Návrat na detail prednášky / Stiahnuť prednášku / Univerzita Komenského / Pedagogická fakulta / AN - Reálie VB a USA

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (us_history[1].doc)

History of the United States of America

The American continent was probably discovered by Vikings around the year 1000 A.D. but they did not establish any permanent settlement. The existence of the American continent was not known in Europe until the voyage of Colombus in 1492.

Columbus

Columbus was searching for a western route to the India. He believed it would not be far. The Portuguese King John II turned him down, because his advisors said it was too risky. Instead he sponsored sailors looking for an eastward sea route. Than Columbus went to Queen Isabella of  Spain who eventually supported him.

Columbus was very religious and a gret sailor, he read everything he could about sailing. He was also some kind of businessman, he made Ferdinand and Isabella agree that if he succeeded they woul make him a knight, an Admiral of Open Sea, the Governor of all the lands he discovered and give him 10% of the wealth he found.

Columbus with his three ships, the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria and 90 men set sail on August 3, 1492. Unlike others, he did not sail due west, but first south to the Canary Islands and than east, expecting to hit Japan.

Thirty three days later they sighted cliffs on one of the Bahama Islands. Three days earlier he had promissed his men that if they didn t hit land in three days, they would turn back. He made three other voyages and even as he lay diyng two years after returning from his final voyage he thought that he had accomplished his goal of a western route to the East.

Civilizations in Central America

They found three main civilizations:

1. Incas in Peru. It was a mountain civilization, they introduced tomato and potato to Europeans
2. Mayas in Central America, they filles deserts with pyramids and palaces, they had calendar, system of writing and they introduced corn to Europeans
3. Aztecs in Central America, they were warlike and had grand and luxurious cities and palaces

None of these civilizations traveled by boat, they didn t know the wheel and dog was their only beast of burden. They seemed isolated and not interested in progress.

America was named after Amerigo Vespucci. He was Italian and it was an accident.

Other impotrtant conquerers

1. Magellan proved once for all that the Earth was round, and also that the new world was not connected to Asia
2. Cortéz conquered the Aztecs, he did it throught bravery, luck and disease (he arrived in a huge ship with horses and canons, the Aztecs thought he and his men were gods. He was the first who bring back a lot of gold
3. Pizarro conquered Incas
4. Coronado was looking for mythical cities filled with treasures, he went from Mexico to Kansas and found the Gran Canyon

From October 12, 1492, to july 4, 1776, North America served exclusively as colonial land to many Western European countries. The ships who first sailed to the New World were looking for the natural wealth of the region. Although they did not find gold as they had expected , they profited from the fur trade and also brought home new plants such as corn, beans, potatoes, and tobacco.

Soon the explorers decided to establish settlements on the continent. Among the first were:

5. Spanish (Florida in 1565, later Texas, Mexico, California, etc)
6. French ( the Louisiana territory in the middle of the land)
7. Dutch (New Amsterdam)
8. English, who were the most important among these nations

After one attemptthat failed they managed to find Jamestown in Virginia in 1607. The stream of colonists was encouragedby the results of Henry VIII s reformation of the Church in 1534. Many members of the Church of England, known as Puritans, they wanted to purify the Church from the remains of Catolicism, decided to move to America as they were persecuted at home. A typical Puritan colony emerged in 1620 and was named Massachusetts Bay colony. Its centre, Boston, soon became the largest town in the North- Eastern British territory, called New England. While Virginia settlers grew tobacco, New Englanders concentrated on trade.

As more and more colonies were being established in the 1st half of the 17th century, southern plantations could no longer obtain an adequate supply of English workers and so they decided to introduce slavery to America. Becouse the slave trade provided plenty of workers, after 1700 most Southern plantations relied on the slave labour.

In the 2nd half of the 17th century, a new system, known as triangular trade ensured the exchange of goods between England and Spain, the American colonies and the west African coast. While Europe supplied manufactured products, American merchants provided fish, furs, rum (as the product of sugar cane), lumber, grain, and tobacco, and Africa ensured a stable flow of slaves. But soon England began to encroach on the trading liberty of the colonies.

