The War of 1812 (1 juin 1812 – 24 déc. 1814)

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The War of 1812 was a war between the United States of America, and the British Empire. A declaration of war was sent by U.S. congress on June 1st, 1812. (Belshaw, p. 251) This war was started because the British navy were harassing American ships that were headed to France for trade. The British were looking to take back British sailors that joined the Americans and also cut off Frances supply lines so that the Napoleonic wars in Europe at the time would favour Britain more. (Belshaw, p. 251) Even though the British and the United States were at war, it didn’t seem that those already settled in both the U.S. and Canada really had the same desires and interests. Trade all over North America was spurned even more because of these wars. What happened was Americans were able to make money by exporting their grain to Britain through Canadian ports; basically hiding the fact that it was Americans who were making money off of Canadian-British trade. (Belshaw, p. 252) The United States also thought that an invasion of Canada would be a quick and easy end to the war; which they were very wrong about. It was through both the Canadian-British army and Tecumseh’s small militia that the war lasted for three years. They attacked much of the Great Lakes region with a Canadian-British-Aboriginal army and thus quickly took control over the region, but soon enough the Americans led a counter-attack. The fought along the Great Lakes region for the three years, and in 1815, after the Treaty of Ghent was signed. The outcome of this war was a Canadian win, as they did not lose any territory. (Belshaw, p. 270-272) I believe that this was was super important to the creation of Canada as a whole. It secured Canadian land from the Americans, showing that they could hold themselves in a fight, thus stopping further attacks by Americans for land; and it also created an agreement between leaders that since they both have their own vast amounts of territories, they do not need to fight over other small pieces of land. The British attempts at retaking/reformatting the Americas lead to a stronger trade between the North American nations, and thus generated strong economic and population gain. It also had a massive effect on First Nations peoples too. It displaced them even further than before and the British realized that they did not need Indigenous allies in North America anymore, and basically abandoned them. (Watson, The American Revolution and British Loyalist Settlement, slide 29)

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