A Few Lessons from American History: Reader for Students of English. Уроки американской истории. На английском языке

M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Law School
Department of Foreign Languages



A FEW LESSONS FROM AMERICAN HISTORY

Reader for Students of English



СТАТУТ
MOCHBft 2014

УДК 42
ББК 81.2 Англ.
     A 20

COMPILED BY Svetlana Aleshko-Ozhevskaya

EDITED BY Tatiana Tarasova


A 20 A Few Lessons from American History: Reader for Students of English / Ed. by T. Tarasova. — Moscow: STATUT, 2014. - 80 p. [Уроки американской истории. -М.: Статут, 2014. — На английском языке]

        ISBN 978-5-8354-1011-8 (softback)

         The READER ‘A Few Lessons from American History’ highlights the most important periods in the US history with the emphasis on particular political and social events, legal reforms, court rulings, political leaders, prominent justices, federal and state laws, etc. The READER helps to acquire background knowledge and cross-cultural competence for better understanding of spoken and written English for academic purposes, further studies in law, history, social and political sciences.

         Key Words: Colonial America, Native Americans, New England, Navigation Acts, Colonial Wars, Boston Massacre, the First Continental Congress, the Second Continental Congress Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union, Constitutional Convention, Federalists, Antifederalists, George Washington, Bill of Rights, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams, Marbury v. Madison, Abolitionism, Dred Scott v. Sandford, Civil War, Federal Reserve Act, Constitutional Amendments.
УДК 42
ББК 81.2 Англ.
ISBN 978-5-8354-1011-8
© S. Aleshko-Ozhevskaya, 2014
        © Издательство «Статут» (Statut Publishing House), 2014

                CONTENTS





Foreword ............................................... 4
Lesson 1. Exploration of America (1492—1600).............5
Lesson 2. Colonial America (1630—1763)..................11
Lesson 3. Revolutionary America (1763—1783).............19
Lesson 4. The Birth of a New Nation (1776—1789)........ 25
Lesson 5. The Young Republic (1789—1816)............... 30
Lesson 6. Sectional Conflict (1816—1860)............... 36
Lesson 7. Civil War and Reconstruction (1860—1877)..... 43
Lesson 8. Spanish-American War and the Progressive Era (1898-1930).................................... 49
Lesson 9. The Great Depression, the New Deal and the War (1929-1945)....................................... 55
Lesson 10. Post-war America and the Civil Rights Movement (1946-1964) .......................................61
Lesson 11. The Great Society, Nixon and Watergate (1964-1974)............................................ 66
Glossary ...............................................71
Bibliography .......................................... 79

                FOREWORD





   The READER ‘A Few Lessons from American History’ has been compiled as a part of the course of English at the Department of Foreign Languages of M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University Law School.
   The READER provides a deeper insight into US history from the first attempts of colonization till the late 1970s.
   The READER is divided into 11 lessons — particular historical periods with the emphasis on the origin and development of American law and government, the most important political, social, economic, cultural and legal events, reforms, personalities.
   The READER will help students of English to enhance the cross-cultural competence, to acquire the background knowledge of American history for better understanding of modern political, social, economic, cultural and legal developments in the Englishspeaking world.

                LESSON 1


                Exploration of America (1492—1600)




   The lands and human societies that European explorers called a New World were in fact very old. About 10,000 years ago ancestors of the Native Americans filled nearly all of the habitable parts of North and South America. They lived in isolation from the history - and particularly from the diseases - of what became known as the Old World. Native Americans were diverse peoples. They spoke between 300 and 350 distinct languages, and their societies and ways of living varied tremendously. The Aztecs of Mexico and the Incas of Peru built great empires. In what is now the United States, the Mississippians built cities surrounded by farmland between present-day St. Louis, Missouri, (where their city of Cahokia was larger than medieval London) and Natchez, Mississippi. The Mississippians’ ‘Great Sun’ king ruled authoritatively and was carried from place to place by servants, preceded by flute-players. The Pueblo peoples of the Southwest lived in large towns, irrigated their dry land with river water, and traded with peoples as far away as Mexico and California.
   The peoples were varied, but they lived in similar ways. All of them grew much of their food. Women farmed and gathered food in the woods. Men hunted, fished, and made war. None of these peoples kept domestic animals. All lived in family groups, but owed their principal loyalties to a wider network of kin and to their clans. Some - the Iroquois in upstate New York and the Powhatan confederacy in Virginia - formed alliances called confederacies for the purposes of keeping peace among neighbours and making war on outsiders. Even within these confederacies, however, everyday political organization seldom extended beyond


