Theme 2: The making of a nation

1.Nation of immigrants;

2. The voyage of the Mayflower;

3. Colonial life in America;

4. American Indians

1. The United States is a nation of immigrants. In fact, the descendents of immigrants now populate both continents in the Americas. But some immigrant groups have been here longer and some have more fiercely taken on the identity of their adopted place. The history of immigration to the U.S. and the Americas is long and shaped by the history of agriculture.

The New York Times is offering a remarkable interactive map of the history of immigration here that displays the proportions of foreign-born residents down to the county level and across the last 120 years.

Human occupation of the Americas began between 20,000 to 15,000 years ago when hunter-gatherer tribes moved across the Bering Strait land bridge that then connected Siberia and Alaska. By roughly 12,000 years ago, humans had reached southern South America.

As they hunted and gathered food here over the next 10,000 years or so, these tribes became "Native Americans." Then, around 5,000 years ago, three groups in the Americas independently domesticated various plants and animals for food, and agriculture began. The ancestors of the Inca in South America domesticated llamas, alpacas, potatoes and quinua for their food sources. The ancestors of the Aztec in what is now central Mexico started growing maize, beans and squash. And Eastern Woodland tribes in what is now the central U.S. independently developed sunflowers and gourds. Later, the techniques to cultivate maize were imported from Mexico and became a major food source across North America. It was the harvest of these Native farmers that sustained the early European immigrants thousands of years later.

As the North American continent was colonized, agriculture continued to shape the patterns of immigration. Recent scholarship has produced some surprises in the story that we all thought we knew.

For instance, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy of Stanford University has pointed out that for the first 300 years or so after the European discovery of the New World, the main source of immigrants was from Africa, not Europe. Slaves outnumbered European settlers in the Americas throughout the 1600s and 1700s. The reason was that the Europeans needed labor for their tobacco and cotton plantations. Ten million Africans were forced to immigrate to the Americas to raise crops in the New World.

In the 1800s, Europeans began arriving in the new United States in large numbers – again because of developments in agriculture.

Immigrants are both pushed away from their former homes and pulled toward their new homes by various factors. In the 1800s, David Kennedy writes, the "push" away from Europe was the Industrial Revolution and its impact on agriculture. By 1750 or so, English agriculture, in particular, was more scientific and industrial. English farmers discovered that rotating their crops with clover and other legumes would restore the fertility of the soil. That meant more crops could be produced to feed larger and larger herds of cattle and other livestock. The crops could also feed horses and farmers found that horsepower was better than oxen-power. Advances in livestock breeding, insect control, irrigation and metal implements meant that fewer farmers produced more food. Millions of subsistence farmers were forced to become urban wage earners. At the same time, science and industry improved the diets, sanitation and disease control for humans.

Europe became overcrowded.

"In the nineteenth century," Kennedy writes, "the population of Europe more than doubled, from some 200 million to more than 400 million, even after about 70 million people left Europe altogether. (Only half of these, it should be noted, went to the United States.)"

As the Industrial Revolution moved out of England, onto the continent, south to Italy, and on to Eastern Europe, the immigration patterns to America followed along. People were being pushed away from Europe because they couldn't find a livelihood there.

They were also being pulled to the U.S. by the availability of free land through the Homestead Act. Private companies – like the Union Pacific Railroad that had been given land to sell along their right-of-ways – were actively recruiting settlers to farm that land.

Between 1890 and 1914, 17 million immigrants arrived in the U.S. The Census of 1910 recorded the highest percentage of foreign-born people ever resident in the U.S. – 14.7 percent.

For the most part, this flood of immigrants was accommodated and assimilated into the burgeoning United States without too much conflict. Professor Kennedy identifies three reasons for this –

• First, 14.7 percent of the population is not a trivial proportion, but it is still a relatively small minority. In other words, the percentage of foreign-born immigrants in the U.S. never threatened to overwhelm the majority of older immigrants.
• Second, the labor that immigrants supplied was desperately needed. America was expanding. Figures show that those states with the most immigrants also had the highest per capita incomes.
• Third, Kennedy says "pluralism" helped the immigrants of the late 19th and early 20th centuries assimilate into the wider culture. "The European immigrant stream was remarkably variegated in its cultural, religious, national, and linguistic origins," he says. "These many subcultures also distributed themselves over an enormous geographic region." Some groups tried to hold on to their old ways of religion, culture and language, but their children wanted to be Americans.

There were clashes between immigrants and "native-born" citizens and among immigrant groups themselves. Although those clashes were relatively minor, the federal government began limiting the number of immigrants who could enter legally as early as 1875. Over the years, the rules have changed.

• 1875, direct federal regulation of immigration; prostitutes and convicts were barred.
• 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Law curbed Chinese immigration and banned lunatics, idiots, political convicts and persons likely to become public charges.
• 1907, banned people with tuberculosis, physical or mental defects and orphans; Japanese immigration was restricted.
• 1921, for the first time quotas on specific nationalities were imposed; the quotas were justified by theories of racial superiority. Immigration drops dramatically until 1940.
• 1943, the Bracero Program imports temporary agricultural and railroad workers from Mexico and Central America to fill jobs that World War II recruits left; the program continues until 1953.
• 1952, adds preferences for unifying families and highly skilled workers to the national quota system.
• 1965, national origins quota system abolished in favor of a system for reuniting families, attracting highly skilled workers and accommodating refugees; however, ceilings were placed on Western Hemisphere and Eastern Hemisphere immigration.
• 1980, enhanced the chances of refugee immigrants in response to large numbers of refugees from Vietnam, Southeast Asia and Cuba.
• 1986, imposed employer sanctions on companies that knowingly hire illegal immigrants; but the law also provided a legalization process for workers who had been in the U.S. since 1982, and provided for more temporary agricultural worker visas.
• 1990, raised the total number of legal immigrants, revised the rules for immigration and naturalization and increased enforcement.
• 1996, increased border patrols and toughened deportation proceedings.

