An-Outline-of-American-History美国历史纲要

An Outline of American HistoryChaper 1 Early America The First Americans Beringia The First Europeans: The first Europeans to arrive in North America - at least the first for whom there is solid evidence - were Norse, traveling west from Greenland . In 1497, just five years after Christopher Columbus landed in the Caribbean looking for a western route to Asia, a Venetian sailor named John Cabot arrived in Newfoundland on a mission for the British king. Although fairly quickly forgotten, Cabots journey was later to provide the basis for British claims to North America. It also opened the way to the rich fishing grounds off Georges Banks, to which European fishermen, particularly the Portuguese, were soon making regular visits. Among the most significant early Spanish explorations was that of Hernando De Soto, a veteran conquistador who had accompanied Francisco Pizzaro during the conquest of Peru. While the Spanish were pushing up from the south, the northern portion of the present-day United States was slowly being revealed through the journeys of men such as Giovanni da Verrazano. A Florentine who sailed for the French, Verrazano made landfall in North Carolina in 1524, then sailed north along the Atlantic coast past what is now New York harbor. A decade later, the Frenchman Jacques Cartier set sail with the hope - like the other Europeans before him - of finding a sea passage to Asia. Cartiers expeditions along the St. Lawrence River laid the foundations for the French claims to North America, which were to last until 1763. Following the collapse of their first Quebec colony in the 1540s, French Huguenots attempted to settle the northern coast of Florida two decades later. The Spanish, viewing the French as a threat to their trade route along the Gulf Stream, destroyed the colony in 1565. Ironically, the leader of the Spanish forces, Pedro Menendez, would soon establish a town not far away - St. Augustine. It was the first permanent European settlement in what would become the United States. In 1578 Humphrey Gilbert, the author of a treatise on the search for the Northwest Passage, received a patent from Queen Elizabeth to colonize the heathen and barbarous landes in the New World which other European nations had not yet claimed. It would be five years before his efforts could begin. When he was lost at sea, his half-brother, Walter Raleigh, took up the mission. In 1585 Raleigh established the first British colony in North America, on Roanoke Island off the coast of North Carolina. It was later abandoned, and a second effort two years later also proved a failure. It would be 20 years before the British would try again. This time - at Jamestown in 1607 - the colony would succeed, and North America would enter a new era. Most European emigrants left their homelands to escape political oppression, to seek the freedom to practice their religion, or for adventure and opportunities denied them at home. Between 1620 and 1635, economic difficulties swept England. Many people could not find work. Even skilled artisans could earn little more than a bare living. Poor crop yields added to the distress. In addition, the Industrial Revolution had created a burgeoning textile industry, which demanded an ever-increasing supply of wool to keep the looms running. Landlords enclosed farmlands and evicted the peasants in favor of sheep cultivation. Colonial expansion became an outlet for this displaced peasant population. Majestic rivers - the Kennebec, Hudson, Delaware, Susquehanna, Potomac and numerous others - linked lands between the coast and the Appalachian Mountains with the sea. Only one river, however, the St. Lawrence - dominated by the French in Canada - offered a water passage to the Great Lakes and into the heart of the continent. Dense forests, the resistance of some Indian tribes and the formidable barrier of the Appalachian Mountains discouraged settlement beyond the coastal plain. Only trappers and traders ventured into the wilderness. For the first hundred years the colonists built their settlements compactly along the coast. Political considerations influenced many people to move to America. In the 1630s, arbitrary rule by Englands Charles I gave impetus to the migration to the New World. The subsequent revolt and triumph of Charles opponents under Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s led many cavaliers - kings men - to cast their lot in Virginia. In the German-speaking regions of Europe, the oppressive policies of various petty princes - particularly with regard to religion - and the devastation caused by a long series of wars helped swell the movement to America in the late 17th and 18th centuries. In contrast to the colonization policies of other countries and other periods, the emigration from England was not directly sponsored by the government but by private groups of individuals whose chief motive was profit. Jamestown:The first of the British colonies to take hold in North America was Jamestown. It was not long, however, before a development occurred that revolutionized Virginias economy. In 1612 John Rolfe began cross-breeding imported tobacco seed from the West Indies with native plants and produced a new variety that was pleasing to European taste. The first shipment of this tobacco reached London in 1614. Within a decade it had become Virginias chief source of revenue. MASSACHUSETTS During the religious upheavals of the 16th century, a body of men and women called Puritans sought to reform the Established Church of England from within. Essentially, they demanded that the rituals and structures associated with Roman Catholicism be replaced by simpler Protestant forms of faith and worship. Their reformist ideas, by destroying the unity of the state church, threatened to divide the people and to undermine royal authority. In 1620, a group of Leyden Puritans secured a land patent from the Virginia Company, and a group of 101 men, women and children set out for Virginia on board the Mayflower. A storm sent them far north and they landed in New England on Cape Cod. Believing themselves outside the jurisdiction of any organized government, the men drafted a formal agreement to abide by just and equal laws drafted by leaders of their own choosing. This was the Mayflower Compact. In December the Mayflower reached Plymouth harbor; the Pilgrims began to build their settlement during the winter. Nearly half the colonists died of exposure and disease, but neighboring Wampanoag Indians provided information that would sustain them: