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Graeme Decarie, Canadian Historian
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“Cross-border shopping” during the War of 1812In those days, people didn't think of war the way we do, that, you know, “Our nation is at war against another nation. We all hate all the other side, we all pitch in and do our best.” Even today, in fact, in most countries, people don't do that nearly as much as newspapers and television would have us believe. And in those days, the war was the business of the leaders. "Let them fight it. Let hired hired soldiers fight it." But if you were an ordinary citizen, you had to think of your own property first, your own farm, your own interests, and your own family.Even at the height of the war, people would quite commonly - well, they'd do what we would now call cross-border shopping. You'd go across the American side. Americans would come over here, do shopping, pick up some food, head home again. It was quite acceptable. So this notion of nations at war was not one that was very strong then. Business was business. If it had not been for American farmers smuggling food up to the British army, the British army could not have sustained itself on the Great Lakes in that war. One general claimed at one point that 80% of his meat was coming from American farmers who were shipping it up. Same thing was true for a lot of the supplies at Montreal and at the fortress of Quebec. They were coming from American sources. |
