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This Crying Enormity: Impressment As A Factor In Anglo-American Foreign Relations, David Scott Thompson

Dissertations and Theses

As an issue affecting the foreign relations of the United States and Britain, impressment has been given varying emphasis by different authors. This thesis is first a chronological outline of the events and correspondence that trace the subject. Beyond this basic delineation I will consider exactly how important impressment was to the two countries. James F. Zimmerman, in Impressment of American Seamen, posits that impressment was of paramount significance while other authors have attempted to down grade it into a status of utter inconsequence. This paper will show that the actual influence of impressment varied from one time, one set …