USA (Linguistic Culture), страница 2

In 1681 William Penn, a son of the famous admiral of the English Navy, and a follower of religious group called Quakers made an agreement with the King, about the land in America. He called this land Pennsylvania (“Penn’s woods”). W. Penn did very much to build up Pennsylvania, writing advertisements, telling people in Europe about the beauty of his colony, promising that it would be a place open to settlers of all faiths.

One of the most striking characteristics of the mainland colonies in the 18th century was their rapid population growth. European immigrants flooded New England attracted by beautiful stories about America. In 1700 only 250,000 people resided in the colonies, but later the population began to double every 25 years, sprawling along the Atlantic coast. By 1760 the colonies already had contained over a million inhabitants – rich and poor, white and black, rural and urban, commercial and agricultural, Protestant and Catholic.

The 17-century settlers came largely from Britain, bringing with them the English language, institutions and cultures. But in the 18th century other groups of immigrants began to arrive. The largest of them were the Scots and the Irish who fled from economic distress, failure of crops and religious discrimination. Many Europeans, mostly from Germany, came to America through so-called “redemption”. Under that form of indentured servitude, so-called redemptioners paid as much as they could of their passage before sailing from Europe to America. After they landed in the colonies, they were indentured for a term of service proportional to the amount of their debt. The term of service lasted from one year to four or longer. According to American historians only two of every ten indentured servants became successful farmers or artisans. The remaining 80% died during servitude, became drifters or caught the land belonging to native tribes.

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 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 “loving, unobvious people…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 giving 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, the 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 Indians were doomed to be defeated. The colonists had guns, the Indians fought only with bows and arrows.

Overall, the treatment of North American Indians by Europeans stands as the bloodiest 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 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 on the new lands, to produce large-scale products of tobacco, 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. Many African slaves died from terrible conditions on the ships but eventually their number was growing. In 1800, there were almost 900,000 black slaves, most of them in the southern states of the New World. 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. 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. 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 later, 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. Only a few 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 captured?

10. Who were so-called “conductors”?

2. Render the texts in English:

Виржиния. В мае 1607 г. поселенцы Лондонской компании основали на восточном побережье Америки форт Джеймстаун в Виржинии.. Освоение девственной страны шло медленно. Многие поселенцы не выдерживали и умирали.

Постепенно в колонии складывалась определенная общественная структура. Высший слой общества составляли члены администрации и губернатор. Cредний слой составляли 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 часть земли.

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. 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. 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 южных колониях, долго сохранялось плантационное хозяйство, основанное на рабском труде.

War for Independence.

By the middle of the 18^th century North America was no longer a serious of isolated 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 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 English and Americans who felt much less dependent on the mother country. The controversy between England and the colonies after 1763 revolved around the laws of colonial trade, currency, taxes, courts of justice and legislation.

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 financial programs for America. The Currency Act of 1764 extended an earlier edict against making colonial money legal. A New Sugar and Molasses Act 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 Quartering Act (1765) demanded colonials to furnish shelter and provisions for the English troops.

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 only by their own legislatures. In 1766 an Organization “Sons of Liberty” was created in New York, who 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 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”.