The archenemy of mankind

Not to forget "this great deflowerer of the virginity of republics." Both descriptions of Emperor Napoleon by US representative John Randolph in 1812 while debating a declaration of war against Britain in 1812. It's worth remembering that Napoleon was Hitler for many people of his time. Back before he became just a colorful historical figure.

Alan Taylor on "Loyalist" Upper Canada

In Upper Canada most of the common people felt ambivalent about taking sides in the war. Drawn to the colony by low taxes and cheap land, the American-born majority had scant interest in politics and a great dread of war. Localist, pragmatic, and self-interested they balked at making sacrifices for any larger political cause, whether for an empire or a republic. The common folk were loyal enough to Britain so long as the colonial government left them alone, but they felt shocked by the sudden wartime demand for their services in the militia. British officials mistook their reticence for disloyalty, and the Americans misunderstood it as longing for a republic. . In fact most people just wanted to be left alone to tend their farms, so they hoped that one side or the other would win the war quickly.

What a nasty little war

As I read Taylor's the Civil War of 1812, the question in my mind becomes not was this an important war? But rather why would anyone want to be associated with either side in this war? It's a nasty war where most of those in arms are there for the loot while those who have some principles or goals have unadmirable ones. The Americans who are most interested in the conquest of upper Canada are former Canadians unhappy with the aristocratic domination of the provincial government and its general unfairness. Or they are unhappy about the situation in Ireland. Or both. American Federalists are more interested in discrediting the Republicans, and the Republicans are more interested in labeling the Federalists as traitors than either is in actually fighting the British. While Upper Canada conservatives are really keen to label anything like dissent as treason. Yuck.

The Civil War of 1812 by Alan Taylor

I am reading Alan Taylor's recent book on the war of 1812, and it is excellent. It is a finely written narrative history that does an excellent job of describing people and situations, and also very good as an analytical treatment of the war. One of the characteristic features of this book is that it focuses on Upper Canada, much my surprise. It is in Upper Canada, today's Ontario, that Taylor sees many of conflicts of the early 19 century coming together in an interesting mixture. For instance, one conflict was between the concept of republic and its associated idea of citizen, and the concept of empire associated with the idea of the subject. Taylor: "We imagine that the revolution effected a clean break between Americans and Britons as distinct peoples. In fact, the republic and the empire competed for the allegiance of the peoples in North America – native, settler, and immigrant." Taylor is amazingly fair in showing the virtues and drawbacks of both systems of thought as they worked themselves out in North America.

Seen on the Detroit River -- the Mississagi

Built in 1943 and still going strong.

How important was the War of 1812?

It is easy to be snarky about the War of 1812.  Someone on the radio today did precisely what I have done in the past -- compare the North American war to the invasion of Russia.  I always follow that quip up by referring "of course" to the fact that the war was a real turning point for Canada.

But today I have reason to wonder.  I was in a university library looking at the section where they keep books on 1812 written from the Canadian point of view and I noticed that there are more books on 1837 than on 1812.  A LOT more.

Hunh.

All you readers, US, Canadian, or Other can now look up 1837.

Warrior nation?

That's the image our current Prime Minister is promoting for Canada. More realistic is John Moore's take, the same guy who took on "entitlement" in Quebec politics recently. Again from the National Post, with thanks to Phil Paine:

But is Vimy really the best of Canada? Does our modern identity and national purpose hinge on the harrowing slaughter of our citizens on a foreign field of mud in a pointless war? It’s easy to romanticize war and reverse engineer its purpose. The Second World War — one of the most unambiguously moral wars in history — has fooled us into thinking there is honour in war itself. The Americans celebrate a conflict in which 600,000 died over a man’s right to own another man as evidence of romantic nationalism, when the Civil War should really be regarded as a five-year period of epic madness. The Great War was a needless enterprise. Launched like a negative billing option by a series of reciprocal agreements between inbred, tottering royal families, the war consumed nine million souls and accomplished absolutely nothing, save laying the pretext for an even bloodier future conflict. Canada was roped into the enterprise by virtue of our colonial status. Canadian men descended from those who had fled the stifling working class slavery of Europe to build new and free lives in a country without horizon, were sucked into the vortex of internecine conflict between the crowned heads they had left behind. It’s worth noting many enlisted only under relentless pressure from former warriors and dilettantes who presented dissenters with white feathers as the ultimate public gesture of emasculation. If anything, modern Canada should reflect on Vimy and our total First World War sacrifice as a national tragedy. Sixty-thousand Canadian men died in a war in which we had no real casus belli and which was largely administered by damnable incompetents. A generation of teachers, milkmen, farm hands, labourers, students and artists died on the field of battle, so hollowing out the population that many of the women they left behind would never marry. One hundred and seventy-three thousand returned home suffering from burns, chemical poisoning, amputations and traumatic stress disorder that would leave them depressed and spastic for the remainder of their lives. So why, 95 years later, do we venerate Vimy? Perhaps because it’s far easier to stir emotions where military matters are concerned. You can’t erect a heroic statue to the civility for which Canada is renowned. Social justice has never been able to muster an inspiring flypast. The national understanding that in Canada we look after each other doesn’t have a solemn bugle call to draw a tear. In place of the notion that our national identity might rise from something as unremarkable as compassion, hard work and character, we prefer to imbue the solitary terror of a prairie farm boy calling for his mother as he bleeds out into the soil of a French field with a purpose and nobility it does not deserve.

Lest we forget.