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LESSON 1

villages, and village chiefs ruled their independent-minded people by consent.
   The first attempt by Europeans to colonize the New World occurred around AD 1000, when the Vikings sailed from the British Isles to Greenland, established a colony, and then moved on to Labrador, the Baffin Islands, and finally Newfoundland. There they established a colony named Vineland (meaning fertile region) and from that base sailed along the coast of North America, observing the flora, fauna, and native peoples. Inexplicably, after a few years Vineland was abandoned.
   Between 1000 and 1650 a series of interconnected developments occurred in Europe that provided the impetus for the exploration and subsequent colonization of America. These developments included the Protestant Reformation and the subsequent Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Renaissance, the unification of small states into larger ones with centralized political power, the emergence of new technology in navigation and shipbuilding, and the establishment of overland trade with the East and the accompanying transformation of the medieval economy. Portugal, Spain, France, and England were transformed from small territories into nation-states with centralized authority in the hands of monarchs who were able to direct and finance overseas exploration.
   But the most powerful inducement to exploration was trade. The newly unified states of the Atlantic - France, Spain, England, and Portugal - and their ambitious monarchs were envious of the merchants and princes who dominated the land routes to the East. Moreover, in the latter half of the 15th century, war between European states and the Ottoman Empire greatly hampered Europe’s trade with the Orient. The desire to supplant the trade moguls, especially the Italians, and fear of the Ottoman Empire forced the Atlantic nations to search for a new route to the East.
   Christopher Columbus sailed for the monarchs of Spain in 1492. He used the familiar prevailing winds to the Canary Islands, off the northwest coast of Africa, and then sailed on. In about two months he landed in the Caribbean on an island in 6

Exploration of America (1492—1600)

the Bahamas, thinking he had reached the East Indies. Columbus made three more voyages. He died in 1506, still believing that he had discovered a water route to Asia. In 1499 an Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci sailed to the northern coast of South America and pronounced the land a new continent.
   The first European recorded voyage to the northern coast of America was made by John Cabot, an Italian navigator in the service of England, who sailed from England to Newfoundland in 1497. Giovanni da Verrazzano, in 1524, and Jacques Cartier, in 1534, explored nearly the whole Atlantic coast of the present United States for France. By that time, Europeans had scouted the American coast from Newfoundland to Brazil. While they continued to look for shortcuts to Asia, Europeans began to think of America for its own sake. Spain again led the way: Hernan Cortes invaded Mexico in 1519, and Francisco Pizarro did the same in Peru in 1532. A few years later (1539-1542) Francisco Vasquez de Coronado discovered the Grand Canyon and journeyed through much of the Southwest looking for gold and the legendary Seven Cities of Cibola. About the same time Hernando de Soto explored southeastern North America from Florida to the Mississippi River. By 1650 Spain’s empire was complete and fleets of ships were carrying the plunder back to Spain.
   By the 1530s French explorers had scouted the coast of America from Newfoundland to the Carolinas. Samuel de Champlain built the foundations of what would become French Canada (New France). From 1604 to 1606 he established a settlement at Acadia in Nova Scotia, and in 1608 he travelled up the St. Lawrence River, made contact with the Huron and Algonquin peoples, and established a French settlement at Quebec.
   Unlike Spain’s empire, ‘New France’ produced no caches of gold and silver. Instead, the French traded with inland tribes for furs and fished off the coast of Newfoundland. New France was sparsely populated by missionaries and dotted with military forts and trading posts. Although the French sought to colonize the

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area, the growth of settlements was stifled by inconsistent policies. Initially, France encouraged colonization by granting charters to fur-trading companies. Then control of the empire was put in the hands of the government-sponsored Company of New France. The company, however, was not successful, and in 1663 the king took direct control of New France. Although more prosperous under this administration, the French empire failed to match the wealth of New Spain or the growth of neighboring British colonies.
   Another contender for influence in North America was the Dutch, inhabitants of the leading commercial nation in the early 17th century. Sailing for the Dutch in 1609, Henry Hudson explored the river that now has his name. The Dutch established a string of agricultural settlements between New Amsterdam (New York City) and Fort Orange (Albany, New York) after 1614. They became the chief European traders with the Iroquois, supplying them with firearms, blankets, metal tools, and other European trade goods in exchange for furs. The Iroquois used those goods to nearly destroy the Huron and to push the Algonquins into Illinois and Michigan. As a result, the Iroquois gained control of the Native American side of the fur trade.
   The Dutch settlements, known as New Netherland, grew slowly at first and became more urban as trade with the indigenous peoples outdistanced agriculture as a source of income. The colony was prosperous and tolerated different religions. As a result, it attracted a steady and diverse stream of European immigrants. In the 1640s the 450 inhabitants of New Amsterdam spoke 18 different languages. The colony had grown to a European population of 6,000 (double that of New France) on the eve of its takeover by England in 1664.
   Until Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the English showed little interest in exploration, being preoccupied with their European trade and establishing control over the British Isles. By the mid-16th century, however, England had recognized the advantages of trade with the East, and in 1560 English merchants enlisted Martin Frobisher to

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