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What So Proudly We Hailed - Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R289
Discovery Miles 2 890
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(62%)
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What So Proudly We Hailed - Essays on the Contemporary Meaning of the War of 1812 (Paperback)
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List price R767
Loot Price R289
Discovery Miles 2 890
You Save R478 (62%)
Expected to ship within 9 - 15 working days
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With distrust between the political parties running deep and
Congress divided, the government of the United States goes to war.
The war is waged without adequately preparing the means to finance
it or readying suitable contingency plans to contend with its
unanticipated complications. The executive branch suffers from
managerial confusion and in-fighting. The military invades a
foreign country, expecting to be greeted as liberators, but
encounters stiff, unwelcome resistance. The conflict drags on
longer than predicted. It ends rather inconclusively or so it seems
in its aftermath.Sound familiar? This all happened two hundred
years ago. What So Proudly We Hailed looks at the War of 1812 in
part through the lens of today's America. On the bicentennial of
that formative yet largely forgotten period in U.S. history, this
provocative book asks: What did Americans learn and not learn from
the experience? What instructive parallels and distinctions can be
drawn with more recent events? How did it shape the nation?
Exploring issues ranging from party politics to sectional schisms,
distant naval battles to the burning of Washington, and citizens'
civil liberties to the fate of Native Americans caught in the
struggle, these essays speak to the complexity and unpredictability
of a war that many assumed would be brief and straightforward. What
emerges is a revealing perspective on a problematic ""war of
choice"" the nation's first, but one with intriguing implications
for others, including at least one in the present century. Although
the War of 1812 may have faded from modern memory, the conflict
left important legacies, both in its immediate wake and in later
years. In its own time, the war was transformative. To this day,
however, some of the fundamental challenges that confronted U.S.
policymakers two centuries ago still resonate. How much should a
free society regularly invest in national defense? Should the
expense be defrayed through new taxes? Is it possible for profound
partisan disagreements to stop ""at the water's edge""? What are
the constitutional limits of executive powers in wartime? How,
exactly, should the government treat dissenters, especially when
many are suspected of giving aid and comfort to an enemy? As
Americans continue to reflect on their country and its role in the
world, these questions remain as relevant now as they were then.
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