The Linguistic Culture-5 (USA-1) (1157932), страница 2
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European immigrants flooded NewEngland attracted by beautiful stories about America. In 1700 only 250,000 peopleresided in the colonies, butthe population began to double every 25 years,sprawling along the Atlantic coast. By 1760 the colonies already had containedover a million inhabitants – rich and poor, white and black, rural and urban,commercial and agricultural, The most 17 -century settlers came from Britain,bringing with them the English language, institutions and cultures.But in the 18th century other groups of immigrants began to arrive. The largestof them were the Scots and Irish who fled from economic distress, failure of cropsand religious discrimination. Many Europeans, mostly from Germany, came toAmerica through so-called “redemption”. Under that form of indenturedservitude, so-called redemptioners paid as much as they could of their passagebefore sailing from Europe to America.
After they landed in the colonies, theywere indentured for a term of service proportional to the amount of their debt. Theterm of service lasted from one year to four or longer. According to Americanhistorians only two of every ten indentured servants became successful farmers.The remaining 80% died during servitude, became drifters or seized illegally theland belonging to native tribes.The development of American colonization was dramatically influenced by twomost important aspects: the relationships of Europeans and Native Americans andthe importation of more than two hundred thousand Africans into North America.Native AmericansIt is well known that when Christopher Columbus arrived in the “NewWorld” 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 10million different Indian tribes who lived within the present limits of the UnitedStates and spoke about 450 distinct dialects.
It is well known now that theAmerican Indians who demand now to be called Native Americans or by theirtribal names like Navajo or Lakota developed great civilizations in Pre-ColumbianAmerica( the Incas and the Aztecs and others), and contributed much to worldculture and the welfare of the human race. They domesticated corn, potatoes,tobacco and many vegetables and fruits which we like so much now. They madediscoveries of very many drugs that are used today in chemistry and medicalscience.At the time of European settlement in the 17PthP century the New Englandcoastal area was densely populated with Indian tribes who mostly hunted buffalofor food, shelter, clothing, and articles of warfare. At that time the white settlers’contacts in the New World with the Indians were not bad. It was the Indians whotaught European newcomers how to adjust to the new nature and climate, how tohunt 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 bettercountry… They loved their neighbors as themselves and they had the sweetest andgentlest way of speaking in the world, and always with a smile”. It was the Indianswho kept the Virginia colony originally alive by trading corn and other foodstuffsto the settlers.But in return for their friendship the Europeans took their lands, destroyedtheir 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 andcruelty in human history.
The settlers needed land, Indians occupied it. Only whenthe white men began pushing the Indians off their land did they started viewingthem as enemies and tried to strike back. The year of 1622 marked the beginningof 200 long conflicts between the Native Americans and the white settlers. TheIndians were doomed to be defeated.
The colonists had guns, the Indians foughtwith bows and arrows.Overall, the treatment of North American Indians by Europeans stands asthe most bloody acts of genocide. In books and later in Westerns the Indians werealways portrayed as “the hair-raising baddies” (villains). The phrase “the onlygood Indian is a dead Indian” was generally used. The means of violence werevaried and included not only outright mass extermination, but also bounty-hunting(scalping for profit), massacre of women and children, the assassination of Indiankings and leaders, the forced relocation of peoples.
By the end of the 18-th centurysome 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 territoryto the whites and moved to reservations, not suitable for farming and that’s whynot 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. InAugust 1619 the first cargo of twenty blacks was brought by a Dutch ship toVirginia. In 1661 the Virginia legislature enacted the law that assumed AfricanNegroes as “inferior” and “servants for life”.
After that slaves were brought intoother colonies. Although while crossing the Atlantic many African slaves diedfrom terrible conditions on the ships but their number had grown to six thousandby the end of the 17PthP century. The difference in skin and culture of Africans wasviewed by most white settlers as their inferiority, creating the basis for a system ofracial slaveryBlack slaves were considered to be the property of their masters and werebought and sold like farm animals. In 1800, there were almost 900,000 blackslaves, most of them in the southern states of the New World. America proved formany of them a hideous prison, and death provided the only escape from life-longsufferings and degradation. They often came from different tribes and did not evenspeak the same languages. Enslaved into a hostile and strange culture, they had tofully obey their masters or else they would be beaten, tortured, or killed.
Most ofthem worked in the fields on tobacco or cotton plantations, others worked asdomestic servants, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the master’s family. It wasillegal to teach a slave reading and writing. If slaves wanted to marry, they had toask their master’s permission. The children of the slaves automatically became theproperty of the master. Sometimes family members were sold to different ownersand never saw each other again.Scattered references to attempted suicides and occasional slave mutiniesindicate that Africans did not accept their fate passively, and the sadness of theirsongs - their most powerful legacy of expression - provides insight into theirpersonal tragedies.
Outright resistance was impossible, but. some slaves tried toescape. Although a few northern states, including New York, New Jersey, andVermont, abolished slavery at that time, escaped slaves from the South could belegally recaptured there and returned to their masters. Many slaves tried to escapeto 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 andextremely difficult. During the day, slaves hid in caves or in barns belonging toanti-slavery white farmers. At night, they were taken to the next hiding place. The“conductors” risked their lives, because people could be executed for helpingslaves to escape. Only a few slaves ever reached the promised land of Canada.Translate from English into Russian:Abundant geography, diverse population, wilderness, acquisition of…, cargo oftimber, oriental, hostility to, accession, it was bound, to authorize, chartering, ajoint stock company, a nightmare, persecution, rugged existence, to perish, to bedistressed, to be beset, to adjust to…, trinkets, to surrender, redemption, indenturedservitude.Answer the questions :1.
Why did the English settlers of the Virginia Company call their first permanentlocation asNew 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 ofNorth 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 black 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 восточномпобережье Америки форт Джеймстаун. Положение жителей было трудным.Освоение девственной страны шло медленно. Многие поселенцы невыдерживали и умирали.Шло время. В колонии постепенно складывалась определеннаяобщественная структура. Высший слой общества составляли членыадминистрации и губернатор.
Cсредний слой – поселенцы, которые самиоплатили свой проезд. Низший слой включал людей, посланных в Америкуза счет Лондонской компании. Они обязывались в течение контрактавыполнять любую порученную им работу. После окончания контрактакаждый из них мог получить свою землю. Их называли сервентами.Постепенно “сервенты” Виргинии становились батраками у землевладельцев ирезервомработниковбудущихкапиталистическихмануфактур.Такимобразом,постепенно в Виргинии создавалось капиталистическое производство. Однако количествосервентов, прибывавших из Европы, не удовлетворяло потребности колониальногохозяйства.
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