.[19]
To China, holding the South China Sea is just as vital as the Royal Navy’s impressment crisis.
Rising Tensions Along the Road to War
In the early 19th century, much of the United States was outraged by the British practices of impressment and seizing U.S. trade goods. As early as 1796, Congress authorized ‘protections,’ legal documents signed and witnessed by a magistrate for every U.S.-born sailor to protect them against illegal impressment. By 1812, more than 100,000 U.S. seamen had obtained one. However, the British argued that these could be forged (as they sometimes were) and thus ignored them.[20]
By 1807, President Thomas Jefferson resolved to bring U.S. economic power to bear to end British abuses. He pushed Congress to pass the Embargo Act in December 1807. This halted all trade exports from the United States in order, Jefferson wrote, “to keep our seamen and property from capture and to starve the offending nations.”[21] Despite a small effect on the British economy, U.S. smuggling rose to new heights and public protests and riots led to fears of civil war, particularly in New England. In March 1809, Congress passed the less stringent Non-Intercourse Act, which opened trade to all countries but France and Great Britain. Each law was largely ineffectual. Great Britain’s widespread trading networks could not be toppled.
Throughout these trade wars, the Royal Navy continued the impressment of U.S. seamen that it felt was justified. The relations between the countries deteriorated until President James Madison signed Congress’ declaration of war on June 18, 1812. Madison declared that to endure further outrages “would have struck us from the high rank where the virtuous struggle of our fathers had placed us and have betrayed the magnificent legacy which we hold in trust for future generations.”[22]
Today, the South China Sea likewise is a cauldron of tensions as few accept China’s assertions of sovereignty. Many states have launched official diplomatic protests, and anti-Chinese riots have broken out in countries across Southeast Asia. The United States, while not making a stance on sovereignty in the region, does however have a pivotal interest in maintaining Freedom of the Seas, particularly in navigational rights. As a result, the United States has conducted numerous Freedom of Navigation operations (FONOPs) in the region. The FONOPs program was developed under President James Carter as a peaceful means of asserting navigational rights against excessive maritime claims; in the South China Sea context, it means sailing U.S. ships within 12 nm of an excessively claimed feature.[23] To date, there has been five FONOPs in the South China Sea, and China has said each “is serious illegal behavior, and is intentionally provocative behavior.”[24]
Like the Embargo and Non-Intercourse acts, some in the U.S. Congress have also turned to economics. Senator Macro Rubio (R-FL) recently proposed sanctions to end the “ongoing, flagrant violations of international norms [which] cannot be allowed to go unchecked.” If passed, the sanctions bill would restrict Chinese visas and prevent U.S. investment in Chinese companies developing features in the South China Sea.[25]
In 2013, the Philippines filed an arbitrational lawsuit under UNCLOS against China before the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. It contended that China’s historical claims to the South China Sea were invalid. China refused to participate in the arbitration, but the Tribunal held that it did have jurisdiction over the claims and found for the Philippines. In response, China has refused to abide with the decision and instead strengthened its claims and escalated the pressure in the region.[26]
The Conflict Then and its Echoes Today
After war was declared in 1812, Americans rallied around the cry of “Free trade and sailors’ rights” as a rejection of British impressment and restrictions on neutral trading rights. First used onboard USS Essex in a masterful cruise which opened the war, the phrase was soon repeated throughout the country. John C. Calhoun described the war to Congress ‘‘as it had been emphatically and correctly stated, a war for free trade and sailors’ rights.’’ Newspapers labeled casualties as ‘‘MARTYRS IN THE CAUSE OF ‘FREE TRADE AND SAILOR’S RIGHTS.” U.S. prisoners in Britain’s Dartmoor Prison flew a flag with the phrase over their barracks, and soldiers even raised such a banner over the burned ruins of the White House.[27]
As it prepared to defend its maritime rights, the fledgling U.S. Navy drew upon innovative technologies the Royal Navy lacked. First was the composition of its ships. The United States only had recently founded its Navy with the construction of six frigates, and U.S. shipwrights had used live oak to strength their hulls. Incredibly dense, live oak has a usable life span six times that of white oak and other timbers used to complete contemporary British ships. The wood was miserable to extract and shape, but the effort would prove to be well-spent.[28]
To add to this were the new U.S, frigates’ design and armament. Their keel was longer and their beam (width) shorter than other frigates. The change allowed heavier and more cannons to be mounted without losing speed. Joshua Humphreys, their designer, declared that “they are superior to any European frigate,” and controversially combined the extra cannons of a battleship with the maneuverability of a regular frigate.[29]
Under the banners of “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights” and armed with its new technology, the U.S. Navy nevertheless astounded the nation with its successes. Captain Isaac Hull and the USS Constitution claimed the first major victory by capturing HMS Guerriere on 19 August 1812. During the engagement, the U.S. innovations proved devastating; the Constitution out-sailed and out-gunned the enemy with her armament and design, and British cannonballs even bounced off her live oak hull, cementing her nickname as “Old Ironsides” forever.[30] The news in London, wrote the Times, “spread a degree of gloom through the town.”[31] Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of the Navy Paul Hamilton wrote to Captain Hull: “In this action, we know not which most to applaud, Your gallantry or Your skill—You, Your officers & Crew are entitled to & will receive the applause & the gratitude of Your gratefull [sic] country.”[32]
Other victories followed. USS Constitution took HMS Java, USS United States seized HMS Macedonian, and the U.S. Navy defeated the British at lakes Champlain and Erie. There were notable defeats, of course, but throughout the conflict and against overwhelmingly superior numbers, the U.S. Navy acquitted itself well.
