Why couldn't we annex Canada in 1812?

America was still a fledgling state, they were just more incompetent and backwards.

The only war that America has ever won definitively and without another country doing the majority of the legwork is the Mexican-American war. Every other war has been pretty much indecisive or had another country do the legwork.

The Quebec act that triggered the 1 colonies so hard was actually not a terrible thing for Quebec. While they didn't get political representation in Britain ( which they'd never expect) they got to keep their local system of law and many of their religious rights as Catholics were protected.

I guess they won their civil war?

lots of officials in the USA didn't even support the war and refused to provide man power. the Americans that did go over expected to be seen as liberators by a devoutly loyalist colony.

Ask Spain. Tell him btw, Puerto Rico just blew me. Shit was cash.

>and there officers were far better experienced
They still have better educayshun

well memed

Did they really assume that Canada wanted liberating? I could understand them making the mistake in thinking Quebec would jump at the chance, but a large portion of the Anglo population were British loyalists that left the 13 colonies in the revolution.

UNDERRATED

A constant theme in American warfare is the idea of being seen as liberators. They usually are... for the first two weeks or so. Then they do some dumb shit like burn down Toronto or massacre the natives and the shit rolls downhill from there.

Not attacking, but how exactly were the British oppressing Canadians?

They weren't, per se. However, many Canadians (during the Revolution) were sympathetic with the American cause. Not sympathetic enough to join the war, but sympathetic nonetheless. When America came in 1812, a lot of Canadians were in a similar situation, sympathetic with both sides, but not enough to do anything outside of a few militias. The idea that Canada fought fervently against the war in the first year (maybe a year and a half), outside of a few small militias and stationed British regulars, is nationalist revisionism. Same with the idea that Canadians burned down D.C., rather than the reality of British regulars fresh off the boat from Europe.

France did.

How the fuck did France win a civil war they weren't involved in, in any way? They were too busy getting kicked around in Mexico.

>try to invade Canada by land
>only realize after you've crossed the border that there are no fucking roads, everything is connected by waterways
>don't have a real navy, so capturing the fortress at Quebec City to gain access to the St. Lawrence is absolutely out of the question
>maybe we should have done some planning first

I think he's talking about the revolution

Partly shit planning, partly the Eternal Native, entirely shit leadership.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Detroit

>don't have a real navy, so capturing the fortress at Quebec City to gain access to the St. Lawrence is absolutely out of the question
Except U.S. frigates rocked British ships to the point that the Royal Navy sent out an order that British ships weren't to engage unless they had a 3:1 advantage.

Spanish/American?

It's debatable if the soldiers were "Canadian".

When you talk colonial armies you usually consider where they're serving to be a sort of nationality. For example, a lot of the Indian military traces it's traditions to British colonial traditions even though they were technically a British army. The Varrangian guard was considered "Byzantine" even though it composed mainly of Slavic Vikings.

Although they might not be citizens or denizens of the land they are the army of that colonial property and as such are a part of their cultural heritage when events occurred in which they were involved.

Pacific War.

>inb4 muh China

Barely did shit except die, more IJA soldiers were killed in the Philippines than China and 2/3 of their military budget went to the IJN anyway which the USN soloed.

>Gulf War
>"another country do the legwork"

kek fuck off.

Loyalists didn't really arrive here en masse until after 1812. Before then it was mostly French and a minority of British settlers in the Maritimes and Upper Canada.

what's your point?

The us navy and marines were in absolutely no shape to take Quebec City.

you would be thinking of China there.

They beat Japan

It is honestly pretty pathetic how much the British were able to keep the US at bay since they were simultaneously fighting Napoleon.

>Barely did shit except die

That still helped us though. The Japanese thought they would conquer China easily, it took much longer than they thought, and soon the Japs were fighting a two-front war.

>be American
>shart

The Japs were fighting a ten front war.
>hey guys lets expand into China (which due to its massive size basically counts as three individual fronts), India, New Guinea, the Pacific, and Siberia while also fighting the British in the Indian Ocean while dealing with the US Silent Service (which sunk more Japanese ship tonnage than every other military branch combined)
>what could possibly go wrong!?!?>?!

The US Army had been gutted by the previous President, leaving it tiny, poorly equipped, and lacking in funding to expand. The idea was that the US Army would form the center of armies supported largely by militias who would march into Canada and "liberate" the Canadians from the British. A large amount of the military was expected to be Canadian colonists.

