Chapter 1: OVERVIEW

Reading 1: An expansive and diverse nation

1.      General info

-          Federal republic

-          Area: 9,629,047 sq km à 3rd

-          Population: à 3rd

-          50 states:

+ 48 contiguous states + 2 non-contiguous states: Hawaii & Alaska

+ outlying areas: the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the islands of American Samoa & Guam.

-          Largest state: Alaska à Texas àCalifornia

-          Most populous state: California à Texas à NewYork

-          Smallest state: Rhode Island

-          Less populous state: Wyoming (plateau & rugged mountains)

-          State à counties (parishes) à cities à towns à small villages

-          Metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois, New York city

2.      Geographic diversity

-          4 most productive agricultural climates of the world (1/3 of the country; mix of rain, sun, long growing season)à make US 1 of the world’s leading agricultural countries.

-          Major river systems: Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Colorado, Rio Grande

èFlow south (drinking water, crop irritation, industrial production) if flow north, ice & frozen soil would block the melt water, causing floods, making land unusable for agriculture.

-          Rich natural resources: a wide array of mineral resources; the shallow water along the coastline is rich breeding ground for marine life (commercial + sport fishing); the comprehensive networks of rivers (transportation & hydroelectricity)

3.      Cultural diversity: 1 of the most diverse countries in the world (culture & environment)

-          Native American pp (spoke > 300 diff lang)

-          The 1st European & Africans arrived

-          Huge chunks of territory & millions of immigrants (mainly fr Europe)

-          2nd immigration: Hispanics fr Mexico to northward

-          Slaves brought fr Africa

àthey saw it as a land of a plenty

4.      Unity & Diversity

èDebates: pros & cons of bilingual edu, impacts of multiculturalism, merits of affirmative action policies.

·         Bilingual education:

-          1960s: demands of bilingual edu by organizations representing Spanish-speaking Americans (1.want the use of Spanish in schools & 2.teaching of Mexican American culture).

-          1968: Congress passed the Bilingual Education Act; 1975: Rights Act (vote in their own lang)

-          1980: oppositions (1. Make E the official lang; 2. Restrict bilingual school programs)

-          For: forcing stns to give up their native langs weakened their distinctive cultures

-          Against: bilingual edu slowed down the pace at which no-E-speaking stns entered the mainstream of society

-          1998: California passed Proposition 227 (a program of nearly all E instruction)

·         Multiculturalism (M): the acceptance of immigrant & minority groups (gr) as distinct communities, distinguishable fr the majority population à Debates

-          For: + minority grs should enjoy equal rights in US without giving up their own ethnic cultures

        + reject the idea of melting pot & assimilation; national identity must be based on a common heritages & values

-          Against: + M creates conflict among grs

   + M: a token gesture designed to hide continuing domination of A culture by majority gr

   + Recognition of cultural differences & gr identities doesn’t help address social & economic disadvantages.

·         The policy of affirmative action: the most widespread controversy

-          1961: president Kenedy 1st used to require grs (doing business with Gov.) to take affirmative action to remedy discrimination against African Americans.

-          Nixon: included women & minorities

èFor: AA give opportunities to mems of groups that suffered past discrimination

èAgainst: AA reverse discrimination à object to the use of quotas for mems of minority groups

-          Americans have to balance individual rights against group rights to consider problems that involve national identity versus group identity.

Reading 2: Brief history of the US

1.      The colonial era:

-          1st successful E colony in 1607 at Jamestown, Virginia

-          E Puritans came to American to escape religious persecution for their opposition to the Church of England, power of Queen.

-          2nd British establishment in  1620 at Plumouth Colony (Massachusetts)

-          1636: E clergyman Roger Williams founded the colony of Rhode Island.

-          1733: E settlers had founded 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast

-          1763: the Seven Years’ war between England & France left England in control of Canada

-          19/4/1775: American Revolution War broke out à 4/7/1776: Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of Independence.

Explanation

+ City upon a hill: an ideal community that the Puritans hopes to build in New England.

+ Intolerant moralism: kind of religion, system of strict moralism, used to teach pp

+ Boston tea party: an event which a group of patriots responded to tea taxation. They disguised as Indians & boarded British merchant ships & dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston harbor.

+ Tea act (10/5/1773): an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain

+ Treaties of alliance: 1777, the deal between France & Americans in which France supported Americans to defeat British.

2.      The new nation

-          Gov. --> 3 branches: legislative (Congress), executive (president & federal agencies), judicial (federal courts) à reason: avoid excessive central power.

-          George Washington: favor a strong president & central government  

-          Thomas Jeffeson: prefer to allot more power to states.

3.      Slavery and Civil war

-          1828: Andrew Jackson became the 7th US president à1st outsider

+ a man fr the frontier state of Tennessee

+ born in a poor family

+ outside the cultural traditions of the Atlantic seaboard.

à End of a political era dominated by the planter aristocracy and the commercial aristocracy

-          1820: North & South debated the question of whether slavery would be legal in western territories

-          1860: Abraham Lincoln, a foe of slavery was elected 16th US president

-          1860: 11 states left the Union & declared to be independent nation

-          The Civil War began in 1861 & ended in 1865

-          The Civil War put an end to slavery and decided that the country was not a collection of semi-independent states but an indivisible whole. 

Explanation:

+ the Missouri Compromise: a compromise in which slavery was permitted in the new state of Missouri & the Arkansas Territory but bared everywhere west & north of Missouri.

