Mohammed Aldriwesh
1-What were the major
patterns of Native American life in North America before Europeans arrived?
When European explorers
first arrived in North America, they encountered aboriginal peoples who had
worked out stable long-term adaptations to their local environments and
available resources. Native North Americans lived within the balance of nature,
and their cultural and religious beliefs expressed a deep reverence for the
land and a sense of kinship with wildlife. Subsistence was of course central to
aboriginal life and culture. The acquisition of food demanded considerable
time, energy and ingenuity. It was the primary focus of Indian technology and a
dominant theme in the Indian religion, legend and art. The more time there was
devoted to hunting, fishing, gathering or growing food, the less time for other
cultural pursuits. People here ate a large variety of foods and used a variety
of means in acquiring them, depending on geography and availability as well as
knowledge and technology.
2-What were the main
contours of English colonization in the seventeenth century?
In the seventeenth
century, North America was characterized by instability and dangerous
environment. The Indian and other settler populations were decimated by
diseases. Religious, political and economic tensions that drew into imperial
wars and conflict with Indians racked the colonies. The colonies largely
depended on their mother countries for protection and economic support.
Furthermore, the Puritans were totally intolerant with the Indians and saw them
as heathens. These religious issues were also there among the Massachusetts.
The new colonies were continually made by of these issues. People’s concern was
more on trade than church since that is what helped New England survive.
3-How did the English
empire in American expand in the mid-seventeenth century?
North America, like
England itself, was embedded in a worldwide matrix of trade and warfare. The
web woven by oceangoing vessels, once composed of only a few strands spun by
Columbus and his successors, now crisscrossed the globe, carrying European
goods to America and Africa, Africans to the Americas, Caribbean sugar to New
England and Europe, and New England fish and wood products to the Caribbean.
Formerly tiny outposts, the North American colonies expanded their territorial
claims and diversified their colonies after the mid seventeenth century. Mohawk
country was closer to British metropolis than ever before.
4-How did African slavery
differ regionally in eighteenth century in North America?
In the eighteenth
century, African slavery was largely regionalized in North America. The North
rejected slavery and eventually banned it but the south favored slavery due to
its cheap labor. European settlers in the North America appropriated a
relatively sparsely populated but fertile and spacious land from its Native
American inhabitants. From the earliest settlement, agricultural development
and its accompanying social organization differed regionally. In the North was
a combination of independent family farms and greater urbanization; in the
south, large scale plantation and smaller farm cultivation of tobacco with
hired or African American slave labor was more typical. The North became more
urban and commercial and began to industrialize, while the southern plantation
economy spread, switching from tobacco to cotton cultivation.
6-What were the roots and
significance of the stamp act controversy?
The stamp act controversy
had its roots in the events that occurred two years earlier on the far rim of
the American frontier. There, on May 16, 1763, an outpost of British troops at
Fort Sandusky in the Ohio Country was slaughtered by a war party of Wyandot
Indians. Within a week, a larger garrison in wilderness Michigan was attacked
with brutal losses by Ojibway warriors. The massacres were the opening
battles of Pontiac’s Rebellion, an Indian uprising in the Ohio Country that was
led by the Ottawa war chief whose name it bore. The shock precipitated by the
stamp act was the catalyst for intense period of self-examination that occupied
the decade of the 1760s and culminated in the Declaration of Independence.
7-What was the impact of
the revolution on slavery?
Revolution was important
to ending slavery in the Americas. Slavery flourished and was practically
unquestioned on the eve of the age of revolution, yet ended relatively quickly
thereafter. Beginning with 1776, revolutions influenced each other and had a
cumulative effect beyond their boundaries in the assault on slavery. The
American Revolution was important because it created the problem of slavery and
a framework for ending it.
8-What were the
achievements and problems of the confederation government?
The Articles of
Confederation served as a valuable trial government. Its achievements include
winning the war with Great Britain. While the constitutional convention was
meeting, the congress under the Articles also adopted the Northwest Ordinance
of 1787 formulating government for the western territories. Despite its
accomplishments, the economy worsened as states enacted tariffs and other trade
restrictions on one another’s goods. Currency was not uniform from one state to
another. Congress was too weak. The government had difficulty enforcing
treaties, and foreigners treated American diplomats with disrespect.
Politically, the new government lacked adequate power of taxation and defense,
and the rigid requirement for state unanimity stymied needed constitutional
amendments.
9-What issues made the
politics of the 1790s so divisive?
The financial plan that
was develop by secretary of the Treasury Hamilton I the 1790 and 1791 was the beginning of
division in the America. In this plan,
the vision of powerful commercial republic won over financers, manufacturers
and merchants. But the plan alarmed the believers in new nation’s destiny lying
in charting, a different path of development. This resulted into much political
division. Moreover, the religious issues also caused division.
_____________________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________________