In the Navigation Acts (1651, 1660,1663, and 1673), it required certain products (enumerated goods) to be sold only in the mother country, and only English or colonial merchants and ships could engage in trade in the colonies.

In 1675 the Stamp Act required the payment of tax for any printed matter, and finally the Townshend Acts put a tax on many goods imported to the colonies from Britain (later restricted only to tea).

All these acts were passed by the British Parliament where the colonies had no actual representation. Those facts put colonists at a disadvantage and let to their hatred for the British. The trend of disobedience reached its peak on December 16, 1773, when 10 000 pounds worth of tea was dumped into the sea at the Boston Port.

The Boston tea party started the struggle for independence of the thirteen American colonies:

9. Georgia
10. South Carolina
11. North Carolina
12. Virginia
13. Maryland
14. Delaware
15. Pennsylvania
16. New Jersey
17. New York
18. Connecticut
19. Rhode Island
20. Massachusetts
21. New Hampshire

The first battle of the War of Independence started in April 1775 The British were greater in number, but weak in tactics. The patriots (American Militiamen), led from July 1775 by George Washington, wore the British down with their persistent fighting and deep commitment. Finally after the battles  of New York and Saragota, and with the help of France, the Americans forced their enemy to surrender at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.

On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of  Independence was signed. It officially denied colonial obligations to England. It was written by Thomas Jefferson. It declared all men created equal, an ideal principle on which the American society was supposed to be based.

The Treaty of Paris, Signed in 1783, granted the Americans unconditional independence and in addition included concession of all British land east of Mississipi. From May to September 1787 the Constitutional Convention was held under the leadership of Benjamin Franklin, James Madison and other delegates.

During 1778, the needed mayority of states ratified the new Constitution, although many opposed it because of the absence of the bill of rights (that was ratified much later, in 1791). Elected by inanimous vote, George Washington was the first president in office (1789- 1797). His first task was to pay off war debts owed to France but this became more and more difficult on the background of the Napoleonic wars. It resulted in the Quasi War with France which meant the seizing of the American ships by the French. The war ended in 1800 by signing the Convention which along with the negotiations with the British in 1796 aasserted a new diplomatic course of the United States, striving to avoid dependence on the European powers. The principle was outlined by George Washington in his Farewell Adress: The United States should maintain commercial but no political ties with other nations and enter no permanent alliances.

During the presidency of Thomas Jefferson (1801- 1809), the contry would be characterized by a decentralized economy, minimal government (especially at the national level) and maximum freedom of action and enterprize for everybody.

In April 30, 1803, the vast territory of Louisiana was purchased from the French for only 15 million dollars. The Louisiana Purchase presented a major step in the westward expansion across the continent and doubled the size of the nation.

Because of the naval blockade that both Britain and France were imposing in 1806, the United States lost all its commercial connections. Mainly British ships were controlling most of the Atlantic Ocean and basically disabled American ports from exporting and importing goods.  That is why the United States felt harmed and in 1812 empowered Congress to declare war on Britain.

At first , the only battle front of the War of 1812 on which it was possible to fight was Canada. Although begun with high hopes, the invasion of Canada ended as a disaster mostly because of the fact that the soldiers were untrained and the moves of the army uncoordinated. Sometimes it happened that militiamen of some states refused to fight outside the borders of their own territory and so the battle was lost.

In addition, the British naval blocade along the East Coast hit even more eeffectively American trade (between 1811 and 1814 it declined by nearly 90%). On the other hand, the battles of Baltimore and New Orleans, where American trops were led by Andrew Jackson, the future president, were won. The Treaty of Ghent, signed in 1814, reestablished the pre-war status quo. The War of 1812 also reaffirmed the inde pendence of the young American Republic.

In 1819, by a treaty with Spain, Florida was gained and so the United States became larger once again. Politically, an important event occured that formed the foremost rule in the future development of the USA.

