An Assignment Submitted by
Although the United States of America became an independent country not so long ago there was a long history that preceded the mentioned event that happened in 1776. In this paper the history of the pre-independent USA will be explored.
It is believed that the indigenous people have been coming to America from Asia for thousands of years in the gap between 15 and 50 thousand years ago, when the modern Bering Strait did not yet exist and the two continents were connected with land. Reliable evidence of their presence in the United States was received throughF the findings of artefacts whose age is about 14 thousand years. In 1492, America's existence became known in medieval Europe after Christopher Columbus visited the islands of the West Indies, as he had called them, and during his second voyage in 1493 personally landed on the island of Puerto Rico that is now owned by the United States. In 1498 John Cabot , the first British explorer made a voyage to the shores of New England, and in 1513 Spanish explorer Juan Ponce de Leon reached the coast of Florida. With the arrival of the Europeans the colonial history of America began.
At the dawn of its independence the United States consisted only of thirteen states, which were formed from British colonies. After independence, they had to fight two times with Great Britain in the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812. According to the Paris Peace Treaty of 1783, Great Britain has formally recognized the independence of the United States, but before the end of the Second Anglo-American War in 1815 still continued to support allied Indian tribes which resisted the US army.
The expansion of the United States to the west began immediately after the War of Independence, and it was strongly supported by the faith of Americans in a manifested destiny, according to which God has ordained the existence in America of their state on the territory from the Atlantic to the Pacific. The main territory of the United States formed in 1912, when they formed the continental part of the last State of Arizona. By this time, the territory of the states of Alaska and Hawaii also have belonged to the United States, but they were officially given in the status of states only in 1959.
So, what were the first Americans like? According to one of the theories the first men appeared in America 10-15 thousand years ago, getting onto the Alaska across the frozen Bering Strait. The tribes of the mainland of North America were separated and occasionally at odds with each other. Famous Icelandic Viking Leif Eriksson discovered America, calling it Vinland. The first visits to America by Europeans did not have any impact on the lives of indigenous people.
Back in the 1980s, R. Mc Nash, an archaeologist from the University of Boston, made a statement that the hypothesis of man that were crossing of the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago is untenable since they have discovered earlier traces of resettlement in South America. At that time, stone tools have been found in the cave of Piauí in Brazil, whose age is about 18, 000 years, as well as spearhead in Venezuela, which is stuck in the pelvic bone of a mastodon of about 16 000 years ago.
The findings discovered in recent times indeed confirmed the statement by R. Mack Nash. That Southern Chile is most interesting place, provoking the scientists to present hypotheses about change, because in Monte Verde was found many remains of Americans. All that was found here were stone and bone tools in large quantities, the remains of grains, nuts, various fruits, animal remains, huts, and all these objects have an age about 12 500 years.
The city is far enough away from the Bering Strait, which means that people could not have gotten there fast. Another archaeologist T. Dillihey generally believed that this settlement may have more ancient origins. After archaeological research he found charcoal and stone tools that have an age of about 30, 000 years.
You can find the archaeologists who, despite the fact that they may lose their reputation, say the discovery of the most ancient settlements, such as, for example, located in Clovis New Mexico, is considered the most ancient. They call numbers from 17 000 and 30 000 years. In addition, the archaeologist N. Gidon in the mid 80-ies brought proof of old settlements, which were presented in the form of drawings from the cave Pedra Furada in Brazil, dating back 17,000 years, and tools from stone age of 32 000 years.
The latest studies are of great interest as well. All forms of the skulls of the peoples of the world can be translated into mathematical language virtually,using computers with the developed software. This makes it possible to trace the ancestry of a particular group of people. This comparison is called craniometrical analysis.
Two anthropologist Doug and Richard Auzli Dzhantz worked with this analysis for 20 years and compared the skulls of modern Americans, but after analyzing the most ancient skulls they did not find that the similarities that they expected. For them, it was not clear and at the same time, surprisingly, that the ancient skull had huge differences from modern Native Americans’. The reconstructions of the first Americans that were made were closer to the Europeans or Indonesians. Some of the skulls could belong to the people of South Asia and Australia, and one skull was found in the dry mountain shelter in Western Nevada, having an age of about 9,400 years. Surprisingly, it came to the ancient Ain from Japan. On the basis of all the above mentioned data, many scientists ask reasonable questions about the origin of the ancient skulls: who are these people who have narrow elongated head and face, from where they are, and what happened to them, if they are not the ancestors of the Indians?
It is assumed that various nations have participated in the colonization of America, and it lasted a long time. Perhaps the battle for the land took a place, and only one ethnic group of people survived, who became the ancestors of the modern tribes. And people with elongated skull and a narrow face just lost the battle, and can assimilate other migrants, and may have died of starvation or epidemics. All of these are just scientific theories.
