Poll results

[avrelia]

I want to thank everyone who voted in my poll, and here are the results: only Canadians actually care or remember about this war.
Now what was the purpose of this all? Recently I facilitated the discussion about Canadian history (I have only the most general knowledge of the subject, but my students know even less, and no, I am still unemployed). So as we started to talk about the war of 1812, a thesis was proposed that Canadians think they won (well, since Canada technically didn’t exist at the moment as an independent state, it was Great Britain); and the Americans think that they did. Well, as it turns out, the Americans don’t think about it at all.
For some people (including myself), this war brought another set of confusions, because the first association I have with year 1812 is the Russian campaign of Napoleon, the Borodino battle, and the fire of Moscow. When I ask my other friends about it – non-Canadians, non-Russians, they mostly blank out at mentioning 1812. I’ll try to my Latin-American girls, I wonder whether they have any associations of their own with 1812.

In other news, we bought bicycles yesterday, and now my bicycle muscles are all sore, and I slept through the afternoon, and would likely have slept more if being left to my own devices.

Comments

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

Well, The Russian Campaign is the beauty in itself. (and not only because of all the pretty cavalier guards, hussars, and all the heroics). Napoleon definitely lost the war. But he lost it by winning. Having won battles (even Borodino, according to some was won by the French), having advanced rapidly, having occupied Moscow, he found himself in the worst position ever.