In 1823, President James Monroe annouced the Monroe Doctrine which called for non- colonization of the Western Hemisphere by European nations, non- intervention by Europe in the affairs of independent New World nations and also non- interference by the United States in European affairs.

The existence of slavery, which was tolerated by the Constitution, became questionable when new territories were to be admitted as states to the Union. Because in 1820 the slave and non- slave states were equal in number, a potential admission of a state of one kind or the other would destroy the balance. Therefore a new law, the Missouri Compromise, was designed in which a line was drawn along the 36°30´ parallel north of which all states had to be free, whereas in the South slavery was not prohibided, thus the ratio of states was unchanged. In the period of the 1st half of the 19th century Southern and Northern states differed much in economy. The North was becoming an industrial area with factories, growing cities and railroads. Even the farmers in the West could rely on the North´s supplies of manufactured products.

On the other hand, in the South, farms and plantations spread across the lanscape as the prevailing slave labour brought money to the wealthy slave owners. The new product which stimulated expansion was cotton. The English textile factories needed more and more cotton and so gave birth to to Cotton Boom, large- scale production with territorial expansion and huge profit.

In the political sphere, two mayor parties emerged which varied in regad to the federal government. While the Whigs. a new party, claimed that a strong government could give a better chance to everyone  by building a central institucion, the Democrats (represented by Andrew Jackson) called for a looser bond of the individual states.

The western frontier continued to recede throughtout the 19th century. Texas, originally a part of Mexico, was gradually being settled by American slaveholders. They helped Texas win independence in 1836 and gain admittance to the Union as the 28th state in 1845. Furthermore the Oregon territory (including all of present- day Oregon, Washington and Idaho and parts of Wyoming and Montana), until this time jointly occupied by the British and Americans, became by the Oregon Treaty (1846) a part of the United States.

In the same year, a war with Mexico broke out the main issue still being Texas. It didn´t last long and turned out to be more successful than the Americans had expected. In the Treaty of Guadalupe- Hidalgo (1848), the United States gained California and New Mexico (including present- day Nevada, Utah and Arizona), and recognition of the Rio Grande as the southern boundary af Texas.

The American nation grew not only in size, but also in population. More than any other sourca, immigrants influenced this growth, counting for over 5 million in the years 1820- 1860. Seeking cheap land and a chance to make money, the Irish and German people were the most numerous. With increasing area of the land which was under control of the slaveowners, the Northerners were afraid that slave power coul become dominant in the whole nation. Therefore they formed a new Republican Party concentrating the abolitionists, i.e. those who asked for the abolition of slavery. Soon the United States split into two large parts, one of them being the North represented by Republicans, and the other the South with the slave- oligarchy- supported Democrats. They became hostile to each other because of the fear of each other´s power.

The winner of the 1860 election, Republican Abraham Lincoln, took a strong anti- slavery stand. This caused South Carolina on December 20, 1860, and in the spring 1861 another 10 states to secede from the Union. Those states were:

22. Mississippi
23. Florida
24. Alabama
25. Georgia
26. Louisiana
27. Texas
28. Virginia
29. Arkansas
30. North California
31. Tennesee

They formed a new government at Montgomery, Alabama, and called themselves the Confederate States of America. They chose Jefferson Davis as their president and acted independently from the Union. The armed conflict with which the Civil War (1861- 1865) began was the confederate attact on Fort Sumter in South Carolina (the fort was still under the control of the Union).

Despite the initial victories of the South, federal troops managed to succeed in two major battles in 1863 (Vicksburg and Gettysburg) and defeat became inevitable for the Confederacy.

In the middle of the war, at the end of 1862, President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation in which he announced that by January 1st, 1863, he would emancipate the slaves in states whose „people shall then be in rebellion against the United States“. Althought the blacsk were declared free by the 13-15th amendments to the Constitution and were given the right to vote, they continued to be completely segregated ( restricted in public facilities such as hotels, parks, theaters,etc.)