The hypothesis that the Europeans were among the first Americans is quite interesting. Such conclusion can be made from the evidence obtained, but it is not sufficiently accurate. The first proof is the European appearance of some Americans. The second is the DNA analysis carried out, which revealed features characteristic only for the European people. In addition, Dennis Stanford, who has studied production of stone tools from the early site Clovis, started looking for similarities in other countries. He was surprised to find that the similarities are not in Alaska, Canada and Siberia, but in Spain. The tools found resembled Solutrean culture of Western Europe which existed 24 000-16 500 years ago.
So, how could ancient people come to another continent? The new hypothesis based on the evidence of the movement of people through the ancient sea was presented in the 70-ies. Archaeological findings in Australia, Japan and Melanesia said that ancient people could still 25 000-40 000 years ago to use boats to get around the coastal areas. Archaeologist Stanford expresses his thoughts on this and suggests that at the time of flow, which are present in the ocean, could contribute to moving to other continents.
It is assumed that people could come to another continent by chance due to storms or strong currents. They could swim the ocean, as did Alain Bombard, using only fish and rainwater for nutrition. In addition, the ancient people of Europe could swim by boat along the ice bridge, which at that time connected the continents (England, Iceland, Greenland, North America). But no one knows whether such a journey is possible and how it might be successful if there were no stops to rest on the coasts?
The colonization of the New World could have happened a very long time, but how it was done the people, scientists do not know until now. Perhaps colonization scheme with respect to the Bering Strait 12,000 years ago caused a new wave of displacement and swept across the continent, just replaced the very first settlers of America, occupying their territory (Curian 216).
Vikings were the first people to discover the continent of America in the more modern era. Actually, this territory was not called America at that time. In the Viking Age (IX-XI century) Scandinavian Vikings travelled from Ireland to Russia, engaged in trade, hunting and plunder. Approximately 860 Vikings discovered the island and named it "Iceland" ("Icy country"), and founded a number of colonies. Making frequent voyage to the West, the Vikings, as it is now believed to be the first Europeans who visited America, in addition, in the Viking Age there was also the first genetic contact between Europeans and the people of North America.
Around 900 a Norwegian ship went under Gunnborn team. The ship went off the course, and the Vikings saw the island (Greenland). The discovery of Gunnborn inspired other Normans for a new expedition. The creator of the Greenland colonies Erik the Red was exiled from Norway in approximately 985. He used the exile to open new lands. After a difficult voyage he found the land discovered by Gunnborn. Its climate was very harsh, but Erik the Red named it Greenland ("Green Country"). In 986 Erik gathered a group of Vikings who were ready to settle on the island open to them. When the team arrived, it was summer, and was able to establish trade with Scandinavia. Soon, one of the settlers, Bёrni Horlfson due to storm stumbled upon an unknown land that was forested hills (perhaps north-east coast of America). Horlfson could not wait to arrive in Greenland, to tell the others about his discovery.
The son of Eric the Red, Leif Erikson, was the first Vikings to step onto America's shores. Around 1000 he traveled to the region,he called Helluland ("country of boulders", now - Baffin Island), Markland ("forest nation", the Labrador Peninsula), Vinland ("wine country", perhaps New England or Newfoundland). Erickson expedition wintered in Vinland and returned to Greenland.
Leif's brother Thorwald Erikson founded the settlement in America in 1002. Soon, however, they were attacked by the local Indians, which the Vikings called skrelings (apparently, Algonquian tribes). Thorvald fell in battle, and his companions returned home. Descendants of Eric the Red took two more attempts to colonize Vinland. The first involved his daughter Gudrid. Based in America she has succeeded in trade with skrelingami, but still left America. The second involved the daughter of Eric the Red Freydis, but she was not able to establish good relations with the Indians and the Vikings abandoned Vinland. Thus, a settlement in Vinland lasted several decades.
The hypothesis about the opening of America Normans was common for many years, but could not find evidence. Even the map of the north-east coast of America, which dates back to the Vikings, was, in some respects, a fake. But in 1960 in Newfoundland (Canada), at last, found the remains of the Viking settlement of L'Anse aux Meadows.
In 2010, the remains of a woman were tested in Iceland, and it was found that she was Indian woman, arrived in Iceland around the year 1000 and remained there to live.
After the Vikings Spaniards were the first Europeans in the New World. In October 1492 a Spanish expedition led by Admiral Christopher Columbus arrived on 3 ships: Santa Maria, Nina, and Pinta. It stopped by the island of San Salvador. In the late 15th - early 16th century Columbus has made several expeditions to the regions of the Western Hemisphere. Standing in the service of the English king Henry VII an Italian Giovanni Cabot reached the coast of Canada (1497-1498), a Portuguese Pedro Alvares Cabral discovered Brazil (1500-1501), a Spaniard Vasco Nunez de Balboa founded the first city on the American continent and left to the Pacific (1500-1513), in the service of the Spanish king, Ferdinand Magellan in 1519-1521 circumnavigated America from the south.
