America through history and revolutions

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"Man was born free,
and everywhere he is in chains."

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau



American time line:

1500:
• 07 - The name "America" is first used in a geography book referring to the New World with Amerigo Vespucci getting credit for the discovery of the continent.
• 12 - Spanish Laws of Burgos forbid enslavement of Indians and advocate Christian conversion
• 14 - Bartolome de las Casas petitions Spanish crown on behalf of Native Americans
• 41 - Hernando de Soto of Spain discovers the Mississippi River.
• 65 - The first permanent European colony in North America is founded at St. Augustine (Florida) by the Spanish.
• 87 - Ralegh sends out a fresh colony of 117 men, women, and children in three ships, with John White as governor.

1600:
• 07 - Establishment of Jamestown
• 08 - Colony of Quebec is established.
• 21 - First thanksgiving
• 30 - Population increasing rapidly in Virginia and Plymouth
• 36 - Founding of Providence, R. I. by Roger Williams, who establishes Rhode Island as a place of religious toleration
• 43 - Anne Hutchinson and family (founded Portsmouth) are murdered by native Americans.

1700:
• 00 - The Anglo population in the English colonies in America reaches 250,000
• 05 – Laws restricting the travel of slaves (Virginia Black Code of 1705)
• 10 – 10 000 German refugees from Palatinate settle in Livingstone Manor
• 24 – Jewish settlers exiled from Louisiana colony
• 32 – Birth of George Washington
• 39/42 - War of Jenkin''''s Ear (against Spain in the Southern colonies)
• 49 - First American repertory acting company established in Philadelphia; it opens with Thomas Keane in Richard III. Trustees of Georgia colony revoke their prohibition on slavery in the colony, marking a legal recognition of slavery there.
• 54 - Colonies adopt Benjamin Franklin''''s "Plan of the Union" of English colonies.

1800:
• 02 - Ohio outlaws slavery
• 08 - African slave trade ends in America; slaves may no longer be imported; but this does not preclude the buying and selling of slaves within the United States. Slave trading within the states continued up until the day of Emancipation in 1863.
• 12 – The war of 1812
• 15 - Peace treaty negotiated between the Dakota Indian nation and the United States
government. First American fur traders enter Minnesota.

• 51 - Charter granted to the University of Minnesota, the first collegiate institution in the territory.
• 60/69 - Civil war
• 70/79 – Industrial revolution gets really big


Commercial revolution:
The Seven Years War started, but in America it was called the French and Indian war. The fighting began in America in 1754, and continued there, but it also took place in India. The biggest thing about this is that the English took over pretty much all of America. They captured Quebec, and by doing so, they got the New France. When peace finally was made in Paris 1763, the British got Canada and all French territories east from Mississippi river. Spain acquired the French territory of Louisiana. In 1800 America expanded in the pacific, and began trading with Japan and China. The slave trade expanded in the 1800’s, and that made the European countries get very high profits. But the first slaves that came to America came as early as in 1619, but they weren’t called slaves back then, they were just servants, and the intention was for them to return after seven years.
During this time, due to the exploration I guess, trading grew, and more and more countries got new goods to use. This is something we don’t think about today, since it is so natural for us. Globalization is, in most cases, a very good thing that brings us forward in our development, as it did back then. Therefore, I think it was very good that the exploration started, because I can’t imagine what it would be like to feel so isolated that these people were.

Industrial revolution:
America had an enormous amount of nature resources, which the Europeans gladly invested in. They started to build railroads, and that increased the good economy, since it was a lot easier to communicate and to transport goods and so on. In the 1870’s the iron and steel production increased, and in the 1880’s America had exceeded Britain’s iron and steel production. Steam power drove machines, mainly in the textile industry. People moved from country sides to cities, and the urbanization was a fact.
Thomas Alva Edison invented photographs and electric generating plant and got light power in New York. England saw how successful it was and adopted it.
If the industrial revolution in the end led to more opportunities to work in the cities, and gave the workers better living conditions, then I guess that’s what counts. The inventions that made the cities safer, like street lights and gas and electric streetcars must really have created new conditions to live in a city, and brought us to another level of living. Also, the industrial revolution created so much more jobs that even women could work, which I think was a really important event. That can be one of the reasons why we are so equal in that area today.



Scientific revolution:
The American Enlightenment, which is generally dated from the Glorious Revolution of 1688, was an uneven affair. In part, it involved the exporting of scientific, social, and political ideas from Britain, but also meant exporting of radical and marginal ideas, such as the republicanism of the "commonwealthmen." In almost all cases, however, the American Enlightenment did not mean that they took away all of the radical protestant ideas that from the beginning inspired the settlement of America, but started a long process of secularizing these religious ideas.
Locke got very popular, he thought things like “the purpose of the government is to create order in society”, and he had a very positive view of man kind.
If the scientific revolution hadn’t occurred, we would probably not live with the conditions we do today. Today it’s just natural that you think of the world from our point of view. We decide what to think and what we say what we want and use our own reason (in most countries, anyway). Back then, that wasn’t a common thinking. If we hadn’t developed this more scientific way of thinking, maybe we would still be controlled by religion, and having people with more power taking advantage of that. The population would probably not be as big either, because of the medicine that we have today. From my point of view, that is a good thing, but when you think about it, it might be bad for what we are doing to the nature.

American revolution:
In 1760, King George demanded money from the colonists, because of the huge amount of debt the British had. So he started to take economic initiatives made to take out more takings from the colonies, and he said that this was just right, since the colonists were enjoying the peace they had won. In 1767, new taxes were put on goods like tea, paper, glass and other things that were imported to the colonies. The colonists were not very happy about this, since the messages of the enlightenment had just started to grow there. This led to that the leaders of the colonies boycotted the British imports. Then there is the Boston tea party, which happened in 1773, and was one of the events that triggered the American Revolution. It was a protest from the Sons of Liberty against British East India Company. What happened was that the Sons of Liberty, led by a man called Samuel Adams, ruined several crates of tea in Boston harbor. This act made both the colonial and British officials complain. For instance, Benjamin Franklin said that the ruined tea must be repaid and offered to repay with his own money. The British government responded harshly by closing the port of Boston and put in place other laws that were known as the "Intolerable Acts". This act proved to be one of those that led to America''''s fight for independence. The Boston Tea Party and the reaction that people had after it served to get support for revolutionaries in the thirteen colonies who were very successful in the following war.

The war its...