The Linguistic Culture-2 (british media) (1157941), страница 7
Текст из файла (страница 7)
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 from the meager beginnings 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.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 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% either 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 in the 17PthP 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 17PthP 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 18PthP 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.
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