The three main things the US failed to account for was
1. The US Army was hilariously useless due to the aforementioned problems, meaning it was going to form a core about as solid as jello for these armies comprised mostly of militia
2. The militia were largely uninterested in going to fight and die to claim land. They joined the militia to protect their homes, not steal other people's, and in many cases refused to cross the border into Canada.
3. The Canadians were perfectly happy being British subjects, aside from the French colonists who wanted to be French subjects. Neither much wanted "freedom" they just wanted to keep farming and trapping and were more than happy to defend their homes and fight for the King.

1812 is pretty inexcusable because of the attempted invasion and annexation of Canada. The US had perfectly legitimate issues with British impressing sailors and holding forts on US territory, but just when negotiations were getting under way and the British were willing to relent on the impressing issue the US declared war, and a few figureheads got it in their heads that this would be a perfect time to both stop the British from stealing sailors and claim fat new lands to tax.

The White House burned because the US thought to neither leave an army nor a navy to protect the capital.

Jefferson dismantled the army in 1801. He fired 70% of the personnel and completely reworked the officer corp for political reasons.

The army after Jefferson was meant to rely on untrained militia almost entirely, on the assumption that the US could not be invaded by anyone. It was just a frontier civil service for things like Lewis and Clark and other exploration/scientific projects.

Then came the battle of Bladensburg, where a numerically superior force of militia in prepared defenses fled through the streets of Washington before the eyes of the entire federal government, who had stepped outside to observe, before the British regulars even fired shots.

This combined with the cowardice and incompetence that had been put on display during the 5 failed invasions of Canada finally convinced the government to build a real army like Washington and Adams had done.

The war of 1812 was so humiliating for the US that New England was organizing secession with the aim of possibly rejoining Britain. They may have done so, had the political situation not turned around with the Battle of New Orleans.

>since they were simultaneously fighting Napoleon.

t. deluded Brits
British contribution in the Napoleonic Wars was a joke
All they did was getting stalled on a secondary theater against a second-rate French army not even lead by Napoleon for 6 years while Ryssians, Prussians and Austrians were fighting the real war

>trafalgar
>btfoing continental system
>funding the war effort of other countries with the aid of Jewish merchants

and the Peninsular war was surely vital in diverting troops from the primary theatre? You forgetting about the 100 days too m8?

They invited the French Canadians to join their rebellion but the Brits basically bribed the Frenchies with the Quebec Act.

This including an event that happened before the Napoleonic wars

>destroying the dutch navy at camperdown meaning it never can challenge British control of the seas

The dutch were the only ones who could legitimately challenge British control of the sea. So destroying the dutch before they became cucked to the french really helped in the long run

Also, forgot to mention

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vlieter_Incident

The british beat soundly the only ones who could challenge british control of the seas, in this case without firing a shot

It was just a bunch of farmland and there would probably have been royalist revolts. Canada was basically a containment country.

Because our "army" that invaded Canada was a bunch of state militias and didn't do so well. Here's a better question, why didn't Canada declare independence with us in 1776, think about it, the United States would've had literally the whole continent northwards of the Rio Grande (after the Mexican-American War) minus Quebec of course

It isn't debatable. They were literally British regulars fresh off the fucking boat from Britain.

>The Dutch were evolved from arabs
>Poles evolved from toasters
fucking kek

Because they weren't traitorous spergs and they respected their British overlords.

Is there any record of any of them settling in Canada after the war?

If we were given taxation with representation we never would've seceded

The whole tax thing was propaganda made by the Sons of Liberty because they wanted their ideal new world. The truth was that the taxes were fair and no worse than what most civilians paid in most countries. King George had used the military to protect the Thirteen Colonies so it made sense to have them help repay. But politics won out over reality and enough people bought the "taxation without representation" line and other stretched truths.

And Americans were never fooled into starting a needless war ever again.

they hadnt even been oppressing the americans.

>Except U.S. frigates rocked British ships to the point that the Royal Navy sent out an order that British ships weren't to engage unless they had a 3:1 advantage.

only applied to british frigates, if a ship of the line had a american frigate in a position to force a engagement she would be expected to take it, and the order only applied to the 4 large heavy frigates the lighter frigates were considered fair game, and indeed got btfo when engaged by RN frigates as shown by the chesapeakes performance against shannon.

and the order only applied until heavier frigates had entered the theatre, however by that point the US had conceeded that they couldnt win the war and entered peace negotiations

Did you even read the chart? The China front took up over a million troops and that's just counting the army. That's second only to Japan itself.

US didn't have a larger army or navy than Britain, what are you talking about?

...

this

american revisionism is that the americans are always the good guys and are always helping the poor nations they attack no matter what

america was a mistake

This Spain got BTFO

>You may fire when ready Gridley