how to grow maize. By the next fall, the Pilgrims had a plentiful crop of corn, and a growing trade based on furs and lumber. Massachusetts Bay was not the only colony driven by religious motives. In 1681 William Penn, a wealthy Quaker and friend of Charles II, received a large tract of land west of the Delaware River, which became known as Pennsylvania. To help populate it, Penn actively recruited a host of religious dissenters from England and the continent - Quakers, Mennonites, Amish, Moravians and Baptists. When Penn arrived the following year, there were already Dutch, Swedish and English settlers living along the Delaware River. It was there he founded Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love. Georgia was settled in 1732, the last of the 13 colonies to be established. CHAPTER 2: The Colonial Period NEW ENGLAND New England shippers soon discovered, too, that rum and slaves were profitable commodities. One of the most enterprising - if unsavory - trading practices of the time was the so-called triangular trade. Merchants and shippers would purchase slaves off the coast of Africa for New England rum, then sell the slaves in the West Indies where they would buy molasses to bring home for sale to the local rum producers. THE MIDDLE COLONIES THE SOUTHERN COLONIES THE SOUTHERN COLONIES SOCIETY, SCHOOLS AND CULTURE Of equal significance for the future were the foundations of American education and culture established during the colonial period. Harvard College was founded in 1636 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. A few years later, the Collegiate School of Connecticut, later to become Yale College, was chartered. The first immigrants in New England brought their own little libraries and continued to import books from London. And as early as the 1680s, Boston booksellers were doing a thriving business in works of classical literature, history, politics, philosophy, science, theology and belles-lettres. In 1639 the first printing press in the English colonies and the second in North America was installed at Harvard College. In 1704 Cambridge, Massachusetts, launched the colonies first successful newspaper. By 1745 there were 22 newspapers being published throughout the colonies EMERGENCE OF COLONIAL GOVERNMENT In all phases of colonial development, a striking feature was the lack of controlling influence by the English government. All colonies except Georgia emerged as companies of shareholders, or as feudal proprietorships stemming from charters granted by the Crown. For their part, the colonies had never thought of themselves as subservient. The colonists - inheritors of the traditions of the Englishmans long struggle for political liberty - incorporated concepts of freedom into Virginias first charter . It provided that English colonists were to exercise all liberties, franchises and immunities it was generally accepted that the colonists had a right to participate in their own government. in the mid-17th century, the English were too distracted by the Civil War (1642-1649) and Oliver Cromwells Puritan Commonwealth and Protectorate to pursue an effective colonial policy. The remoteness afforded by a vast ocean also made control of the colonies difficult. Added to this was the character of life itself in early America. On such a continent, natural conditions promoted a tough individualism, as people became used to making their own decisions. Equally important, John Lockes Second Treatise on Government (1690) set forth a theory of government based not on divine right but on contract, and contended that the people, endowed with natural rights of life, liberty and property, had the right to rebel when governments violated these natural rights. THE FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR France and Britain engaged in a succession of wars in Europe and the Caribbean at several intervals in the 18th century. Though Britain secured certain advantages from them - primarily in the sugar-rich islands of the Caribbean - the struggles were generally indecisive, and France remained in a powerful position in North America at the beginning of the Seven Years War in 1754. By that time France had established a strong relationship with a number of Indian tribes in Canada and along the Great Lakes, taken possession of the Mississippi River and, by establishing a line of forts and trading posts, marked out a great crescent-shaped empire stretching from Quebec to New Orleans. Thus, the British were confined to the narrow belt east of the Appalachian Mountains. The French threatened not only the British Empire but the American colonists themselves, for in holding the Mississippi Valley, France could limit their westward expansion. An armed clash took place in 1754 at Fort Duquesne, the site where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is now located, between a band of French regulars and Virginia militiamen under the command of 22-year-old George Washington, a Virginia planter and surveyor. Englands superior strategic position and her competent leadership ultimately brought victory in the Seven Years War . In the Peace of Paris, signed in 1763, France relinquished all of Canada, the Great Lakes and the upper Mississippi Valley to the British. The dream of a French empire in North America was over. Having triumphed over France, Britain was now compelled to face a problem that it had hitherto neglected - the governance of its empire. It was essential that London organize its now vast possessions to facilitate defense, reconcile the divergent interests of different areas and peoples, and distribute more evenly the cost of imperial administration. CHAPTER 3: The Road to Independence A NEW COLONIAL SYSTEM To put a new system into effect, and to tighten control, Parliament had to contend with colonists trained in self-government and impatient with interference. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 One of the first things that British attempted was the organization of the interior. The conquest of Canada and of the Ohio Valley necessitated policies that would not alienate the French and Indian inhabitants. But here the Crown came into conflict with the interests of the colonies. Fast increasing in population, and needing more land for settlement, various colonies claimed the right to extend their boundaries as far west as the Mississippi River. The British government, fearing that settlers migrating into the new lands would provoke a series of Indian wars, believed that the lands should be opened to colonists on a more gradual basis. Restricting movement was also a way of ensuring royal control over existing settlements before allowing the formation of new ones. The Royal Proclamation of 1763 reserved all the western territory between the Alleghenies, Florida, the Mississippi River and Quebec for use by Native Americans. Thus the Crown attempted to sweep away every western land claim of the 13 colonies and to stop westward expansion. Though never effectively enforced, this measure, in the eyes of the colonists, constituted a high-handed disregard of their most elementary right to occupy and settle western lands. More serious in its repercussions was the new financial policy of the British government, which needed more money to support its growing empire. Unless the taxpayer in England was to supply all money for the colonies defense, revenues would have to be extracted from the colonists through a stronger central administration, which would come at the expense of colonial self-government. The first step in inaugurating the new system was the replacement of tihe Molasses Act of 1733, which placed a prohbitive duty, or tax, on the import of rum and molasses from non-English areas, with the Sugar Act of 1764. This act forbade the importation of foreign rum; put a modest duty on molasses from all sources and levied duties on wines, silks, coffee and a number of other luxury items. The hope was that lowering the duty on molasses would reduce the temptation to smuggle it from the Dutch and French West Indies for processing in the rum distilleries of New England. Both the duty imposed by the Sugar Act and the measures to enforce it caused consternation among New England merchants. They contended that payment of even the small duty imposed would be ruinous to their businesses. Merchants, legislatures and town meetings protested the law, and colonial lawyers found in the preamble of the Sugar Act the first intimation of taxation without representation, the slogan that was to draw many to the American cause against the mother country. Later in 1764, Parliament enacted a Currency Act to prevent paper bills of credit hereafter issued in any of His Majestys colonies from being made legal tender. Since the colonies were a deficit trade area and were constantly short of hard currency, this measure added a serious burden to the colonial economy. Equally objectionable from the colonial viewpoint was the Quartering Act, passed in 1765, which required colonies to provide royal troops with provisions and barracks. STAMP ACT The last of the measures inaugurating the new colonial system sparked the greatest organized resistance. Known as the Stamp Act, it provided that revenue stamps be affixed to all newspapers, pamphlets, licenses, leases or other legal documents, the revenue (collected by American customs agents) to be used for defending, protecting and securing the colonies. Trade with the mother country fell off sharply in the summer of 1765, as prominent men organized themselves into the Sons of Liberty - secret organizations formed to protest the Stamp Act, often through violent means. TOWNSHEND ACTS Charles Townshend, British chancellor of the exchequer, was called upon to draft a new fiscal program. Intent upon reducing British taxes by making more efficient the collection of duties levied on American trade, he tightened customs administration, at the same time sponsoring duties on colonial imports of paper, glass, lead and tea exported from Britain to the colonies. The so-called Townshend Acts were based on the premise that taxes imposed on goods imported by the colonies were legal while internal taxes (like the Stamp Act) were not. The Townshend Acts were designed to raise revenue to be used in part to support colonial governors, judges, customs officers and the British army in America. In response, Philadelphia lawyer John Dickinson, in Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, argued that Parliament had the right to control imperial SAMUEL ADAMS During a three-year interval of calm, a relatively small number of radicals strove energetically to keep the controversy alive, however. They contended that payment of the tax constituted an acceptance of the principle that Parliament had the right to rule over the colonies. They feared that at any time in the future, the principle of parliamentary rule might be applied with devastating effect on all colonial liberties. The radicals most effective leader was Samuel Adams . Adamss goals were to free people from their awe of social and political superiors, make them aware of their own power and importance and thus arouse them to action. In 1772 he induced the Boston town meeting to select a Committee of Correspondence to state the rights and grievances of the colonists. The committee opposed a British decision to pay the salaries of judges from customs revenues; it feared that the judges would no longer be dependent on the legislature for their incomes and thus no longer accountable to it - thereby leading to the emergence of a despotic form of government. The committee communicated with other towns on this matter and requested them to draft replies. Committees were set up in virtually all the colonies, and out of them grew a base of effective revolutionary organizations. Still, Adams did not have enough fuel to set a fire. BOSTON TEA PARTY In 1773, however, Britain furnished Adams and his allies with an incendiary issue. The powerful East India Company, finding itself in critical financial straits, appealed to the British government, which granted it a monopoly on all tea exported to the colonies. The government also permitted the East India Company to supply retailers directly, bypassing colonial wholesalers who had previously sold it. After 1770, such a flourishing illegal trade existed that most of the tea consumed in America was of foreign origin and imported, illegally, duty- free. By selling its tea through its own agents at a price well under the customary one, the East India Company made smuggling unprofitable and threatened to eliminate the independent colonial merchants at the same time. Aroused not only by the loss of the tea trade but also by the monopolistic practice involved, colonial traders joined A Quartering Act required local authorities to find suitable quarters for British troops, in private homes if necessary. Instead of subduing and isolating Massachusetts as Parliament intended, these acts rallied its sister colonies to its aid. The Quebec Act, passed at nearly the same time, extended the boundaries of the province of Quebec and guaranteed