Lectures of The Linguistic Culture, страница 7

The development of American colonization was dramatically influenced by two most important aspects: the relationships of Europeans and Native Americans and the importation of more than two hundred thousand Africans into North America.

Native Americans

It is well known that when Christopher Columbus arrived in the “New World” and thought that he was in India, he called the native people as Indians. When Columbus discovered the New World there seemed to be approximately from 1 to 10 million different Indian tribes who lived within the present limits of the United States and spoke about 450 distinct dialects. It is well known now that the American Indians who demand now to be called Native Americans or by their tribal names like Navajo or Lakota developed great civilizations in Pre-Columbian America( the Incas and the Aztecs and others), and contributed much to world culture and the welfare of the human race. They domesticated corn, potatoes, tobacco and many vegetables and fruits which we like so much now. They made discoveries of very many drugs that are used today in chemistry and medical science.

At the time of European settlement in the 17P^thP century the New England coastal area was densely populated with Indian tribes who mostly hunted buffalo for food, shelter, clothing, and articles of warfare. At that time Indian – white contacts in the New World favored the white settlers. It was the Indians who taught European newcomers how to adjust to the new nature and climate, how to hunt in the wilderness and fish. Christopher Columbus described the American Indians as “a loving, unobvious people, so docile in all things that there are no better people or better country… They loved their neighbors as themselves and they had the sweetest and gentlest way of speaking in the world, and always with a smile”. It was the Indians who kept the Virginia colony originally alive by trading corn and other foodstuffs to the settlers.

But in return for their friendship the Europeans took their lands, destroyed their way of life, and turned them into refugees and beggars in their own country. The story of the American Indians is one of the most brutal stories of violence and cruelty in human history. The settlers needed land, Indians occupied it. Only when the white men began pushing the Indians off their land did they started viewing them as enemies and tried to strike back. The year of 1622 marked the beginning of 200 long conflicts between the Native Americans and the white settlers. The Indians were doomed to be defeated. The colonists had guns, the Indians fought with bows and arrows.

Overall, the treatment of North American Indians by Europeans stands as the most bloody acts of genocide. In books and later in Westerns the Indians were always portrayed as “the hair-raising baddies” (villains). The phrase “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” was generally used. The means of violence were varied and included not only outright mass extermination, but also bounty-hunting (scalping for profit), massacre of women and children, the assassination of Indian kings and leaders, the forced relocation of peoples. By the end of the 18-th century some Indian tribes had been exterminated. The others had been forced to accept “the peace terms” according to which they ceded a substantial part of their territory to the whites and moved to reservations, not suitable for farming and that’s why not needed by white settlers.

Afro-Americans.

To work the new lands, to produce large-scale products of tobacco, rice, cotton and indigo black slaves were captured in Africa and brought to America. In August 1619 the first cargo of twenty blacks was brought by a Dutch ship to Virginia. In 1661 the Virginia legislature enacted the law that assumed African Negroes as “inferior” and “servants for life”. After that slaves were brought into other colonies. Although while crossing the Atlantic many African slaves died from terrible conditions on the ships but their number had grown to six thousand by the end of the 17P^thP century. The difference in skin and culture of Africans was viewed by most white settlers as their inferiority, creating the basis for a system of racial slavery

Black slaves were considered to be the property of their masters and were bought and sold like farm animals. In 1800, there were almost 900,000 black slaves, most of them in the southern states of the New World. America proved for many of them a hideous prison, and death provided the only escape from life-long sufferings and degradation. They often came from different tribes and did not even speak the same languages. Enslaved into a hostile and strange culture, they had to fully obey their masters or else they would be beaten, tortured, or killed. Most of them worked in the fields on tobacco or cotton plantations, others worked as domestic servants, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the master’s family. It was illegal to teach a slave reading and writing. If slaves wanted to marry, they had to ask their master’s permission. The children of the slaves automatically became the property of the master. Sometimes family members were sold to different owners and never saw each other again.

