Re: CHAT: "have a Canadian day"

Robert Hailman wrote:

> Nik Taylor wrote:
> >
> > Robert Hailman wrote:
> > > I should have said that was the main reason for the invasion of Canada,
> > > the war of course had other reasons. One can't doubt that at the time
> > > the Americans had an eye to rule Canada.
> >
> > Don't forget that during the Revolution, Benjamin Franklin was sent to
> > Quebec to try to convince them to join in the Revolution.  So, that
> > desire certainly wasn't new with the War of 1812 [which has to be the
> > worst name ever for a war, IMHO; why not, say, the Anglo-American War?]
> >
>
> No, it certainly wasn't a new idea, but it had become more popular by
> the time 1812 rolled around.
>
> I admit it is a pretty stupid name, how about the North American War?
Because it wasn't fought in just North America.  What North Americans
call the "War of 1812" was in fact probably more of an extension of the
third worldwar, the Napoleonic Wars (1799-1815), after the Seven Years' War
(1756-1763) and the War of American Independence (1775-1783), the
first and second worldwars, respectively.

(The way the War of 1812 grew out of the European conflict is analogous
how the French and Indian War -- what we North Americans usually call the
Seven Years' War, except that it lasted from 1754-1763 -- grew into
a general conflict, and how the Japanese war with China starting in 1937
grew into the Second World War (1939-45).)

But anyways, as Saussure pointed out, names are entirely arbitrary.   If you
choose to identify some subset as a war, that's fine, even though you are
implicitly ignoring all the context of that war.  It's for that reason that we
read of the Peloponnesian War, instead of at least three distinct periods of
official war, and why many scholars choose to group what are commonly
called the First World War and Second World War really as one giant
bloodbath with a short breathing space in between.

======================================
Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
ICQ#: 4315704   AIM: trwier
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
======================================