American Civilization Apuntes PDF

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AMERICAN CIVILIZATION UNIT 1 THE AMERICAN CONTEXT 1. Ethnic Culture: First settlers after 1607 were mainly British, sharing America with the Natives communities and other Europeans (French & Spaniards). Until 1776, half of the population were protestant white Anglo-Americans. They pr...

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AMERIC AN C IVILIZATIO N

UNIT 1 THE AMERICAN CONTEXT 1. Ethnic Culture: First settlers after 1607 were mainly British, sharing America with the Natives communities and other Europeans (French & Spaniards). Until 1776, half of the population were protestant white Anglo-Americans. They promoted many of the new nation’s political, social, constitutional and religious institutions. Political principles were based on democracy, grassroots sovereignty, and skepticism about government… Social values were conditioned by a belief in individualism, Protestant work ethic, and the rule of law. Other Europeans integrated on the American mainstream identity. North western Europe supplied 2/3 of the immigration in America after the Colonial and Independence age (1776), there were also many Asians. At the end of the 19th century a shift occurred towards southern and eastern Europe immigrants; this varied the social and religious composition of the USA society. Despite of many restrictive politics in immigration; the US received 60 M. immigrants during the 20th century; Asians, South and Central Americans (Mexicans), Caribbean… The effects of colonial settlements, the importation of slaves, and later immigration, have been important in numerical and origin terms, making the US a special country in this way, providing a distinct ethnically based identity as a nation of immigrants and their descendants. The biggest minority immigrant population is Latino. White people are the group with more population, but in further years this could vary. Afro Americans and Native Americans suffered (and suffers) problems of integration in the US society.

2. Religious culture: Religion is a very important issue in American history, and it’s based on colonists, slaves and Native Americans. Some early settlers escaped from religious prosecution in their homelands, establishing communities based on their beliefs. This fact makes the moral basis of the new nation. Not all settlers were inspired by religion, some travelled for adventure, freedom, new experiences, new markets and to escape from European oppression. Religiosity rates fluctuated during the ages, however, it’s a defining fact of the actual US, in comparison with other countries. Although religion is a private, personal matter separated from the state, it informs and may condition social, economic and political life. Religion influences in many areas of the American life is a part of education, politics and ethics. Despite a desire to keep religion out of politics by a legislative and constitutional means, some critics question whether it is realistic or necessary to deny religion a full and active part of public life.

3. Political-legal culture: This is the third major American culture fact, shaped by: o Central place of law and Constitution in American life. o Restrictions made by constitution upon politics. o Belief if the Americans in minimal government, especially in the federal one. o The perceived need to produce consensual national policies. The Constitution is the centre of this fact, interpreted by the judiciary (the Supreme Court in Wa DC.) determining what’s constitutional or not. These features help to solidify society, widely accepting centralized politics. Racial or ethnic differences, immigration and social diversity affected to national unity, and are still problematic. Americans are aware of corruption, fraud and incompetence in the political and legal systems and that claims to “liberty” and “freedom” are not always respected in reality. Responses to pluralism have often resulted in consensus politics based on political and judicial compromise. US politics are not usually considered to be as oppositional as in other nations, but in the recent years the differences between parties became bigger in a lot of issues, economy, religion, employment… Voters can also register opposition or support on many issues, gay marriage, abortion, death penalty… Even when academics register a low rate of voting participation. This reflects alienation from the political process.

4. Economic culture: The fourth major US culture is the economic framework, which is also idealistic/abstract and materialistic/practical. Americans generally have a belief in individualism and a free enterprise system, which is supposed to deliver goods and services demanded. The system can also produce inferior products, bad service, incompetence, corruption and little variety of the real choice of consumers. Americans tend to support small business in front of big ones. Depending on global economy, fluctuation between public and private economic sectors varies.

5. Americaness and National identity: Many cultures (Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Italians…) interacted to form the American lifestyle, leaving their influence in education, people, environment and social services. A historical dilemma for the US has been how to balance a need for civic unity against the problems generated by ethnic diversity. An important thing has been the “Americanization”, the assimilation of different groups into an Anglo-American base, the thing known as the “melting pot”. Assimilation implies absolute national unity, whereas “integration” occurs at levels of partial and more “natural” blending or mixing. The fact of nationalism inside the US varied during the years, growing and decreasing. It is difficult to represent an American lifestyle integrating all those ethnicities; there are huge differences between the dominant groups and the others, that’s why the US is also known as a “mosaic” or a “salad bowl” in substitution of “melting pot”. The solution to problems is to define national structures, which acknowledge ethnic identity or roots, seeing the differences as valid despite of the reluctance to some groups of integrating in the US society. The US tried to achieve this “Americaness” using several symbols such as the national anthem, the flag, and some documents such as the Declaration of Independence that came from Puritan concepts and the European Enlightment. Americans may stress with individualism, distrust of big government and their desire to be free. But communalism, voluntary activities, charitable organizations and group endeavors are also a feature of the US life, making a highly recognized international culture.