Scattered references to attempted suicides and occasional slave mutinies indicate that Africans did not accept their fate passively, and the sadness of their songs - their most powerful legacy of expression - provides insight into their personal tragedies. Outright resistance was impossible, but. some slaves tried to escape. Although a few northern states, including New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, abolished slavery at that time, escaped slaves from the South could be legally recaptured there and returned to their masters. Many slaves tried to escape to Canada, the only place that slaves could become free legally. The escape route, called the Underground Railroad, was a network of hiding places and people called “conductors” who led slaves north to freedom. The journey was long and extremely difficult. During the day, slaves hid in caves or in barns belonging to anti-slavery white farmers. At night, they were taken to the next hiding place. The “conductors” risked their lives, because people could be executed for helping slaves to escape. Only a few fugitive slaves ever reached the promised land of Canada.

1. Answer the questions.

1. Why did the English settlers of the Virginia Company call their first permanent location as New England?

2. Who were the very first colonists in North America?

3. What were the major events of the first period of the English colonization of North America?

4. Why were some immigrants indentured for a term of service?

5. How did New Amsterdam turn into New York?

6. What was the colonists’ policy towards the Indians?

7. How did Africans get into America?

8. Why did the colonists need Black slaves?

9. What happened to the Black slaves, if they escaped but later were recaptured?

10. Who were so-called “conductors”?

2. Render the texts in English:

А). Виргиния.

В мае 1607 г. поселенцы Лондонской компании основали на восточном побережье Америки форт Джеймстаун. Положение жителей было трудным. Освоение девственной страны шло медленно. Многие поселенцы не выдерживали и умирали.

Шло время. В колонии постепенно складывалась определенная общественная структура. Высший слой общества составляли члены администрации и губернатор. Cсредний слой – поселенцы, которые сами оплатили свой проезд. Низший слой включал людей, посланных в Америку за счет Лондонской компании. Они обязывались в течение контракта выполнять любую порученную им работу. После окончания контракта каждый из них мог получить свою землю. Их называли сервентами.

Постепенно “сервенты” Виргинии становились батраками у землевладельцев и резервом работников будущих капиталистических мануфактур. Таким образом, постепенно в Виргинии создавалось капиталистическое производство. Однако количество сервентов, прибывавших из Европы, не удовлетворяло потребности колониального хозяйства. Делались попытки превратить индейцев в рабов, но они были безуспешны. Нужны были новые рабочие руки, которыми стали. черные рабы из Африки..

Б) Первые поселения.

За группой пуританских пилигримов в 1620 г. в последующие годы потянулись представители других протестантских верований, намеревающихся на новом континенте устроить жизнь в соответствии со своими религиозными убеждениями. Численность населения росла быстрыми темпами. За первой английской волной эмиграции последовали другие; в Северную Америку стали приезжать немцы, голландцы, швейцарцы и французы, превращая колонии в огромный «Этнический котел». Английские короли пытались насадить за океаном феодальные отношения: раздавали своим приближенным земли, жаловали хартии, согласно которым землевладелец мог отдавать землю зависимым держателям. Однако развитие колоний пошло по иному, гораздо более прогрессивному пути.

Идеология «здорового эгоизма», стимулирующая конкурентную борьбу, культ супермена-одиночки, преодолевающего все препятствия на пути к успеху, и девиз «время-деньги», подхлестывающий деловую активность, привели к быстрому развитию производства. Уже в первой половине 17 в. начали появляться города – будущие центры промышленности и торговли. В 1640-х гг. возникли первые мануфактуры; развивалось судостроение. В Нью-Йорке и Пенсильвании появились железоплавильные печи, и вскоре производство железа увеличилось настолько, что это стало беспокоить англичан.

На севере распространилось фермерство, т.е. утверждался капиталистический путь развития сельского хозяйства. Этому способствовали огромные неосвоенные пространства земли. Уход на Запад был способом решения споров между арендаторами и землевладельцами: беднейшие колонисты захватывали свободные земли, причем, как правило, делали это самовольно и становились независимыми собственниками земли.

В богатых, работающих на внешний рынок южных колониях, долго сохранялось плантационное хозяйство, основанное на рабском труде.

Part III.

