
U.S. Forces Failed to Conquer Canada 200 Years Ago (2012) - gscott
https://www.history.com/news/how-u-s-forces-failed-to-conquer-canada-200-years-ago
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kenned3
Canadian here.. why do we keep seeing these stories about how the US invaded
"canada"?

wasnt "Canada" created as part of the British North America Act (1867)?

Didnt canada do a big "150" thing in 2017?

The US invaded "british north america" in 1812.

The article is also mistaken when it talks about "canadians" defending British
North America. They were british citizens.

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8note
Would you prefer Upper and Lower Canadians?

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henntipular
As an upper Canadian, yes, those filthy lower Canadians.

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btilly
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 war where natives could fight open
battles against the US, and with the decimation of the Iroquois the Western
border was open. Also Andrew Jackson's victory in New Orleans (after the peace
treaty was signed but before anyone knew about it) meant that the USA kept
Louisiana rather than possibly giving it back to France.

So it was a net loss at the time, but set the stage for westward expansion.

Incidentally one of the things that the USA was upset about is now
international law. Namely the pressing of US citizens into the British navy.
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.

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kd5bjo
> 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 US citizens visiting Britain, they were boarding US
merchant ships at sea to conscript the sailors.

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btilly
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.

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kd5bjo
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 an independent country.

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btilly
My understanding is that Americans born in America were recognized not to be
British citizens, but those born in Britain who later emigrated were
considered British citizens.

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...](https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/summer/1812-impressment.html)
there is the case of Charles Davis, an Englishman impressed into the US navy.
We have no records of how common that was.

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est31
See also plan red:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Plan_Red)

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nonstopnonsense
Not sure if this will cause an uproar. An Indian by birth here. As I see it,
this was just Britisher's fighting the other Britishers on land(s) that does
not belong to them?

PS: I've not read the history of both the nations (yet to open the book 1491),
but I do know what the Britisher's did to India.

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ericmuyser
I agree it mostly a British thing, but I say it was their land. Never in
history has territory been invaded and capture and then partially given back
to the people with special rights like it has in North America. I think native
Indians should just be Canadian and that's it, none of this special rights
seclusion bullshit. I never did get why we did it? I feel like it's not even
helping or what most want, is it just a bad compromise at this point?

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diego_moita
> 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!".

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grecy
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.

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giancarlostoro
Did they? I remember studying about that in Elementary school. Maybe most
people forget history from Elementary school I suppose? We went over the Civil
War and the World Wars for quite a while in Elementary school.

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throwaway3627
We also studied the War of 1812. It was a crushing, symbolic defeat in battle
for the fledgling nation, although it didn't make much difference in total.

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henntipular
Lots of interesting battles too. I live in the corridor between Detroit and
Toronto. Battles all up and down those lakes

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dmurray
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
world. Right?

[0]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_invasion_of_Russia)

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kd5bjo
Where I went to school (in the US, but there weren’t unified standards at the
time), US and European history were taught separately, in alternate years. So
we got both the war of 1812, and the Napoleonic Wars, but there was little to
connect them to each other except for the dates.

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realo
French Canadian here...

My impression on the 1812 war is that if the French had won the 1759 Battle of
Quebec (
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Plains_of_Abraha...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Plains_of_Abraham)
) then they would likely have lost to the Americans in 1812 ... There would be
no Canada today.

But of course, this is just speculation.

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war1025
If the French had won something in 1759, it's entirely possible that the
American Revolution in 1776 would never have happened or would have played out
completely differently.

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sbmthakur
After going through the comments, I landed on _Burning of Washington_ entry on
Wikipedia. Too bad that many people were killed but it makes for an
interesting read:

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_of_Washington)

The next foreign attack on Washington DC would be on _9 /11_.

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Causality1
The War of 1812 is a fascinating study in the ways we record and teach
history. The US teaches it as a US victory because the US got everything it
went into the war looking for and repulsed a British invasion. Canada teaches
it as a British/Canadian victory because they too got everything they went
into the war looking for and repulsed an American invasion.

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opps90
I'm American and it was taught as a stalemate. I think most history classes
probably teach it that way, and that's the most accurate interpretation. Your
average American likely remembers nothing about their history class so asking
an average American if it was a US victory is meaningless.

Also it's not accurate to say the British got everything they wanted from the
war. The Americans got the British to stop the impressment and harassment at
sea, which is why the Americans declared the war to begin with. I think the
British would have preferred not having the war at all in the first place
since they had bigger issues with their own war with France.

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maire
I am also American and I also learned it was a stalemate. The most significant
battle of the war was was fought two weeks after the war ended!

American historians think that the British complied with the meager settlement
of Ghent because of the battle of New Orleans.

We did get a nifty song out of it.

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mobilefriendly
The US (well, the Continentals) invaded British Canada early during the
Revolution for some of the same reasoning-- rally the ethnic French and
deliver a blow to British North America. That effort failed as well.

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stunt
The "Presidents of War" book touches this story from the U.S. prespective and
with a little bit background information on US, UK relationship during that
period.

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lacampbell
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.

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dentemple
There's nothing stopping Canadian companies from paying the same wages as
American companies.

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eloff
There's one thing stopping them, not enough Canadian programmers are willing
to vote with their feet. So the supply is too high in the labor market.

I do my part, whenever a recruiter contacts me on linked-in for a domestic
position, I reply thanks but I don't work for Canadian companies.

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lacampbell
I like it. Do you work remotely for US companies in Canada?

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eloff
Usually, but now I work unpaid on my own venture. I made an exception for a
couple months last year and worked for a Canadian company at US level wages.
They let me go pretty quickly. I think I was too expensive for them.

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maerF0x0
And they've been overcompensating since