Although the Treaty of Ghent, which ended the war in late 1814, merely returned the parties to the status quo ante bellum, the vigorous U.S. defense of its maritime rights proved long lasting. Great Britain ceased its impressment of U.S. sailors, and the economic ties of free trade grew between the two states. That the Unites States had defended its rights at sea signaled to Great Britain that the United States was to be treated as a rising power and not merely a rebellious backwater. No longer could its “sailors’ rights” be trampled with impunity.[33]
Today, to protect China’s “Spratly rights,” China is engaging in increasing militarization throughout the region. The Chinese have expanded the usable land on their claimed islands in the South China Sea by dredging sand from the ocean floor. On these enlarged islands, they have installed airfields and antiair missiles to defend them. Advanced radar facilities, underground bunkers, and reinforced hangers are appearing as well. China has shifted the focus of its naval forces, diverting its main submarine fleet to Hainan Island for faster, more regular sorties into the South China Sea, and its coast guard and paramilitary maritime militias have become mainstays throughout the South China Sea.[34]
What’s more, its antiship technology is increasing rapidly and poses a major threat to the U.S. Navy. Of particular note is the Dong Feng-21 antiship ballistic missile. “The DF-21 strikes a target at hypersonic speed from a nearly vertical angle. It can also conduct defensive maneuvers that make the missile incredibly difficult to intercept.”[35] Meanwhile, China’s new YJ-12 missile, another deadly antiship weapon, may be mounted onboard an aircraft. Together, these missiles pose a threat that comparable U.S. technology struggles to counter in the region.[36] Although China does not rival the United States for ships, recently it launched its second aircraft carrier and seeks to build more. Likewise, China is expanding its submarine fleet, while the number of U.S. submarines is projected to shrink. Operating in the South China Sea will place these Chinese carriers and submarines close to home ports, while many U.S. ships must steam from Hawaii or the West Coast. Like the live-oak and added weaponry of the early U.S. Navy’s superfrigates, China’s new ship-killing missiles and expanding fleet add a dangerous variable to the tension in the South China Sea.[37] In response to FONOPs, economic pressure, and the arbitration ruling, China is prepared to safeguard its claims against all contenders.
Conclusions
Others have written extensively on what the United States’ response in the South China Sea should be, but however the country responds, first it must heed the past to inform its decision. China’s dealings in the South China Sea today bear a striking resemblance to the leadup to the War of 1812: a rising state with new military technology feels its fundamental sovereignty and rights are being violated by the world’s leading naval power.
The comparison is further complicated, as China today is analogous to both sides of the War of 1812. With an expanding fleet, increased military technology, and growing connections and power in the international community, China resembles the early United States. On the other hand, armed with an unshakeable conviction that its actions are supported by tradition and are necessary to protect its sovereignty, it is engaging in clear abuses of the maritime rights of others, as Great Britain’s impressment and economic harassment restricted “Free trade and sailors’ rights.”
The similarities should give all pause, as the prior tensions resulted in war. Whether the United States chooses to accede to China’s claims, maintain its protests and FONOPs, or even to escalate its involvement to safeguard Freedom of the Seas, it should weigh all responses within this historical framework. This is neither a call for or against war, nor a prediction that one is sure to happen. Rather, the comparison should serve as a warning that should China, like Great Britain before it, continue to run roughshod over others in the South China Sea, the United States’ maritime superiority and the Freedom of the Seas must be weakened. The War of 1812 was a global, full-scale war to resolve the issue of “Free trade and sailors’ rights.” In today’s tense climate, the United States must balance its interests and international maritime rights against the prospect of another war, this one over China’s “Spratly rights.”
