The Four Wars of 1812 - Softcover

MacLeod, D. Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1771000503 ISBN 13: 9781771000505

Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre, 2012

Synopsis

June 2012 marks the two hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the War of 1812. Most people know the War of 1812 as the military conflict between Great Britain and the United States that lasted from 1812 until 1815, but the truth is that Canada, including Canadian First Peoples, and Native Americans were caught up in the war too. This highly visual book with photographs and maps supplied by the Canadian War Museum and text by distinguished historian Peter MacLeod, examines the War of 1812 from the diverse perspectives of American, British, Canadian, and Native participants. For Canadians, the War of 1812 was all about American invasions. For Americans, it was about standing up to Britain. For the British, it was an annoying sideshow to the Napoleonic Wars raging in Europe. For Native Americans, it was a desperate struggle for freedom and independence as they fought to defend their homelands. Canadians and Americans have used the War of 1812 as a source for nation-building narratives, centred on their stories of the war. But all four groups fought and remembered their own War of 1812. Viewing the conflict through the eyes of the four principal combatants will provide readers with a better appreciation of the War of 1812, a crucial event in Canadian history.

The book's publication will coincide with the opening of a major corresponding exhibit at the Canadian War Museum about the War of 1812, which will run from June 15, 2012 to January 6, 2013.

About this title

About the Author

D. Peter MacLeod is the pre-Confederation historian at the Canadian War Museum, where he curated the exhibits on the Seven Years' War and Battle of the Plains of Abraham for the permanent galleries. A longstanding student of 18th-century Canada, he is the author of The Canadian Iroquois and the Seven Years' War (published in French as Les Iroquois et la guerre de sept ans). He lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

From School Library Journal

Gr 7 Up-Published for the 200th anniversary of the War of 1812, this attractive book uses a pictorial format to examine the viewpoints, goals, and outcomes for its four major participants: Britain, Canada, the United States, and Native American nations. It opens with maps of the North Atlantic and North America and a short introduction about the war. Its four chapters, each focused on one combatant, are made up of spreads that feature either a color photo of period artifacts and weapons or reproductions of artwork or political cartoons on one side and a one- to four-paragraph essay that describes how it illustrates a significant aspect or perspective about the war on the other. It is an effective format, one that will help readers understand that the goals and achievements of the major combatants were so different that they experienced four different wars. However, it does not provide a comprehensive overview, and background information and details are limited. MacLeod is mostly objective about each nation's perspectives, goals and achievements, and failures, but does identify Canada as the clear "winner" of the war. This book will not replace more traditional overviews such as Miriam Greenblatt's War of 1812 (Facts On File, 2003), which provides significantly more detail about causes, battles, and outcomes, but it does offer a different and more international perspective about an almost-forgotten conflict, making it a good supplementary choice for secondary collections.-Mary Mueller, formerly at Rolla Junior High School, MOα(c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

About this edition

• Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 1771000503
• ISBN 13: 9781771000505
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 112