6. Social and institutional change: US influence many other countries and vice versa, remaining specific politics for the US attending political, minority and consumer demands. US social organizations or institutions have been constructed since 1607, some particular of the nation, some shared with another countries. All very designed to attend the complex society system, taking different forms and sizes, operating on federal, state, and local levels, and may be public or private in character. The “American way of life” is defined by how citizens function within and respond to local and national institutions and cultures, whether positively or not.

7. American attitudes to US society: Social structures and policies affect individuals directly in their daily lives. Despite the difference in origins, Americans have the same concerns and values regarding economy, politics, crime, religion, healthcare… Some polls showed that a 23% of Americans think that the country goes in the right direction whether a 72% thinks the opposite.

UNIT 2 THE PEOPLE: SETTLEMENT, IMMIGRATION, WOMEN AND MINORITIES 1.

Mother of Exiles

Immigration is a central aspect of US history. Believing in the American Dream, many tens of millions of people have come to live in the USA. They strengthened the nation’s commitment to “the dream” and to its ideal of being a refuge for the poor and oppressed, a nation of nations. The view that the nature of the nation was and should be a composite of many national backgrounds, races and cultures gained popular acceptance. For most of foreign-born, life in the USA has meant an improvement over their situation in the “old country”. However, the meetings of newcomers and native-born have also contributed to America’s history of social disorder. The contacts, conflicts and mixing of cultures have fuelled widespread discrimination, economic exploitation and debates over equality, opportunity and national identity. In a country whose history began with the meeting of Native Americans and European colonists and continued through the importation of African slaves and several waves of immigrants, there has never been a single national culture, although for centuries a majority of Anglo-Americans made vigorous efforts to establish one.

2.

Early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans

The first North American settlers migrated from Siberia by way of the Bering land bridge approximately 15,000 or more years ago. Some, such as the pre-Columbian Mississippian culture, developed advanced agriculture, grand architecture, and state-level societies. European explorers and settlers encountered Native Americans in the late 1400s. These encounters amounted to a collision of worlds. In the very early days, Native Americans outnumbered the invaders, but their opponents possessed insurmountable technological advances, including metal weapons. European and Native Americans caught diseases from each other. Although Europeans survived the first contact, by the seventeenth century half of them died from difficulties in adapting to the new environment. On the other hand, After European explorers and traders made the first contacts, the native population declined for various reasons, including diseases, such as smallpox and measles, and violence. Entire native cultures were annihilated. In the early days of colonization many settlers were subject to food shortages, disease and attacks from Native Americans. Native Americans were also often at war with neighbouring tribes and allied with Europeans in their colonial wars. At the same time, however, many natives and settlers came to depend on

each other. Settlers traded for food and animal pelts, natives for guns, ammunition and other European wares. Natives taught many settlers where, when and how to cultivate corn, beans and squash. Horses,

donkeys, sheep, pigs and cows were alien creatures to Native Americans and potatoes, maize and tobacco were discoveries to Europeans. European missionaries and others felt it was important to "civilize" the Indians and urged them to concentrate on farming and ranching rather than depending on hunting and gathering.

European societies were as diverse as Native-American cultures. Yet, each continent’s diversity of cultures was related, even quite similar in broad outline, when compared with cultures from the other continent. To Europeans, Native Americans seemed lazy and wasteful of nature’s potential. Because these last one viewed nature as a great mother, they could not comprehend how pieces of her could be sold and owned by individuals. From the first European settlement until today, the main focus in conflicts between these continental culture systems has been land-ownership. Native Americans became a small minority as a result of a long history of invasion, military conflict and pressure by Europeans and then white Americans. Europe and white-Americans were more aggressively expansive and acquisitive than indigenous cultures.

3.

The Founders

The people who established the colonies are considered founders because they created the customs, laws and institutions to which later arrivals had to adjust. The Spanish occupied coastal Florida, the south-west and California in the 1500s and 1600s. They worked to convert natives to Christianity, farming and sheep-herding. Many natives rejected this way of life and Spanish colonies faced border attacks for over 200 years. The English established their first permanent settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607. Their monarch had no desire to rule distant colonies, so instead the Crown legalized companies that undertook the colonization of America as private commercial enterprises. This first colony floundered until tobacco provided a profitable export. Because of the scarcity of plantation labor, in 1619 the first African laborers were imported as indentured servants. Supported by tobacco profits, however, Virginia imported 1,500 free laborers a year. By the 1700 there were 10,000 Africans in hereditary slavery. In the 1630s, Maryland was established as a haven for Catholics, but its economy and population soon resembled Virginia’s. In the 1660s, other English aristocrats financed Georgia and Carolina as commercial investments and experiments in social organization. Within a generation, these colonies too resembled Virginia, but their cash crops were rice and indigo. The southern settlers warred with the natives within a few years of their arrival and by the 1830s drove the Native Americans from today’s south.