In the period 1865-1877 the reconstruction of the South was carried out. It included industrialization and improvements in the transportation system. In the following era, the flourishing industrial corporations, pools and trusts, generally known as big businessess, helped the United States gain economic power. The problems of most presidents consisted of regulating these monopolies (the most famous of them are Henry Ford´s car factories, Morgan´s U.S. Steel Corporation.  and Rockefeller´s Standard Oil Company) which were  trying to control politics too. The first strong president after many years Theodore Roosewelt (1901-1909). He strove to achieve cooperation between big busunessess and government and emphasized principles of the preservation of the enviroment.

After him, Woodrow Wilson increased regulation of finances. Internationally, the United States were becoming a world power. It set out for expansion which meant the outward movement of goods, dollars, ships, people, and ideas. This went hand in hand with anexation, colonialism, military occupation, economic domination, and political manipulation.

To name just a few areas that were goals of American expansionism:

-1867 Alaska was purchased from Russia

- 1893 annexation of the Hawaiian Islands

- US troops in Haiti, Dominican Republic, Honduras, Nicaragua, purchase of the land for the Panama Canal (completed 1914)

- financial control in Mexico and Guatemala.

Mostly Americans were referring to the Monroe Doctrine according to which they had a free hand over Latin America. Finally the Spanish-American-Cuban-Filipino War in 1898 was fought because the American government wanted Cuba to be independent from Spain an the local revolution against the Spanish reign could not succeed for a long time. The most remarkable victory for the United States was the destruction of the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay in the Philippines. Spanish resistance both in Cuba and the Philippines collapsed in  the same year in the Treaty of Paris Spain ceded Puerto Rico, Guam, an the Philippines to the United States and granted Cuba independence. Furthermore, in China, the United States asked all the countries with spheres there to respect the Open Door policy, that is equal trade opportunity for everybody.

In the  times of World War I, Woodrow Wilson sought to protect American interests as a neutral trader an tried to make the fighting countries respect international law. For almost 3 years, he kept the United States out of the war. But after Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare and sank several American ships, it was no longer possible just to profit from selling goods to the fighting countries. On April 2, 1917, Congress declared war on the Central Powers. American soldiers in France helped the Allies win the war and so America took part as a victorious country in the negotiations in Versailles. President Wilson was the one to design the Fourteen Point which guided the conference in Paris. They included principles of public-checked diplomacy, freedom of the seas, reductions in armaments and decolonization of empires. Other points concern self-determination of the European nations, and also a suggestion to found a League of Nations. In Paris all of the points were accepted, however in the United States, the Senate rejected the treaty (mainly due to the aversion to membership in the League of Nations) on the grounds of traditional American unilateralism, which already started with George Washington.

In the 20´s, the American economy was prospering more than at any previous time. The gross national product rose by 40 percent between 1919 and 1929 and for example a car was easily affordable for an ordinary factory worker. The flow of immigrants had to be halted by issuing the Immigration Quotas (1921 and 1924). In 1919, the 18th Amendment prohibited the production, sale and transport of alcoholic beverages and so the whole period became known as Prohibition. However, on Black Thursday (October24, 1929), the stock market crash in New York destroyed the dreams of a rich society. Overproduction and underconsumption caused widespread unemployment. As many as one quarter of all workers (about 13 million) were without jobs. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt moved into the White House in 1933, he began to issue radical reform legislation. During the period of the First Hundred Days (or the First New Deal) from March 9 to June 16, 1933, several acts were passed that helped banks and farmers and ensured social support for citizens. Perhaps the most important of the laws was the National Industrial Recovery Act that provided money to hire the unemployed to build government-owned roads, sewage and water systems, public buildings. The Second Hundred Days (or the Second New Deal) in the summer of 1935 included laws allowing workers to unionize, the Social Security Act (insurance for illness, old age and unemployment) and many other measures.

