American history

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AMERICAN HISTORY

The New World

About a thousand years ago, the Vikings lived in Northern Europe. They were sailors and warriors who sailed ships to the coast of England, France, and Italy. They also sailed westward into the Atlantic Ocean.

Greenland was discovered and settled by a Northman called Eric the Red. His son was named Leif Ericson, or Leif, the son of Eric. Once Leif was returning from Norway. His ship was blown off course in a storm. It reached a shore the Vikings had never seen before. Because the land had grapes which grew in vines, Leif called it Vineland. We now believe Vineland was on the shore of Newfoundland, a part of Canada. The discovery was remembered only in the stories of old people, which most of the other people did not believe and soon forgot. Today, we know that the stories of the Vikings were true. Leif Ericson and his sailors landed in the New World about five hundred years before Columbus made his voyage.

Knowing about the Viking does not mean that Columbus`s discovery is less important. It does not matter who was actually the first to set foot in the New World. What matters is that Leif, Columbus, and many others had the courage to sail the dangerous oceans to find new lands.

Christopher Columbus

Christopher Columbus was born in Genoa, in Italy, in 1451. His father and both grandfathers were cloth makers. When he was twenty-five he joined his brother Bartholomew in Lisbon, a busy Portuguese city port. Bartholomew owned a small shop that sold maps, compasses and other tools that sailors needed. Columbus studied the maps and charts in his brother`s shop. He read books on navigation, visited shipyards and watched shipbuilders work on new fast ships called caravels.

Most people in Columbus`s day thought that the earth was flat and they did not believe that beyond the Atlantic Ocean lay the Indies. Columbus, however, that a route to the Indies across the Atlantic would be shorter and safer than a route around the tip of Africa, but ye did not have the money to buy ships and hire sailors. Columbus first asked the king of Portugal to pay for his voyage. The king asked his advisers and after their report, he denied Columbus his help. Next Columbus travelled to Spain to ask Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand for help. After six years, Isabella gave Columbus three caravels: “The Santa Maria”, “The Nina”, and “The Pinta”.

Columbus's crew last saw land on the eastern horizon on 9 September 1492 and on 12 October 1492, when everybody was tired and anxious, the lookout on “the Pinta” saw something like a white cliff shining in the moonlight and yelled out: “ Tierra! Tierra!” Columbus named the land he had reached San Salvador (“Holy Saviour”). He thought he had landed in Asia, but in fact he was on a small island in the Bahamas, a group of islands close to the continents of North America. On 15 March 1493 Columbus was back in Spain with two of his ships. He carried parrots, an alligator, a few pieces of gold jewellery, some interesting looking plants and six American Indians.

The colonies

European people came to the New World for many reasons. Some hoped to find new trade routes to Asia. Later many came in hope of finding gold and silver. Priests and missionaries came to bring the Christian religion to the Indians. Finally, there were those who came in search of freedom and a new way of life. Some were convicts who had come straight to the colonies from English jails. The colonies stretched for about one thousand miles north and south along the Atlantic coast line. Life was different in each English colony. Settlers in the northern colonies found the soil rocky and not very rich. Instead of farming, they turned to fur trapping, lumbering and fishing. The settlers in the middle colonies were mostly farmers. They cultivated wheat and other grains. Some of the grain was used for food. Grain was also sold as a cash crop. Some was shipped to other parts of America and to England. The middle colonies produced so much grain that they were called the “bread colonies”. The southern colonies cultivated rice, tobacco and hemp which was used to make rope.

The Pilgrims

Among those who came seeking freedom was a small group of English people called Pilgrims. The Pilgrims were searching for religious freedom. They founded the Plymouth colony in Massachusetts in 1620. The Pilgrims had been forced to leave England because of their religious beliefs. They had moved to Holland where they had lived for ten years.

When they decided to leave for America, they sailed on “The Mayflower” and arrived in the new world in the winter of 1620. The Pilgrims worked hard all through the spring and summer of 1621. They hunted, fished and planted crops.

As the harvest that summer and autumn was good, the Pilgrims wanted to give thanks to God for their food fortune.

They had learned that the Indians, who were their friends, held a ceremony each year at harvest time. At this ceremony the Indians thanked nature for the food they had received. The Pilgrims decided to hold their own feast of thanksgiving that fall*. The first thanksgiving lasted three days. Today, more than 350 years later, Americans still celebrate Thanksgiving. It is their national holiday in November. Another religious group, known as Quakers, founded a colony called Pennsylvania, while some English Catholics, who had left England to escape persecution settled in the colony which they called Maryland.

columbus piligrim amercan revolution

The American Revolution

In 1763 Great Britain defeated France in the French and Indian War, but was left nearly bankrupt. The only way to fill the treasury was to raise money by taxes.

The British placed taxes on such goods as molasses, tea, glass and paint. They also passed Stamp Act. This was a special tax in the form of a stamp which had to be placed on newspapers and legal papers. The colonists protested so strongly against this tax that Britain finally dropped in.

