Cultura: CEX 10-11 English Cross the Atlantic PDF

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CEX 10-11: ENGLISH CROSS THE ATLANTIC AMERICAN ICONS IN THEIR HISTORICAL CONTEXT THE UNITED STATES ICONS OF AMERICAN CULTURE

Thanksgiving

Golden Gate

Ford T

4th July (Independence Day)

USA Constitution

First time to step on the moon

Teddy Bear

USA’s Confederate Flag

Martin Luther King

Barack Obama’s slogan

Ground Zero

REASONS TO MOVE TO AMERICA IN THE EARLY DAYS ● ● ● ● ● ●

Gold and adventures Expansionism Religious freedom Work LAND Forced labor

LAND OF PROMISE THE THIRTEEN COLONIES The Thirteen Colonies, also known as the Thirteen British Colonies or the Thirteen American Colonies, were a group of colonies of Great Britain on the Atlantic coast of America founded in the 17th and 18th centuries which declared independence in 1776 and formed the United States of America.

1. New England group: most were small farmers or craftsmen, others depended on trade. B  oston grew into a busy port. 2. The Middle colonies: many had German, Swedish or Dutch

ancestors. Most lived by farming. 3. Southern colonies: wealthy landowners farmed large plantations of tobacco and cotton. EARLY SETTLEMENT: THANKSGIVING 1620: the Pilgrim Fathers found Plymouth colony. 1621: Colonists and Wampanoag Native Americans get together to celebrate a successful harvest. 1863: Abraham Lincoln makes Thanksgiving a federal holiday. Some contemporary thanksgiving icons:

Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade

Black Friday

NFL games

LAND OF FREEDOM FROM TYRANNY TOWARD INDEPENDENCE: THE BOSTON TEA PARTY, 1773 ● ● ● ●

After the Seven Years’ War in 1763 Britain tries to impose new taxes on the colonies. 1765: S  tamp Act taxes all official paper. Colonists react: ‘no taxation without representation’. Tensions culminate in the Boston Tea Party (16 December 1773).

The Boston Tea Party Tea was really popular in the 17th century. In England, each man, woman and child consumed almost 300 cups of tea every year. Since, the English colonized America, Americans started consuming it too. By the 1760s, they were drinking over a million pounds

of tea every year. When Britain wanted to increase taxes on tea in America, people got angry. Mostly because they had no say in tax decisions made in London. ‘No taxation without representation’. The Americans colonies had long believed that they were not subject to taxes imposed by legislature in which they lacked representation. In fact, rather than paying the taxes, they simply dodged the tax collectors. Since the east coast of America is hundred of miles long and British enforcement was lax, about three quarters of the tea Americans were drinking was smuggled in, usually from Holland. But the British insisted that Parliament did have the authority to tax the colonists, especially after Britain went deeply into debt fighting the French in Seven Years’ War. The close the budget gap, London looked to Americans, and in 1767 imposed new taxes on a variety of imports, including the American’s tea. Americans refused to pay the taxes, they boycotted the importation of tea from Britain and, instead, brewed their own. After a new bunch of British customs commissioners asked London for troops to help with tax enforcement. Things got so heated that the Red Coats fired on a mob in Boston, killing several people, in what was called the Boston Massacre. Out of the terms of the 1773 Tea Act, parliament cooked up a new strategy. Now that East India Company would sell the surplus tea directly through hand-picked consignees in America. This would lower the price to consumers, making British tea competitive with the smuggled variety while retaining some of the taxes. But the colonists saw through the British ploy and accused them of ‘monopoly’. The 13rd  of December, 1773, about 5,000 bostonians were crowded in the Old South Meeting House, waiting to hear whether new shipments of tea that have arrived down the harbor will be unloaded for sale. When the captain of one of those ships reported that he could not leave with his cargo on board, Sam Adams rose to shout: ‘This meeting can do no more to saver the country!’, cries of ‘Boston Harbor a teapot tonight!’ rang out from the crowd. About 50 men, some apparently dressed as Native Americans, marched down to Griffin’s Wharf, stormed about three ships and threw 340 tea chests overboard. An infuriated British government responded with the so called Coercive Acts of 1774, which, among other things, closed the port of Boston until the locals compensated the East India Company for the tea (that never happened). Representatives of the colonies gathered at Philadelphia to consider how best to respond to continued British oppression. This first Continental Congress supported destruction of the tea, pledged to support a continued boycott. They went home in late October 1774 even more united in their determination to protect their rights and liberties. The Boston Tea Party began a chain reaction that led with little pause to the Declaration of Independence and a bloody rebellion, after which the new nation was free. FROM COLONIES TO STATES, 1773-89