+ The Confederate: the army of the Confederate states of America which fought against the US federal Gov. (the Union)

+ The Union  Army: the army of the US federal Gov.

4.      The late 19th century:

-          Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865; Andrew Johnson was the 17th president of the United States in 1865

-          Development of US industry in the late 19th cent.: the United States became a leading industrial power, and shrewd businessmen made great fortunes 

-          Unrestrained economic growth brought dangers

+ Heavy immigration, many of the workers in the new industries were foreign-born.

+ Food prices were falling, and farmers had to bear the costs of high shipping rates, expensive mortgages, high taxes, and tariffs on consumer goods. 

-          In 1867, the USA purchased Alaska from Russia.

-          In 1898, the war between the US and Spain began à When the war was over, the US had gained a number of possessions from Spain: Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam.

+ 1902 American troops left Cuba

+ Philippines obtained limited self-government in 1907 and complete independence in 1946.

+ Puerto Rico became a self-governing commonwealth within the United States.

+ Hawaii became a state in 1959 (as did Alaska).

Explanation:

+ Laissez faire: let the Gov. interfere with commerce as little as possible

+ Progressive Movement (1900) has purpose to reform society &individuals through gov. action.

5.      War & peace

-          1914: World War I in Europe; 28th president Woodrow Wilson urged a policy of strict American neutrality.

-          1917: Congress declared war on Germany à 11/1818, Germany asked for peace

-          In 1919, because of the failure of the Treaty of Versailles, Americans were becoming hostile to foreigners in their midst.

-          1919: a series of terrorist bombings produced the “Red Scare”

-          The 1920s:

+ The age of Prohibition: in 1920 a constitutional amendment outlawed the sale of alcoholic beverages.

+ The Roaring Twenties: the age of jazz and spectacular silent movies and such fads as flagpole-sitting and goldfish-swallowing.

+ For big business, the 1920s were golden years with booming markets for radios, home appliances, synthetic textiles, and plastics. 

Explanation:

+ Ku Klux Klan (KKK): several past & present secret militant organizations in US whose purpose is to protect the rights & further of interests of White Americans.

+ The Roaring Twenties: a phrase to describe the A society in the 1920s, that emphasizes the period of social, artist.

+ Henry Ford: the most admired men of the decade bez he is the person who had introduced the assembly line into automobile factories. He could pay high wages & still earn enormous profits by mass-producing the Model-T; a car that millions of buyers could afford.

6.      Great depression

-          By 1932 thousands of American banks and over 100,000 businesses had failed.

-          Industrial production was cut in half, wages had decreased 60 percent.

-          One out of every four workers was unemployed.

-          Franklin D. Roosevelt the 32nd president of the United States (1933-1945) had rushed through Congress a great number of laws to help the economy recover.

-          Although Roosevelt's New Deal programs did not end the Depression, the economy improved.

Explanation:

-          Reason for depression: with low profits soaring & interest rates, plenty of money was available for investment; much of money went into stock market. Prices were pushed up, investors bought stocks on margin, borrowing up to 90% of the purchase price. Then stock market crashed, triggered out a worldwide depression.

-          The new deal of Roosevelt: gave to a complex package of economic programs to recover the US economy

7.      World war II & Cold War

·         WWI

-          1939: WWI stared in Europe, US remained neutral

-          1941: the Bombing Pearl Harbor naval in Hawaii brought the US to the war.

-          11/1942: British and American forces landed in North Africa, proceeded to Sicily and the Italian mainland in 1943, and liberated Rome (4/7/1944).

-          6/6/1944: D-Day, allied forces landed in Normandy. 

-          5/5/1945: the Germans finally surrendered.

-          8/1945, the USA used atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

·         Cold war: between US & its wartime ally the Soviet Union.

-          4/1949: US had allied with Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). 

-          1950: Korean War with US involvement à1953: ended & the final settlement left Korea divided.

-          1945 - 1970 the United States enjoyed a long period of economic growth

-          1960 John F. Kennedy was elected president à 1963: Kennedy was assassinated.

-          Lyndon B. Johnson managed to push through Congress a number of new laws establishing social programs including preschool education for poor children, vocational training for dropouts from school, and community service for slum youths. 

-          Vietnam war:

+ By 1968, 500,000 American troops were fighting in Vietnam.

+ Demonstrations protesting American involvement broke out on college campuses.

+ Richard Nixon was elected president in 1968.

+ He pursued a policy of Vietnamization, gradually replacing American soldiers with Vietnamese.

è2 purposes: re-established U.S. relations with the People's Republic of China and negotiate the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with the Soviet Union.

+ 1972: he easily won re-election.

-          The Watergate:

+ During that presidential campaign, 5 men had been arrested for breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington.

+ Tape recordings made by the president himself revealed that he had been involved in that scandal.

+ 9/8, Richard Nixon became the only U.S. president to resign from office. 

Explanation:

+ NATO: the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a military alliance established by the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty on 4/4/1949.

+ Berlin wall: the physical barrier divided Eastern & Western Germany for > ¼ cent.

+ The Watergate scandal

8.      Decade of changes

-          In late 1991, the Cold War came to an end.

-          After WW II, Democrats held majorities in the Congress in both the House of Representatives and the Senate.

-          In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan was elected president.

-          In 1988, Republican George Bush became the next US president.

-          When Iraq invaded oil-rich Kuwait in 1990, Bush put together a multinational coalition that liberated Kuwait early in 1991.

-          Bill Clinton, a Democrat, is the 42th president.

-          The economy was strong in the mid-1990s.

9.      Beginning of 21st century