The role of the United States in the world now became the one of the biggest exporter and it functioned as the world´s financial capital. In the Dawes Plan of 1924, it provided loans for Germany to be able to pay off it´s war reparations. At the dawn of the Second World War, President Roosevelt wanted once again to remain loyal to the isolationist theory which Americans had invented for themselves, believing that it was unwise to enter any political alliances. Despite the Neutrality Acts (1935 and 1936), the United States could not prevent its involvement in the war. After the United States had cut off trade with Japan in 1940 and the Lend-Lease Act (1941) which enabled the British to borrow arms from USA, the Japanese launched an air raid on December 7, 1941, which targeted the naval base of Pearl Harbor and the United States entered the war on the side of the Allies. American troops contributed significantly to the invasion of France (operation OVERLORD – General Dwight D. Eisenhower) but were also engaged in the Pacific. There the US Navy employed the strategy of “island hopping” towards Japan. When it was on the verge of entering Japan, the Manhattan Project was completed. It led to the successful development of an atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Japanese city Hiroshima was bombed and three days later another atomic attack flattened Nagasaki. Throughout the war, Roosevelt and later Truman were negotiotating with the Soviets (led by Stalin) and the British about how the war should be fought (Teheran), about founding the United Nations Organization (Dunbarton Oaks) and about structuring the post-war world (Yalta and Potsdam).

After World War II, the Cold War against the Soviet Union began because it was believed that this power posed a threat to the United States by its possession of the atomic bomb and  by dominating Eastern Europe. The Marshall Plan which provided loans to European countries to help them recover their economies and the founding of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to protect the plan were initiated by American activity as well. United States soldiers represented a major portion of the forces that fought in the Korean War (1950-1953) on the side of South Korea against the North Korean and Chinese troops. The chief commander of assistant corps was General McArthur. While Eisenhover´s policy (1953-1961) concentrated predominantly on the Middle East, John Fitzgerald Kennedy had to confront the Soviet Union in Berlin where he was asked to end the Western occupation but refused to withdraw and thus forced the Soviets to build the Berlin Wall (August 1961). The Cuban crisis in 1962 was a reaction to the installation of Soviet nuclear weapons on the island. Kennedy thought this too dangerous and responded with a naval quarantine. The threat of a nuclear holocaust was averted when Khrushchev agreed to ship the missiles back to the Soviet Union in exchange for an American promise never to attack Cuba and respect the revolutionary government led by Castro. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963 in Dallas. During his administration, the civil rights movement headed by Martin Luther King, Jr., achieved many improvements for the African Americans.

The American involvement in the Vietnam War (1961-1973) was later regarded as an unsuccessful military effort to resist the South-Vietnamese Vietcong troops (who received help from the Northern Ho Chi Minh´s regime). They failed to prevent them from taking all of the South Both Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson (president 1963-1969) hoped for victory and escalated the war but all these attempts proved to be in vain. On January 27, 1973, the cease-fire agreement was signed and on April 29, 1975, Vietnam was united. The war was massively opposed at home and seen as purposeless.

In 1974, the investigation of the break-in into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate building proved that President Richard Nixon was involved in bribing witnesses and was withholding evidence regarding the break-in. On these grounds, he had to resign from office as the first president to do so. After the Watergate scandal Gerald R. Ford replaced his predecessor and had to deal with serious economic recession. He was succeeded by Jimmy Carter, who having learned a lesson from Vietnam and Watergate, promised the people never to lie again. His first steps were rather convincing, as he managed to conclude treaties that provided for the gradual return of the gradual return of the Canal Zone to Panama, supervised the meeting of the Egyptian and Israeli leaders that resulted in ending the warfare between these two convincing, and slowed down the arms race by the SALT-II treaty. But in November 1979, having overthrown the pro-American regime, revolutionaries in Iran stormed into the American embassy in Teheran and took the personnel as hostages, While the 444 days long Iranian hostage crisis troubled Carter, Soviet troops marched into Afghanistan. The cracked international reputation of the United States was the legacy that fell into the hands of Ronald Regan. In his two-term presidency he cut down taxes (Tax Reform Act – 1986), lowered inflation but also worked out the Strategic Defense Initiative (known as “Star Wars”) in 1983 and experienced the crisis in Lebanon where 240 American marine servicemen were killed during their peacekeeping mission. The break of the Iran-contra scandal (1986) revealed secret aid from the American government to the counter-revolutionaries in Nicaragua. Although explicitly by Congress, the money which was obtained from selling arms to Iran was still being sent to the Nicaraguan contras. The hearings proved that Reagan´s government had been withholding information from the public. Throughout  this time, many meetings between Reagan an Gorbachev (Reykjavik 1986, Washington 1987 an Moscow 1988) set the course of reducing strategic weapons. Moreover, in 1988 Gorbachev began to withdraw Soviet troops from Afghanistan. Reagan´s successor, George Bush, had to handle the crisis in the Persian Gulf. In the Gulf War (operation Desert Storm – January 15 to February 28, 1991)  troops, which were comprised mostly of US soldiers, defeated the Iraqi army led by Saddam Hussain (who had invaded Kuwait), with the casualties being 137 Americans and an estimated 100 000 Iraqi. In the elections of 1992 Democrat Bill Clinton, the youngest president in office since John F. Kennedy, received the most votes.

