(2015) Коллоквиум 2

t1. Why did the English settlers of the Virginia Company call their first permanent location as New England?

The English pictured the new land of America as New England because the region was not noticeably different from old England.The Virginia Company resembled English joint-stock companies of Africa and Asia, but the small Jamestown colony proved to be economic “white elephant” for investors and a nightmare for many of its earliest inhabitants. The location was low, swampy, covered with trees full of malaria-carrying mosquitoes.

(Белый слон (англ. white elephant) — существующий в английском языке фразеологизм, означающий нечто чрезвычайно дорогостоящее, но не приносящее практической пользы.

Происхождение выражения связано с легендой, согласно которой король Сиама дарил неугодным ему лицам белого слона. Белые слоны считались священными животными и не использовались как рабочие. Стоимость содержания слона разоряла получателя такого подарка.

В биржевой практике выражение «белый слон» обозначает операцию, при которой расходы заведомо превышают ожидаемую прибыль)

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

Видимо, это англичане (больше в лекции я не нашла ничего такого) НО! нашли в интернете другую информацию

лекция:The English did not attempt to “share the American pie” and inhabit North America until the 17^th century settlements in North America. English first colonization steps were stimulated by their hostility to Spain. Queen Elizabeth’s advisers Sir H. Gilbert, Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake proposed a more aggressive policy toward Catholic Spain and persuaded the Queen that New World colonies would serve as bases for attacks on it. a Spaniard called Lucas Vasquez de Allyon attempted to found a colony in Carolina. (He also brought the first black slaves to North America). However the attempt failed. Many Spaniards died of disease and the survivors abandoned the colony.

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

The first English attempts at colonization in Newfoundland and North Carolina however failed. Sir H. Gilbert’s expedition in 1583 was destroyed by a storm. It was bound to be unsuccessful from the start as the boats were too light for the trans-Atlantic passage. Walter Raleigh’s first expedition to America in 1587 brought back glorious reports of the coast of Virginia, but the outbreak of war between England and Spain in 1588 postponed the mission of England’s transatlantic ventures.

Only two decades later King James I authorized the chartering of a joint stock company to colonize Virginia. In 1607 Virginia Company landed 144 men near the mouth of the James River as a site for permanent settlement. During the first six months fever and disease killed approximately half the settlers. Still in 1609 the reorganized Virginia Company petitioned for a charter, fixing the limits of the colony at two hundred miles north and south and including all islands within one hundred miles of the coast.Over the years, the company established more liberal land grants, encouraged immigration of men and women, and slowly but steadily built strong economy based on growing and selling tobacco.

The next group of the immigrants to the New World consisted of the English who disagreed with the teaching of the English Church and fled from persecution at home to Holland. In July 1620 a group of 102 so-called pilgrims sailed on the ship “Mayflower” to North America with the hope to set up a colony and find there civil and religious freedom. After a long Trans - Atlantic crossing the pilgrims landed in a place now called Province Town and started building one of the first permanent Massachusetts’s villages called New Plymouth.

The first religious group was followed by a thousand so-called English Puritans who came to Massachusetts Bay and founded some communities in the place where now is Boston. Like the Pilgrims, the Puritans had been against the policies of the English crown, alarmed over growing immorality in English society and beset by economic anxiety. But unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans claimed not separating from the English church, but establishing a purer version of it. Puritans built the first small towns centered around a church and a meeting house. The colony’s political leaders were also church leaders who tried to create the orders based upon true and strict Christian rules and the family as the basic unit of society. Good harbors, especially at the new town Boston, provided the foundation for a thriving commerce. The growth of trade and the development of shipping industry assisted the colony’s prosperity.

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.

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

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.

5. How did New Amsterdam turn into New York?

In 1626 the governor of the Dutch Colony bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for the trinkets and little trifles valued approximately $24. There he built a trading fort and a town, which he called New Amsterdam. The defenses of New Amsterdam were poor and later when English warships appeared in the bay the Dutch had to surrender the fort and the town to the English. In 1664 King Charles II gave a large area of Manhattan Island to his brother Duke of York and New Amsterdam was turned into New York in honor of the duke.

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

in return for Indians 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.

7. How did Africans get into America?

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”.

8. Why did the colonists need Black slaves?

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.

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

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.

10. Who were so-called “conductors”?

The escape route, called the Underground Railroad, was a network of hiding places and people called “conductors” who led slaves north to freedom.

1. What was the main reason of British – French war?

By the middle of the 18^th century North America was no longer a series 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

2. What consequences had the victory of Britain on the relations between American colonies and their mother country?

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.

4. What did “The Boston Massacre” and the Boston “Tea Party” play in the revolutionary movement?

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”.

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. That event came into American history under the name “The Boston Tea Party”. British King and Parliament condemned the “Tea Party” as an act of vandalism and advocated legal measures to bring the 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.

3. What series of British actions led to the American war for independence?

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 1774 the First Continental Congress was held in Philadelphia. Delegates wrote to King George asking to reopen Boston Harbor (it was closed earlier). 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 skirmish proclaimed the beginning of American War for Independence.

5. What was the main idea of the “Declaration of Independence” drafted by Thomas Jefferson?