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[1] George C. Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 16-17. Although the sentences were remitted, the men languished in British prisons for years, and one died before the rest were repatriated to the United States.
[2] James S. Clarke and John McArthur, eds., The Naval Chronicle: Containing a General and Biographical History of the Royal Navy of the United Kingdom with a Variety of Original Papers on Nautical Subjects: Volume XVIII, July-December 1807 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 340.
[3] Greg Refraccion and Nikko Dizon, “China’s Navy Harassed PH Fishers, says Lawmaker,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, April 24, 2017. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/891373/chinas-navy-harassed-ph-fishers-says-lawmaker.
[4] Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War, 17-19.
[5] Denver Brunsman, The Evil Necessity: Impressment in the Eighteenth Century Atlantic World (United States: University of Virginia Press, 2013), 7-18.
[6] Phillip Francis, Junius: Stat Nominis Umbra (London: L. M. Dowall, 1812), 311, accessed June 22, 2017, https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=kNhQAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[7] Brian Ranfit and J.R. Hill, The Oxford Illustrated History of the Royal Navy, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 139.
[8] T. B. Howell, ed., A Complete Collection of State Trials and Proceedings for High Treason and Other Crimes and Misdemeanors, Volume XVIII (London: T.C. Hansard, 1816), 1330, accessed June 22, 2017, https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=ilZTAAAAcAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[9] David M. Kennedy and Thomas A. Bailey, The American Spirit: United States History as Seen by Contemporaries, Volume I (Boston: Wadsworth, 2010), 247.
[10] Paul A. Gilje, “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights”: The Rhetoric of the War of 1812,” Journal of the Early Republic, Volume 30, Number 1 (Spring 2010), 5.
[11] James Stephen, War in Disguise; or, the Frauds of the Neutral Flags (London, C. Whittingham, 1806), 180, accessed June 22, 2017, https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=f0E3FsgvnrEC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false.
[12] Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War, 14.
[13] Ani, “China Has Indisputable Sovereignty Over South China Seas, Says its Foreign Ministry,” Business Standard, February 22, 2017. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/china-has-indisputable-sovereignty-over-south-china-sea-says-its-foreign-ministry-117022200813_1.html.
[14] “United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea,” United Nations, Article 3-5, 10, 55-75, accessed June 25, 2017, http://www.un.org/depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/unclos_e.pdf; Robert D. Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (New York: Random House, 2014), 172-173. UNCLOS has been ratified by most countries, and those which have not, namely the United States, claim that much of it is customary international law and thus binding on states even without ratification.
[15] Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass Publishers, 2002), 35.
[16] Marwyn S. Samuels, Contest for The South China Sea (New York and London: Methuen, 1982), 22.
[17] Permanent Mission of the People’s Republic of China to the United Nations, “Note Verbale of May 6, 2009,” United Nations, accessed June 25, 2017, http://www.un.org/depts/los/clcs_new/submissions_files/mysvnm33_09/chn_2009re_mys_vnm_e.pdf.
[18] Toshi Yoshihara and James R. Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific: China’s Rise and the Challenge to U.S. Maritime Strategy (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 66; Kaplan, Asia’s Cauldron, 40-41; James R. Holmes, “How China Sees the South China Sea,” The Diplomat, September 9 2013. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2013/09/how-china-sees-the-south-china-sea/; James R. Holmes, “The Commons: Beijing’s ‘Blue National Soil,’” The Diplomat, January 3, 2013. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2013/01/a-threat-to-the-commons-blue-national-soil/; George F. Will, “The ‘Blue National Soil’ of China’s Navy,” The Washington Post, March 18, 2011. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-blue-national-soil-of-chinas-navy/2011/03/18/AB5AxAs_story.html?utm_term=.51667b81b2fa.