To escape religious oppression in England, the Pilgrims founded the first of the northern colonies in 1620 at Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Puritans established the much larger Massachusetts Bay colony in 1630, wanted to purify the Church of England, not separate from it. Over 20,000 emigrated in around ten years, mostly well-educated middle-class people. Flourishing through agriculture and forestry, the New England colonies also became the shippers and merchants for all British America. Because of their intolerance towards dissenters, the Puritan’s New England became the most homogeneous region in the colonies. The founding of the middle colonies (New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) was different. The earliest European communities here were Dutch and Swedish; they recruited soldiers, farmers, craftsmen, clergymen and their families to meet the needs of the fur traders who bought pelts from the natives. The Dutch annexed New Sweden and later New Netherlands fell to the English fleet in 1664. Although the dominant culture in colonial New York and New Jersey became English by the end of the 1660s, the English authorities continued the tolerant traditions of the Dutch in the city. Before it became New York, the city had a diversity that resulted in eighteen different languages being spoken. Pennsylvania’s founders were Quakers. Penn’s publicizing of cheap land and religious freedom brought some 12,000 people to the colony before 1690. His toleration attracted a population whose diversity was matched only by New York’s.

4.

The First Wave: Colonial Immigration, 1680-1776

Founders’ descendants gave the first large wave of European newcomers a warm welcome only if they were willing to conform to Anglo-American culture and supply needed labour. The reception that immigrants received varied according to location and the individual’s qualities. St. Jean de Crevecoeur, an immigrant farmer from France, stated in 1782 the idea that in America “individuals of all nations melted into a ne race of man”. The first wave was possible only because after 1660 the Crown opposed emigration from England and Wales but encouraged it from other nations. In 1662, King Charles II licensed the Royal African Slave Company as the supplier of slaves to English colonies, and during the next century about 140,000 Africans arrived. The largest group of immigrants (voluntary newcomers) were the Scotish-Irish. Roughly a quarter of a million left northern Ireland For the American colonies after 1680 because of economic discrimination by the English. Most paid their passage by becoming indentured servants. When their term of service was finished, they usually took their “freedom dues” (a small sum of money and tools) and settled on the frontier where the land was cheapest. They kept constantly looking for better land. This moving

scattered their settlements from western New England to the hill country of Georgia and made it difficult to preserve their cultural heritage. The largest non-English speaking group in the colonies, the Germans, believed their descendants had to learn German if their religion and culture were to survive in North America. For mutual support, they concentrated their settlements on the frontier, but they usually stayed behind when settlement moved farther west. Developing German-speaking towns, they kept to themselves and showed little interest in colonial politics. Renowned for their hard work, caution, farming methods and concern for their property, they were very successful. The reception of Germans met also varied according to whether they were non-conformist, reformed Lutherans or Catholics. There were also other smallest groups in the first wave. England sent convicts and poor people as indentured servants to ease problems at home while supplying the labor-starved colonial economy. These people formed and underclass that quickly Americanized. Immigration from Ireland included single, male, Irish-Catholic indentured servants, who assimilated rapidly because of religious discrimination and the difficulty of finding Catholic wives. The Scots followed a pattern more like that of the Germans, using compact settlement, religion, schooling and family networks to preserve their culture for generations in rural areas. A French enclave persisted in South Carolina, but the French Huguenots and Jews settled in port towns. English colonist severely limited their civil rights but accepted marriage with them as long as they changed their religion. As a result, their communities nearly vanished. The first wave of immigration transformed the demography of the colonies. By 1776 English dominance had decreased although the cultural, political and economic dominance of Anglo-American was clear. The great diversity of the peoples in the country led Thomas Paine to call the US a “nation of nations” at its founding. African-American slaves composed 20 percent of this population. Most Native-American cultures had been forced inland to or beyond the Appalachians. The first wave had played a major role in bequeathing America a tradition of pioneers on the frontier, a new vision of itself as diverse, possessed of religious tolerance, and with a federal system of government that reserved most power to the new nation’s quite dissimilar thirteen states.

5.

The Second Wave: the ‘Old’ Immigrants, 1820-1890

Between 1776 and the late 1820s immigration slowed. The struggle for independence and the founding of the nation Americanized the colonies’ diverse peoples. A range of factors pushed Europeans from their homelands. Religious persecution drove many German Jews to emigrate, political unrest forced out some European intellectuals and political activists, but economic factors were decisive for most of the so-called “old” north-western immigrants.

Europe’s population doubled between 1750 and 1850; such a large population could not make a living in the countryside. As early emigrants wrote home about their experiences in the US, the alternative of solving problems at home by following routes to specific destinations where friends and relatives had settled became commonplace, and emigration rates soared. During the 1800s, the Industrial revolution and an international trade boom spread from Britain to the continent and the USA. If nearby cities offered industrial work or jobs in shipping, emigration rates were lower. But the population surplus from the countryside was so large that huge numbers of people left away. People moving first to the city and, after some years, from there to a foreign country became common; people moved where the jobs were. Steamships and trains made migration abroad safer, faster and cheaper. During the “old” immigration, 15.5 million people made America their home. The largest immigrants groups, in order of size, were Germans, Irish, Britons and Scandinavians, but many other peoples, including French Canadians, Chinese, Swiss and Dutch, also came in large numbers. The factor that pulled most people to the USA was an apparently unlimited supply of land. The western agriculture of the times helped fuel the rise of new cities like St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Detroit and Chicago, which all sprang up as shipping relays between the we...