War for Independence. American Revolution

Read and translate the following words and word combinations:

legislative assemblies offensive

to put/ levy a duty on disguised as

to dump the cargo to furnish shelter

punitive measures grievances

to be aligned with to bring the insurgent colonists into line

to pledge support not be subdued

uproar to lay down arms

to repeal the duties skirmish

to pledge support rag-tag groups of irregulars

to adopt amendments to subdue

By the middle of the 18P^thP century North America was no longer a serious of isolated imperial outposts inhabited by Englishmen. By 1750 there were thirteen British colonies, competing with the French ones. In 1749 the French sent an expedition down the Ohio River to claim the land in the Mississippi basin for Luis XV. The British government responded by organizing an elaborate offensive against the French. The Seven Years’ War ended in the expulsion of France from North America and stirred a wave of patriotism among the English population in America. Colonials cheered when the Treaty of Paris (1763) gave England control over all of North America east of the Mississippi.

After the French war Great Britain rose to the heights of national power and prestige. At the same time the costly seven-year struggle severely strained Britain’s treasury and pointed up glaring differences of interests between England and Americans who felt much less dependent on the mother country. The colonies had become quite different and no longer wanted to be seen as extensions of England. The controversy between England and the colonies after 1763 revolved around the laws affecting the settlement of the West, colonial trade, currency, taxes, courts of justice and legislative assemblie.

The British Prime Minister George Granville was determined to make the American colonies realize their obligations to the Empire. He introduced a series of new administrative and financial programs for America: the Quartering Act (1765) demanded colonials to furnish shelter and provisions for the English troops.; the Currency Act of 1764 extended an earlier edict against making colonial money legal. A New Sugar and Molasses Act in 1764 put a duty on the goods shipped to the colonies. Besides sugar taxes were put upon silk and wine. In 1765 Stamp Act laid taxes on all printed items such as paper, licenses, newspapers, playing cards and even college diplomas. To show that the tax had been paid, a stamp seller put a stamp on the paper.

The answer in colonies was boycott against the importation of British goods. The first political action - the Congress toward Stamp Act took place in New York. After more than two weeks of debate at the Congress the representatives of nine colonies issued a declaration of rights and grievances that stated that colonies could be taxed constitutionally only by their own legislatures. In 1766 an Organization “Sons of Liberty” was created in New York, and together with other organizations it broadened the base of the resistance movement. They urged citizens not to buy imported goods. Even American women, who had traditionally remained outside of politics, joined the resistance movement. In towns throughout America young women calling themselves Daughters of Liberation sat publicly at their spinning wheels all day boycotting English cloth, eating only American food and drinking American herbal tea.

In March 1770 British redcoats who had been sent to enforce certain British Acts clashed with colonial civilians. Five men were killed and six wounded. The incident was later known as “The Boston massacre When the uproar in America reached Britain, the British Parliament repealed all the duties except the tea tax, but most basic sources of discontent remained.. The Americans felt angry upon the presence of unnecessary troops, the English courts and customs officers.

The East India Company, finding itself in critical financial state, appealed to the British government and was given a monopoly on all tea exported to North America. When three ships loaded with tea came into the port of Boston in December 16, 1773 American colonists refused to pay the tax and unload the tea. Instead at night a group of 60 men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and dumped the cargo of three hundred forty two chests into the water of the harbor This event came into American history under the name “The Boston Tea Party”. British King George and Parliament condemned the “Tea Party” as an act of vandalism and advocated legal measures to bring the insurgent colonists into line. Punitive measures were taken. The newly adopted British laws-called by the colonists “Coercive Acts’- closed the port of Boston until the cost of the lost tea was paid for. New British officials were appointed in American colonies, and many more British troops were stationed there.

But the resistance of the colonists continued to grow. In 1774 Americans established so-called Committees of Correspondence, which sent delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Delegates from 12 colonies except Georgia wrote to King George asking to reopen Boston Harbor. American lawyers Thomas Jefferson and James Wilson worked out the rights of Americans and their own legislation. King George did not answer the letter and sent more warships to America. American patriots called on Americans to take up arms to defend their rights. In April, 1775 the British regulars at Lexington and Concord (near Boston) were met by armed American volunteers (so-called militia). Their first skirmished proclaimed the beginning of American War for Independence.