[19] Brian Kalman, “Two Case Studies That Illustrate the Growing Militarization of the South China Sea,” South Front, April 18, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://southfront.org/two-case-studies-that-illustrate-the-growing-militarization-of-the-south-china-sea/; Phil Stewart, “Chinese Navy Warship Seized an American Drone in the South China Seas,” December 16, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://time.com/4604880/south-china-sea-american-drone-seized/; Joe Cochrane, “China’s Coast Guard Rams Fishing Boat to Free it from Indonesian Authorities,” The New York Times, March 21, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/22/world/asia/indonesia-south-china-sea-fishing-boat.html; Mike Ives, “Vietnam Objects to Chinese Oil Rig in Disputed Waters,” The New York Times, January 20, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/21/world/asia/south-china-sea-vietnam-china.html?_r=0;
[20] Gilje, “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” 11.
[21] George C. Daughan, If by Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the American Revolution to the War of 1812 (New York: Basic Books, 2008), 391. These policies also aimed to restrain Napoleonic France, which allowed the seizure of American vessels which had visited Great Britain under the Milan Decree.
[22] Ibid., 410.
[23] Ankit Panda, “The US Navy’s First Trump-era South China Seas FONOP Just Happened: First Takeaways and Analysis,” The Diplomat, May 25, 2017. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://thediplomat.com/2017/05/the-trump-administrations-first-south-china-sea-fonop-is-here-first-takeaways-and-analysis/. In keeping with remaining neutral on sovereignty and simply enforcing the international legal regime of maritime rights, the United States has also conducted FONOPs against many other Southeast Asian countries, although in the SCS, the majority have been done against China.
[24] “China Protests ‘Illegal,’ ‘Provocative’ U.S. South China Sea Patrol,” Reuters, October 21, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-usa-china-idUSKCN12L270.
[25] Tyler Hlavac, “Rubio Introduces South China Sea Sanctions Legislation,” Stars and Stripes, March 17, 2017. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.stripes.com/news/rubio-introduces-south-china-sea-sanctions-legislation-1.459085#.WUsJP2clGxj.
[26] Tom Phillips, Oliver Holmes, and Owen Bowcott, “Beijing Rejects Tribunal’s Ruling in South China Sea Case,” The Guardian, July 12, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/12/philippines-wins-south-china-sea-case-against-china.
[27] Gilje, “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights,” 1-2, 14-17. Captain David Porter sailed USS Essex from New York harbor on July 2, 1812, and over the course of the following two months captured ten prizes, including HMS Alert; his ship, all the while, bore an ensign with the phrase “Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights.”
[28] Ian W. Toll, Six Frigates: The Epic History of the Founding of the U.S. Navy (W. W. Norton & Company, 2006), 58-61.
[29] Ibid., 49-53, 49.
[30] Ibid., 350.
[31] Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War, 82.
[32] William S. Dudley, The Naval War of 1812: A Documentary History, Volume I (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1985), 472.
[33] Daughan, 1812: The Navy’s War, 414-417.
[34] Tom Phillips, “Images Show ‘Significant’ Chinese Weapons Systems in South China Sea,’ The Guardian, December 15, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/15/images-show-significant-chinese-weapons-systems-in-south-china-sea; “China May be Installing Advanced Radars on Disputed South China Sea Outposts,” Business Insider, February 23, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/chinese-radars-and-underground-bunkers-in-the-south-china-sea-2016-2/#chinas-artificial-island-on-cuarteron-reef-as-of-january-24-2016-1; “Photos Suggest China Built Reinforced Hangars on Disputed Islands: CSIS,” Reuters, August 11, 2016. Accessed June 22, 2017, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-images-idUSKCN10K08P; Yoshihara and Holmes, Red Star over the Pacific, 15.
[35] Jeremy Bender, “A New Chinese Anti-ship Ballistic Missile is Bad News for US Aircraft Carriers,” Business Insider, October 21, 2015. Accessed June 23, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/chinas-growing-military-power-may-make-us-aircraft-carriers-obsolete-2015-10.
[36] Jeremy Bender, “These Weapons Could Be China’s Most Threatening Military Advancement For The US,” Business Insider, January 27, 2015. Accessed June 23, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/these-weapons-could-be-chinas-most-threatening-military-advancement-2015-1.
[37] Alex Lockie, “China Just Launched a New Aircraft Carrier – Here’s How it Stacks up to Other World Powers’,” Business Insider, April 26, 2017. Accessed June 23, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/china-type-001a-new-aircraft-carrier-vs-liaoning-ford-nimitz-kuznetsov-2017-4; Jeremy Bender, “The US is Worried it Can’t Keep up With China and Russia’s Submarine Fleets,” Business Insider, February 25, 2016. Accessed June 23, 2017, http://www.businessinsider.com/us-submarine-fleet-falling-behind-russia-china-2016-2;