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1774: Colonists met at Carpenter’s Hall, Philadelphia, to organise opposition to new British Coercive Laws: F  irst Continental Congress. ● 1775: War begins. Second Continental Congress meets. Declaration ● 1776: 4  July: The Second Continental Congress issues the American  of Independence. ● 1789: Proclamation of the U  S Constitution. NATIONAL FOUNDATION ICONS: 4th OF JULY 4th July is Independence Day. Although not an official ‘national’ holiday, it is a holiday for all Federal workers, and generally adopted by the country as a whole. THE CONSTITUTION AND ARCHITECTURE

ICONS OF A NATION: THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER

A BOUNDLESS FRONTIER FIRST STEPS IN NATIONHOOD ● ●

In 1  812 war broke out between Britain and the new United States. Britain wanted to prevent the US from trading with Napoleonic France; the US wanted to extend into British Canada. ● The war ended in December 1814 with no clear winner, but it was regarded by the Americans as a s  econd war of independence. ● The following decades were marked by the beginning of W  estward expansion, favored by the construction of infrastructures. THE NATION GETS A NICKNAME Uncle Sam is one of the most interesting a popular American icons, whose origin lies in a meatpacking plant in Troy (New York, 1812). A government inspector with the name of Elbert Anderson was purchasing meat from this factory, whose manager was Sam Wilson. The meat was destined for troops fighting in the War of 1812. When they pack the meat in the oak barrels they stamped the barrels ‘EA’ for the name Elbert Anderson and ‘US’ as United States government stores. But, a number of workers in the factory got together and decided, as a joke, to refer to the US as Uncle Sam. That joke spread throughout the entire factory, also, throughout the town of Troy, New York, and, eventually, throughout New England. As early as the late 1820s, individuals were referring to US government as Uncle Sam. In the 1830s, people were asking the question throughout New England, ‘what did Sam Wilson actually look like?’ And the characters, caricatures, depicted him as a rather tall man with a thin stature. That seemed to catch on, perhaps he really was tall and thin, but that character would continue on throughout the 19th century.

A DIVIDED NATION 1861-5: THE CIVIL WAR

CULTURAL LEGACIES OF THE WAR

A NATION IN PROGRESS THE END OF FRONTIER LIVE

A land run or land rush was an event in which previously restricted land of the United States was opened to homestead on a first-arrival basis. Lands were opened and sold first-come or by bid, or won by lottery, or by means other than a run. The settlers, no matter how they acquired occupancy, purchased the land from the United States Land Office. For former Indian lands, the Land Office distributed the sales funds to the various tribal entities, according to previously negotiated terms. The Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889 was the most prominent of the land runs while the Land Run of 1893 was the largest. The

opening of the former Kickapoo area in 1895 was the last use of a land run in the present area of Oklahoma. The Wounded Knee Massacre (also called the Battle of Wounded Knee) was a domestic massacre of several hundred Lakota Indians, almost half women and children, by soldiers of the United States Army. It occurred on December 29, 1890,[5] near Wounded Knee Creek (Lakota: Čhaŋkpé Ópi Wakpála ) on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the U.S. state of South Dakota, following a botched attempt to disarm the Lakota camp. The United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, generally known as Carlisle Indian Industrial School, was the flagship Indian boarding school in the United States from 1879 through 1918. All the school's property, known as the Carlisle Barracks, is now part of the U.S. Army War College. Founded in 1879 under U. S. governmental authority by General Richard Henry Pratt (then a Captain), Carlisle was the first federally-funded off-reservation Indian boarding school. Consistent with Pratt's belief that Native Americans were 'equal' to European-Americans, the School strove to immerse its students into mainstream Euro-American culture, believing they might thus become able to advance themselves and thrive in the dominant society. In this period, many white Americans believed that the only hope for Native Americans, their population declining in number, was rapid assimilation into White culture. Edward S. Curtis: ‘The Vanishing Race’ (1904) a collection of photographies ICONS OF A VANISHING WORLD

THE BIRTH OF AMERICAN CONSERVATIONISM Apart from a champion of American Imperialism and Progressivism, Theodore Roosevelt was the nation's first conservationist President, setting aside nearly 200 million acres for national forests, reserves, and wildlife refuges.

THE URBAN FRONTIER

ICONS OF ‘’THE CITY’’

Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan...