WILLIAM KINGSFORD
Napoleon’s defeat and abdication took place at the same time and that was the major foreign policy news that effected Englishmen at the time. The War with America was strategically a side show. At the same time, the Americans ships had bested the English almost every time they fought (the biggest and best armed ships were needed for the European War with Napoleon so the English fought with second rate ships in the Atlantic). And although the English had the better of most of the land conflicts, the final Battle of New Orleans was such a humiliating, and one sided, rout of His Majesty’s army, that there was nothing politically to be gained by publicizing the facts of the war. The British government just wanted to negotiate a treaty ending the conflict with America and get on with the activity in Europe. The result is that the English people have never known very much about the War of 1812.
William Kingsford was an English-born Canadian historian. Born in London, England, served in the army, and went to Canada, where he was engaged in surveying work. He was a self-taught historian, and one of the first to use the archives being gathered in Ottawa. He is best known for his History of Canada in 10 volumes (1887–1898), which was widely read by the upper middle class, as well as Anglophone teachers, despite its poor organisation and pedestrian writing style. Kingsford believed that the Conquest of New France guaranteed victory for British constitutional liberty and that it ensured material progress. He assumed the assimilation of French Canadians into a superior British culture was inevitable and desirable, for he envisioned Canada as one nation with one anglophone population.
