The British View the War of 1812 Quite Differently Than Americans Do | History | Smiths... - 0 views
-
For people like me, who have got their flags and wars mixed up, I think it should be pointed out that there may have been only one War of 1812, but there are four distinct versions of it—the American, the British, the Canadian and the Native American.
-
In the immediate aftermath of the war, American commentators painted the battles of 1812-15 as part of a glorious “second war for independence.”
-
As the 19th century progressed, this view changed into a more general story about the “birth of American freedom” and the founding of the Union.
- ...6 more annotations...
-
by the end of the century, the historian Henry Adams was depicting the war as an aimless exercise in blunder, arrogance and human folly.
-
During the 20th century, historians recast the war in national terms: as a precondition for the entrenchment of Southern slavery, the jumping-off point for the goal of Manifest Destiny and the opening salvos in the race for industrial-capitalist supremacy
-
In this postmodern narrative about American selfhood, the “enemy” in the war—Britain—almost disappeared entirely.
-
Not surprisingly, the Canadian history of the war began with a completely different set of heroes and villains.
-
By contrast, the British historiography of the War of 1812 has generally consisted of short chapters squeezed between the grand sweeping narratives of the Napoleonic Wars. The justification for this begins with the numbers: Roughly 20,000 on all sides died fighting the War of 1812 compared with over 3.5 million in the Napoleonic.
-
The truth is, the British were never happy. In fact, their feelings ranged from disbelief and betrayal at the beginning of the war to outright fury and resentment at the end. They regarded the U.S. protests against Royal Navy impressment of American seamen as exaggerated whining at best, and a transparent pretext for an attempt on Canada at worst.