Originally posted by jeffkrol so what is the bottom line here? "we" wanted to fight Brits while "you guys" thought you were canadians not brits..
Nationalism w/ out a nation???? A GB "state" w/ delusions (well aspirations) of grandeur???
I'm confused
you will never get it from our perspective.
In actual fact no-one likely thought of themselves as canadian per se at the time (though it was lower and upper canada - ie ontario and quebec now)
most were either brits who left the US after the revolution, or american imagrants who left for whatever reason. the british side (or their decendants) were largely the ones fighting off the US coming north, the american imagrants ignored the whole thing, but did not supply American troops with anything either so helped inadvertently. The native indians did a lot of the fighting with support from the british and then were screwed over with land loss (again) at the end of the war.
From the Canadian perspective it was a win because we kicked you out when you came north
From the british perspective you were a side skirmish in a bigger battle and were more an annoyance than anything. Empressing was more about punishing the french than screwing with the US
and in general if any of the participants had a whit of decent diplomacy skills the entire thing could have been avoided
So the American view ends up you won because you stayed free and stopped the brits from taking over and ended empressment (nothing to do with anything you did BTW - and more about the war with the french ending) - Valid from an American standpoint but it was never about taking back the US from the brit side
The Canadian perspective I've stated
The British placed almost no importance on it and it was all about beating the french
and the native end they supported what they believed were Allies on both sides expecting to be treated well, and instead lost evem more lands as settlement moved west (naive bunch)