If Canadians know any history at all, they know the story of the war of 1812. (Or at least the part about the British burning the White House.) Americans usually focus their remembrance on bigger, bloodier conflicts. Yet in this bicentennial year, one American historian is urging his countrymen to appreciate that their nationhood was forged in two centuries of war up and down the bloody warpath between Albany and Montreal.
Eliot Cohen is one of America's leading writers on military affairs. His 2002 book Supreme Command (a study of civilian leadership in wartime) featured on president Bush's reading list that year. I traveled to Iraq with Cohen in 2005 and had the pleasure of introducing him at a recent book event at the Canadian embassy in Washington.
Cohen's new book, Conquered Into Liberty, offers an arresting idea. It was during their long struggle against the French and Indians that the New England colonies developed a distinctive American idea of how war should be fought.
In Europe, war had been regarded as more or less the normal state of things: "Only the dead have seen the end of war." European societies developed monarchies, bureaucracies and standing armies to fight wars, and regimes of treaties and rules to regulate wars.
The New Englanders rejected this idea of managing an unending conflict. Colonial wars were too atrocious to manage: In the vast wilderness, civilians were always the target of attack, because they were often the only target available to attack. Nor were the New Englanders keen to replicate the war-fighting institutions they had left Europe in large part to escape.
Instead, New Englanders began to imagine a different kind of future: a future of absolute security obtained by the total elimination of their enemy. In Europe, such a vision would have seemed a preposterous fantasy. France could not hope to subjugate Spain; England could never possibly conquer France.
Tiny colonies, however, were much more fragile things than European monarchies. Sever their political connection to Europe, and their population could be absorbed. Deep into the 19th century, the leading families of New York bore Dutch names. But New Amsterdam once defeated was never restored.
This was the future the New Englanders hoped to impose on New France -- and that, in the peace of 1763, they finally gained.
Total war for total peace proved, alas, as elusive in the 18th century as it would in the 20th. The conquest of New France opened a new chapter of conflict between the American colonies and the British metropole, leading to a revolution and two more wars: both again fought up and down the warpath. An American army besieged Montreal in 1775; a British army invaded New York from Quebec in 1777; and the two sides met again in a naval battle off Plattsburgh in 1814.
The peace signed between the United States and Great Britain in 1814 seemed at the time to settle nothing. (Except, that is, for the fate of the Great Lakes Indian nations: as Eliot Cohen notes, they were the only party that can be said wholly to have lost the war of 1812.) Both sides fully expected to fight again; in the years after 1815, both invested heavily in new fortifications to guard their frontiers and cities. (One such fort would enter history in a wholly unexpected way: Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor was built against the British starting in 1829.)
Yet if total war for total peace failed, total peace did arrive all the same by a different path: by the gradual negotiation of differences, by growing mutual recognition of the advantages of peace and by the ever-closer convergence of interests and values across what would become the U.S.-Canadian border.
That's the real meaning of the war of 1812 -- and why this small war that lacks even a proper name deserves a place in the memory of all the world.
This blog originally appeared in the National Post.
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His "take" on the reasons for European immigration to the colonies must have come directly from the GW Comic book collection; again, revisionist history. If Mr. Frum bothered to do any REAL research, he would have quickly discovered that the immigration of religious groups from Europe was by protestant groups trying to escape persecution of the Catholic Church; persecution that was overwhelmingly supported by European monarchies. He would have also found that the war was about border positioning (remember the 54-40 or fight cries by the US?). First Nations sided with the British because of the support the British offered against rogue American militias.
His position of the US being a peaceful nation is at best maniacally laughable. It is the most bellicose nation in history having been in a state of near perpetual war both internally and externally since before signing the Declaration of Independence; Again, historical fact. Even today it is in a civil war of left vs. right; government vs. citizenry.
