{"id":15496,"date":"2012-06-15T08:14:47","date_gmt":"2012-06-15T12:14:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15496"},"modified":"2019-07-18T09:19:13","modified_gmt":"2019-07-18T13:19:13","slug":"the-canadian-war-museums-1812-exhibit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/15\/the-canadian-war-museums-1812-exhibit\/","title":{"rendered":"The Canadian War Museum&#8217;s 1812 exhibit"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www2.macleans.ca\/2012\/06\/11\/the-war-of-1812-at-the-canadian-war-museum\/\" target=\"_blank\"><em>Maclean&#8217;s<\/em><\/a> finds the Canadian War Museum&#8217;s War of 1812 exhibit lacking in the triumphal chest-beating one might expect:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\u201cIf you\u2019re a Canadian, the Americans invaded, and we pushed them back, and we evolved into an independent country. So as far as we\u2019re concerned, it\u2019s hardly worth saying that Canada won,\u201d says exhibition curator Peter MacLeod, the museum\u2019s pre-Confederation historian. \u201cBut the Americans have their own take on it. They went to war with the British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world. And they fought them to a draw. They forced them to respect American independence and American sovereignty. So as far as the Americans are concerned, it\u2019s just as obvious that they won.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To the British, says MacLeod, the conflict in North America was a sideshow to the more important war against Napoleon in Europe. They invested the weapons and men they could spare, and the Royal Navy blockaded American ports, but defending Canada was of secondary importance.<\/p>\n<p>For Native Americans, it was an existential fight. \u201cHere is a chance presented to us,\u201d the Shawnee leader Tecumseh said, \u201ca chance such as will never occur again, for us Indians of North America to form ourselves into a great combination and cast our lot with the British in this war.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Tecumseh\u2019s coalition of Native American tribes believed that by aligning themselves with the British, they might stop American expansionism. \u201cThis is the last war where they have a serious chance to roll back the American frontier,\u201d says MacLeod. \u201cAnd it\u2019s the last war where they have a European ally on their side. After this they\u2019re facing the United States on their own, and the Americans basically roll straight to the Pacific.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maclean&#8217;s finds the Canadian War Museum&#8217;s War of 1812 exhibit lacking in the triumphal chest-beating one might expect: \u201cIf you\u2019re a Canadian, the Americans invaded, and we pushed them back, and we evolved into an independent country. So as far as we\u2019re concerned, it\u2019s hardly worth saying that Canada won,\u201d says exhibition curator Peter MacLeod, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,7,5,13],"tags":[438,1298,522,566],"class_list":["post-15496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-cancon","category-history","category-military","category-usa","tag-firstnations","tag-museum","tag-ottawa","tag-warof1812"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-41W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15496"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15497,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15496\/revisions\/15497"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}