The many disputes led to bad feelings on both sides. Colonists formed an organization called “The Sons of Liberty”. It led protests against the British. The British government then sent soldiers to enforce its laws.

In 1770 some colonists clashed with British troops on a Boston street. In the excitement, the soldiers fired into the crowd. Five people were killed. The shooting came to be known by the colonists as the Boston Massacre.

Colonial leaders such as Samuel Adams, his cousin John Adams, who would latter become the second president of the United States, Paul Revere, Thomas Jefferson, the future third president of the United States, George Washington, who would later become the first president of the USA, and Benjamin Franklin organized stronger protests against British rule. Britain dropped most of the taxes but kept the one in tea. Some merchants smuggled in tea to avoid paying the tax.

When in 1773, Parliament passed a new law lowering the tax on tea, some merchants feared that they would lose the profits they made by smuggling tea. Late in December 1773 a number of colonists took action. Disguised as Indians, they boarded a British ship and dumped the cargo of tea into the harbour. The incident was called “ the Boston Tea Party” and its story spread to all the colonies. Britain was angry and decided to punish the entire city of Boston by closing the port to ships. The Boston Tea party proved to be one of the events that started the Revolution in 1775. The British troops marched out of Boston hoping to surprise the colonists, who had stored weapons near the city. Fighting broke out at Lexington and Concord, two villages near Boston. These battles on 19 April 1775, marked the start of the American Revolution. A month later American colonists occupied the hills around Boston. The British sent more than two thousand soldiers who held the hills. The result was the battle of Bunker Hill in June 1775. The British troops seized the hills, but suffered terrible losses. George Washington took command of the colonial army. It was known as the Continental Army for the rest of the revolution. At the start it numbered 15.000 troops.

Many people in Britain and in the colonies did not want war. Colonial leaders sent a petition to King George III of Britain. In it, the king was asked to unite Great Britain and the colonies in a peaceful way. But the king refused to read the petition. He declared that the colonial protesters were rebels. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress Approved the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration meant that all people have rights that cannot be taken from them by any government. All people should therefore be treated as equals before the law. That is, the laws should be the same for all American people.

The Gold Rush

The story of the discovery of gold in California starts with John Sutter. He decided to build a sawmill on the American river near Sutter`s Fort. This was a settlement he had founded. Sutter hired a mechanic, James Marshal, to start the work. Marshall never finished the sawmill. While digging a ditch, he found a sparkling stone. It turned out to be gold.

The cry “Gold! The hills are filled with gold !” spread like wildfire across the USA.

In the next year , 1849, people swarmed into California by the thousands. Those who came in search of gold were known as forty-niners.

Not all the forty-niners were Americans. Some came from Europe, China and Australia. Only a few found the riches they dreamt of. Most of them settled on towns in California and nearby states. Not even John Sutter, the man on whose property gold was found, became rich. His fields and his sawmill were destroyed by the rush of new settlers. John Sutter was ruined by the cry of “Gold”.

United States foreign policy since 1945

One of the most important results of World War II Is that two countries became world leaders. They were the united States and the Soviet Union. These two countries had been allies during World War II. When the war ended in 1945, that alliance fell apart.

American foreign policy after 1945 was aimed at containing the Soviet Union. Economic and military aid was given to many nations to help them resist communism. The US also signed treaties of alliance with many nations. A so-called “ Cold War” ensued between the USSR on one side, and America and the Western powers on the other.

In 1950 fighting broke out in Asia between North Korea and South Korea. The Soviet Union supported the North Koreans. Chinese troops also came to the aid of North Korea. The USA and the UN supported the South Korea government. Thousands of American troops fought in Korea until the war ended in 1953. A truce finally ended the war. It left North and South Korean boundaries almost as they had been in 1950.

In the 1960s fighting broke out between North and South Vietnam. North Vietnamese attacked American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1963. In retaliation, President Johnson organized air attacks on North Vietnam naval bases. Only later in 1965 were combat soldiers sent over from America to fight. By 1968 the n umber of soldiers reached 500.000. By then the war had become full- scale with the bombing of towns, factories and schools. At home in America the cries of protest, mostly in the university campuses, were making themselves heard more and more and massive peace marches were organized in name of peace.

More than 46.000 American soldiers had died in Vietnam by 1973, when all American forces were removed and the North Vietnamese took control of all Vietnam. There were no manifestations of joy when the war ended. The country had been defeated and the death of so many soldiers could not even be justified in the name of a noble cause.

By the mid -1970s American foreign policy aimed to improve relations with the Soviet Union. The USA also established normal relations with the New Communist Government in China. The people`s republic of China had taken control of the Chinese mainland in 1949. The United States recognized the new government only in 1976. In 1979 the Soviet Union sent troops into the neighboring nation of Afghanistan, the USA protested strongly and the United Nations condemned the Soviet Union. Relations between the USSR and the USA worsened.

Ronald Reagan, elected president in 1980, and re-elected a second time in 1984, obtained a remarkable success in bettering the relations between USA and USSR and in the reduction of nuclear arms. His successor, George Bush, elected in 1988, adapted the same policy and now we can say the “Cold War” is over.

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