But you're completely wrong about 54-40 or right; that slogan didn't emerge until after the dual treaties with the Russian Empire in 1824 (US) and 1825 (Britain) over the southward limitation of the domains of the Russian Fur Company. Russia had alarmed the other powers in the Pacific Northwest by stating a claim at about 53 North, just above the stated northwards limit of New Spain as per the Florida Treaty with the US (52 North), so as to include the mouth of the Columbia, which they knew about first but had never entered, though both the British and Americans had. Not a small amount of bluster from Washington and London saw the Russians withdraw their claim at first to "the line of the Emperor Paul", 51 North, which is about the northern tip of Vancouver Island, proclaimed in 1799 with nobody really noticing, then revised that again in conciliatory fashion to 55 North. In the course of negotiations that was adjusted to 54-40 North so they could have the whole of Prince of Wales Island.... Complicated. In any case that battle cry only began to be spouted by the US in the 1830s, and most loudly in the 1840s; it has no relevance to the War of 1812.
Then there's the seizure of Hawaii, the war with Mexico, and the war with Spain. I mean, really, the War of 1812 was a petty sideshow by comparison. That it had no clear winner makes it all the more silly to treat is as some kind of bombastic nation-defining experience for both sides.
It's obvious that this part of the known Harperite agenda to militarize Canada and glorify our military history, and to tailor North American historiography to fit the new continentalist agenda. And not from an historian either, but from a political hack who is and was a GOP toady
This site's brand used to be known for left leaning coverage and political openness and honesty. Increasingly it is becoming known for being little more than a right wing bully pulpit.
where are the real historians to pen an article for this "cutting edge collection of signature bloggers"? Not welcome on the voyage, one presumes. I"m sure your new BC edition coming soon will be even more nauseating than the VAncouver Sun and Province have perpetually been; pretty sad, and very disappointing.
In part " known Haperite agenda to militarize Canada and glorify our military history"
This is our history and maybe it is time as Canadians we were aware of it, even if it is someone like Harper that reminds us of it. It is hard to understand why school children in this country know who the first president of the U.S was but do not know who John A. MacDonald was or do not understand why the native people were butchered in the US and Canada enjoyed relative peace with the native people.
And look at it this way, if it had not been for 1812 next month we could be celebrating on the 4th and not rhe first
It's not like this man is an authority on history, or even qualified to write a review on the subject. What gets me is this idea of "absolute security" and an end to "permanent war". Yet how long did it take after this for US adventurism not just to start warring in Latin America (through proxy mercenary troops), but to continue challenging Britain? To continue, for decades after, the ever expanding wars with the indigenous peoples in the push westwards, the challenge to Britain over the Oregon boundary, soon after by the San Juans dispute, and ongoing though covert on the Alaska Boundary question right from 1867 through to the denouement in 1902-03, and I suppose Mr Frum's conservative education addressed none of the Bering Sea Dispute in the 1880s and how it nearly precipitated global war.
cont....see below
http://www.dickshovel.com/two.html
http://www.dickshovel.com/two2.html
The British East India Co was really the empire while Great Britain was its headquarters.
The British Navy was to control the seas and force international trade to pay its "duty" to the empire.
Most parts of Africa was under the British East Africa Co and British South Africa Co by financial oligarchs like Cecil Rhodes, which is why empire was mostly financial then military.
When the British pound was no longer the world's reserve currency and substituted by the "dollar", London had no choice but to join up with the US and create the alliance of Anglo-American Powers.
Wall Street/City of London is really the heart of the imperial financial system and it uses war and cultural influence to run the world, duping nations that it needs to reserve "dollars" as if it's gold.
That empire has brought about modern civilization but now is hopelessly bankrupt.
If you look at the British Empire it has its roots in Venice and the Roman Empire, and understanding what I said about the "modern" empire gives a chance to get rid of it once-n-for-all.
The war of 1812 was about the Treaty of Tilset between France and Russia. Napoleon agreed not to invade Russia under the condition that Russia would not sell Hemp/Marijuana to England since Hemp was critical for their Navy in making Sails, Ropes and Gunpowder. Denied Hemp by Russia, England captured US ships and forced them to buy Russian Hemp and deliver it to England. US objected and the war of 1812 started.
At the same time, Napoleon learned that Russia was selling their Hemp out the back door in violation of the treaty and immediately invaded Russia - the rest is in the history books.
I suppose it could have been called the "War in Which the U.S. Inadvertently Sided with Napoleon" or, maybe, "The Revolution - Cleaning Up the Leftover Issues". But, the "War of the Failed Canadian Conquest" just doesn't seem to have all that much cache and pizzazz.