41–50 of 65 posts
> The Americans also captured York (now Toronto) and burned several government buildings there, an act the British reciprocated the following year (1814) in Washington, D.C. The Canadian version sounds better: "Yeah! We burned down the White House!".
It's amazing how many Americas have no clue the White House was burned down by an invading army. Interesting what the US history books choose to leave out.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whereas, like many wars, it should really be taught as a mutual loss: a useless conflict that neither side needed.
The US did get a National Anthem out of it I guess... And a burned down White House
In fact, it's the reason the capital of Canada is Ottawa today. When the Province of Canada was established, it was deemed that York (which is now Toronto) was way too vulnerable since a US army could get there from Buffalo in less than a day and ships from Rochester even faster. By contrast, Ottawa (then called Bytown) was surrounded by swamps, further inland, well away from any US city, but still had access to rivers so it wasn't excessively isolated.
That and the fact that it was halfway between Toronto/Kingston (the English cities) and Montreal/Quebec City (the French cities) also made it a good political compromise.
So without that war, Toronto would probably be the Canadian capital and Ottawa would be a glorified rest spot between Toronto and Montreal.
What I find amusing about both countries is that neither spends time on what was bloody obvious at the time. Namely that the reason why the US picked then to start a war was that Great Britain had their hands full with Napoleon. Still the outcome was that Washington was burned to the ground, the US sued for peace, Great Britain granted it because the US had already proven to be ungovernable. However it was the last w…
> But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it. I imagine that they might have something to say about it if the other country considered all US citizens to also be citizens of that other country. It's been a long time since I got this in school, but I also seem to recall that they weren't conscripting U…
That said, there were a lot of problems with how impressment worked. But that was separate from the question of whether becoming an American citizen made someone no longer a British citizen.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> But today if a US citizen visits a country that also considers him a citizen, and that country drafts him into the military, the USA has nothing to say about it. I imagine that they might have something to say about it if the other country considered all US citizens to also be citizens of that other country. It's been a long time since I got this in school, but I also seem to recall that they weren't conscripting U…
It was not all US citizens. It was ones who were also UK citizens by Great Britain's laws. That said, there were a lot of problems with how impressment worked. But that was separate from the question of whether becoming an American citizen made someone no longer a British citizen.
It was definitely pitched to me that way in grade school, that until 1812 England basically considered the US to be a self-governing piece of the empire instead of an independent country.
If anything it's good that American kids don't learn of this trifle in school, allowing them more time to study the events that really shaped the modern world. Right?
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Whereas, like many wars, it should really be taught as a mutual loss: a useless conflict that neither side needed.
The US barely won the revolution. Luckily during the war, a volcano (Laki, Iceland) threw Europe & much of the British empire (including India & Africa) into a multiyear drought, causing one of the coldest/longest winters in the USA. About 3 months after the eruption formal negotiations to end the war began. No eruption, possibly no USA but historical accounts I've seen rarely mention the role of mother nature.
There was a serious war going on at the time in Europe[0]. It featured the largest army of all time until then and almost a million casualties, compared to the 5,000 toll of this border skirmish. And incidentally inspired one of the best known classical music pieces. If anything it's good that American kids don't learn of this trifle in school, allowing them more time to study the events that really shaped the modern…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was not all US citizens. It was ones who were also UK citizens by Great Britain's laws. That said, there were a lot of problems with how impressment worked. But that was separate from the question of whether becoming an American citizen made someone no longer a British citizen.
I admit that I don’t know the details of how citizenship was handled after the American revolution, but that was only about 30 years prior. My understanding is that the vast majority of American citizens were considered by the Crown to be British citizens. It was definitely pitched to me that way in grade school, that until 1812 England basically considered the US to be a self-governing piece of the empire instead of…
That said, over a third of sailors on American ships were British citizens who were pursuing higher pay and better conditions.
And then per https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/summer/1... there is the case of Charles Davis, an Englishman impressed into the US navy. We have no records of how common that was.
If only the US had won, then all those canadian programmers in Vancouver and Toronto wouldn't have to migrate to get a decent paying job.