Like waves in the ocean, the numbers of immigrants reaching the shores of the U.S. have ebbed and flowed. But we are all descendants of immigrants. University of Nebraska at Omaha professor Lourdes Gouveia (right) says, "Native American communities were not immigrants. They are the only ones that are really true natives of [Nebraska]." She points out that by 1920, 20 percent of the citizens in Nebraska were born in a foreign country. But soon after, these immigrants supported a new anti-immigration law that would keep out other new immigrants, despite the irony in that political stance. Lourdes says the new law "was extremely xenophobic against the Poles and the Italians and the Czechoslovakians and the Latvians and so forth… We had one generation, pretty much one generation that grew up without that immediate immigration history … [before] their grand children joined the nativist chorus" and opposed further immigration.

2. Voyage Of The Mayflower

The Thames at Millwall looking towards Rotherhithe

In 1620 a group of disaffected puritans decided to leave England and set up a colony in the New World. Their famous voyage on the Mayflower can be followed along England's south coast. Mayflower was a cargo ship, captained by a man called Christopher Jones. She was based at Rotherhithe, on the Thames in London. Jones had been working Mayflower on trade routes to Europe since 1609. In 1620 he was approached by a puritan group wanting to go to America. He agreed to take the group across the Atlantic, in the company of a smaller ship called Speedwell. Mayflower's owners insisted that the puritans bulk up their group with other passengers to make their voyage financially viable. The puritans and the "strangers" they were obliged to take along with them boarded Mayflower and Speedwell at Southampton on August 5th 1620. A memorial has been erected on Western Esplanade at Southampton to commemorate this event. If an American can officially trace their ancestry back to one of the Mayflower's original voyagers, they can have their name added to the memorial.

3. Colonial Life In America - The Colonials
Colonial life in America was very difficult for the hopeful settlers who came to escape poverty, persecution, and to gain religious freedom. Later came the adventurous explorers and those sent by European Nations to begin business ventures in this uncharted new land.
They eventually settled into the original 13 colonies now known at the States of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, New Hampshire, Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Delaware, and Georgia.

Colonial Life in America - The Hardships
The settlers did not know how to live in the rugged wilderness and had no experience in preparing for the harsh, bitter cold winters. They faced many hardships such as knowing little about how to hunt for game or how to plant crops on this new soil. As a result, many succumbed to malnutrition and diseases.
In Massachusetts, for example, the Plymouth settlers, spent most of their first winter (1620–21) on board the Mayflower. It took a great deal of time to clear the land and erect adequate shelters. The following winter, the Pilgrims were able to live on land but it was under extremely primitive conditions. Many were sick and all were hungry. Nearly one-quarter of them died before a ship from England brought fresh supplies. They relied heavily on their faith and spent much time in prayer. In time, the colonists learned how to live in the wilderness through trial and error and with the help of an English speaking warrior named Squanto and the Wampanoag Chief, Massasoit. By the 1700s, small cities and towns were established. The colonists slowly developed their own customs and lifestyles. Eventually they began to feel that this new land was now their true home. Life in colonial America centered on the family. Most of the following took place at home in the very earliest years of the settlements:

work

play

schooling

learning a craft or trade

worshiping

Large families were common and necessary in colonial days. Everyone was needed to get all the work done. The father was considered the head of the family. He made all of the family decisions and earned a living by farming and other crafts such as blacksmithing. Women worked in the home raising children, preparing meals, making clothes, preserving food for winter, fetching water and scrubbing clothes. They made their own candles, soaps, and most other basic items. None of this was easy and often done without the proper tools. Much of their dawn to dusk work was merely for day to day survival.

Colonial Life In America - Forming a Nation
After concerns of survival, came the Colonists desires and struggles to form a fair and democratic government. The tyranny that some of them came from made this a priority. Those who survived had a very difficult life but they had determination and steadfast faith that this would be a great land. Many died before their time, but for most of them, their faith in God and the Bible is what helped them persevere. They were grateful to God for sending the Indians who taught them how to survive in this new land. It was through their faith and determination that America was born a free, democratic, and Christian nation.

Questions:

1.Why is the USA is called Nation of immigrants?

2. The voyage of the Mayflower;

3. Colonial life in America;

4. American Indians

Theme 3 Fighting for independence:

1. The roots of revolution.

2. Conflicts between the British Government and the colonists;

3. The War of Independence.

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783), also known as the American War of Independence, was a conflict that erupted between Great Britain and revolutionaries within thirteen British colonies, who declared their independence as the United States of America in 1776. The war was the culmination of the American Revolution, a colonial struggle against political and economic policies of the British Empire. The war eventually widened far beyond British North America; many Native Americans also fought on both sides of the conflict.

Throughout the war, the British were able to use their naval superiority to capture and occupy coastal cities, but control of the countryside (where most of the population lived) largely eluded them. After an American victory at Saratoga in 1777, France,Spain, and the Netherlands entered the war against Great Britain. French involvement proved decisive, with a naval victory in the Chesapeake leading to the surrender of a British army at Yorktown in 1781. The Treaty of Paris in 1783 recognized the independence of the United States.