[edit] 1991 to present

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States emerged as the world's sole remaining superpower and continued to involve itself in military action overseas, including the 1991 Gulf War. Following his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton oversaw the longest economic expansion in American history, a side effect of the digital revolution and new business opportunities created by the Internet (see Internet bubble).

In 1993, Islamic terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, planted explosives in the underground garage of One World Trade Center and detonated them killing six people and injuring thousands, in what would become the beginning of an age of terrorism. Two years later in 1995, Timothy McVeigh spearheaded a terrorist bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. The bombing killed 168 people and injured over 800.

The presidential election in 2000 between George W. Bush (R) and Al Gore (D) was one of the closest in American history, and helped lay the seeds for political polarization to come.

At the beginning of the new millennium, the United States found itself attacked by Islamic terrorism, with the September 11, 2001 attacks in which Islamic extremists hijacked four transcontinental airliners and intentionally crashed two of them into the twin towers at the World Trade Center and one into the Pentagon. The passengers on the fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, revolted causing the plane to crash into a field in Somerset County, PA. According to the 9/11 Commission Report, that plane was intended to hit the US Capitol Building in Washington. As a result of the attacks, the twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed, destroying the entire complex. The United States soon found large amounts of evidence that suggested that a terrorist group, al-Qaeda, spearheaded by Osama bin Laden, was responsible for the attacks. The attacks of that day sparked patriotism throughout the country, the largest clean up effort in the nation's history, and a global battle against terrorism.

In response to the attacks, under the administration of President George W. Bush, the United States (with the military support of NATO and the political support of most of the international community) invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban regime, which had supported and harbored bin Laden. More controversially, President Bush continued what he dubbed the War on Terrorism with the invasion of Iraq by overthrowing and capturing Saddam Hussein in 2003. Reasons cited by the administration for the invasion ranged from the 'spreading of democracy', the 'elimination of weapons of mass destruction' (later proven to be based on false or skewed evidence) and the 'liberation of the Iraqi people'. This second invasion proved to be unpopular in many parts of the world and helped fuel a global wave of anti-American sentiment.

In August 2005, Hurricane Katrina flooded parts of the city of New Orleans and heavily damaged other areas of the gulf coast, including major damage to the Mississippi coast. The preparation and the response of the government were criticized as ineffective and slow. As of 2006, the political climate remains polarized as debates continue over partial birth abortion, federal funding of stem cell research, same-sex marriage, immigration reform and the ongoing war in Iraq.

By 2006, rising prices saw Americans become increasingly conscious of the nation's extreme dependence on steady supplies of inexpensive petroleum for energy, with President Bush admitting a U.S. "addiction to oil." The possibility of serious economic disruption, should conflict overseas or declining production interrupt the flow, could not be ignored, given the instability in the Middle East and other oil-producing regions of the world. Many proposals and pilot projects for replacement energy sources, from ethanol to wind power and solar power, received more capital funding and were pursued more seriously in the 2000s than in previous decades.