In 1507 an Arlington geographer Martin Waldseemüller proposed to call the New World America in honor of the Florentine explorer Amerigo Vespucci. At the same time the development of the continent began. In 1513 a Spanish conquistador called Juan Ponce de Leon has discovered Florida peninsula, where in 1565 there was the first permanent European colony was founded the city of St. Augustine. In the late 1530s, Hernando de Soto discovered the Mississippi and reached the Arkansas River Valley.
The first English settlement in America occurred in 1607 in Virginia and was named Jamestown. Trading Post founded by members of the crews of the three British ships under the command of Captain Newport served simultaneously outpost in the way of promotion of the Spanish inland. In just a few years, Jamestown became a prosperous village thanks laid there in 1609 tobacco plantations. Already in 1620 the village had a population of about 1000 people. European immigrants were very attracted to America's rich natural resources of the distant continent, and its remoteness from the European religious dogma and political affiliation. The outcome of the New World was financed primarily by private companies and individuals who received income from the transport of goods and people. In 1606 London and Plymouth companies were formed in England and finished the development of the northeastern coast of America. Many immigrants moved to the New World with their entire families and communities at their own expense. Despite the attractiveness of the new land, there is a constant shortage of human resources in the colonies.
At the end of August 1619 a Dutch ship that brought black Africans in America arrived in Virginia, twenty of which were immediately bought by the colonists as slaves. In December, 1620 on the Atlantic coast of Massachusetts arrived the ship "Mayflower" with 102 Puritans-Calvinists. This event is considered the beginning of the purposeful British colonization of the continent. They entered into an agreement, later called the Mayflower agreement. The most common form of presentation of the first American settlers on democracy, governance and civil liberties were reflected in it. Later similar agreements between the colonists of Connecticut, New Hampshire and Rhode Island were concluded. After 1630 in Plymouth Colony,the first colonies of New England, which later became a colony of Massachusetts Bay, there was at least a dozen small towns, where new arrivals settled English Puritans. The immigration wave years 1630-1643 brought to New England about 20 thousand people, is not less than 45 thousand settled in the colonies of the American South and the islands of Central America.
Over 75 years after the appearance in 1607 of the first English colony of Virginia came 12 more colonies: New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia.
The first colonists of North America were neither of uniform religious beliefs or equal social status. For example, shortly before 1775 at least a third of the population of Pennsylvania already were Germans (Lutherans), Mennonites, and representatives of other religious beliefs and sects. In Maryland English Catholics settled in South Carolina settled French Huguenots. The Swedes settled in Delaware, Polish, German and Italian artisans chose Virginia. Of those recruited farmers hired workers. The colonists were often vulnerable to Indian raids, one of whom served in 1676 the impetus for the uprising in Virginia known as Bacon's uprising. The uprising ended in vain after the unexpected death of Bacon malaria and execution 14 of the most active of his associates (Fiege, 2012).
Since the middle of XVII century Britain tried to establish complete control over economic operations of the American colonies, implementing a scheme under which all industrial goods (from the metal buttons to fishing boats) were imported colonies from the mother country in exchange for raw materials and agricultural products. In this scheme, the British entrepreneurs as well as the British government, were very uninterested in the development of industry in the colonies as well as in the trade of the colonies with anyone else other than the metropolis.
Meanwhile, the American industry (mainly in the northern colonies) has made significant progress. Especially American industrialists have succeeded in the construction of ships, which allowed quick to establish trade with the West Indies, and thus to find a market for domestic manufactures.
English Parliament considered these successes so threatening that in 1750 passed a law forbidding to build iron producing mills and workshops. Foreign trade of the colonies was also subjected to harassment. In 1763, laws were adopted on the navigation on which the goods were allowed to import and export from the American colonies only on British ships. In addition, all products intended for the colonies were loaded in the UK, regardless of where they were taken. Thus the metropolis tried to put all the foreign trade of the colonies under control. And that's not counting the many duties and tax collection on goods that the colonists imported their own home.
In July 1776, after the First Continental Congress was established it voted for the proclamation of the independence of the United States and adopted the Declaration of Independence, formed the basis of the constitution of the new federal state.
After the revolution, the other federal agencies were created as a result of constitutional reform of 1786-1791. In this way, the United States of America became an independent and sovereign country.
References
Fiege, M. (2012). The Republic of Nature: An Environmental History of the United States. Washington: University of Washington Press.
Kurian, G.T. (2001). Encyclopedia of American Studies.New York: SAGE Publications.
