AP American History

1
UNIT 1
AP American History America A Narrative History
8th Ed
2
Historical Ironies

• Luck and accident often shape human affairs.
• Christopher Columbus accidently discovered the
  New
• World in his effort to find a passage to Asia.
• He named the indigenous people Indians because
  he
• believed he had found the East Indies.

3
Naming a New People

• Why do you call us Indians? a Massachusetts
  native complained to Puritan missionary John
  Eliot in 1646.
• Christopher Columbus, who mistook the Taino
  people of the Caribbean for the people of the
  East Indies, called then Indios.
• Within a short time this Spanish word had passed
  into English as Indians, and was commonly used
  to refer to all the native peoples of the
  Americas.

4
Being Politically Correct

• Today anthropologists often use the term
  Amerindians, and many people prefer Native
  Americans.
• But in the United States most of the descendents
  of the original inhabitants of North American
  refer to themselves as Indian people.

5
The First Peoples

• were nomadic hunters and gathers.
• migrated from northeastern Asia during the last
  Ice Age,
• nearly 20,000 years ago.
• were diverse and often highly sophisticated
  societies
• (farmerstradersconquerors).

6
Negative Impact of Exploration

• Indians were
• - exploited.
• - infected.
• - enslaved.
• - displaced.
• - exterminated.

7
Further Impact of Exploration

• However, Indians were not passive victims. They
  fully
• participated in the creation of the new
  society as
• - enemies.
• - allies.
• - neighbors.
• - advisors.
• - converts.
• - spouses .

8
Europeans

• risked their lives to explore and settle the New
  World.
• They were also diverse
• - young and old
• - men and women
• - came from Spain, Portugal, France, the
  British Isles,
• the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Italy, and
  the various
• German states

9
Motivations

• adventurers and fortune seekers
• fervent Christians
• convicts, debtors, indentured servants, or
  political and
• religious exile
• people seeking land, higher wages, and greater
• economic opportunity

10
Lack of Workers

• The rapidly expanding colonial economies could
  not
• entice enough workers, so the Europeans began
  forcing
• Indians to work for them.
• Captive Indians often escaped or were so
  rebellious that
• their use as slaves was banned in several
  colonies.

11
Primary Excerpt

• The Massachusetts legislature outlawed forced
  labor
• because Indians were of such a malicious,
  surly and
• revengeful spirit rude and insolent in their
  behavior,
• and very ungovernable.

12
African Slave Trade

• In 1619 white traders began transporting
  captured
• Africans to the English colonies.
• Few Europeans saw the contradiction between the
  New
• Worlds promise of individual freedom and the
• expanding institution of race-based slavery.
• Nor did they predict the problems associated
  with
• introducing into the new society people they
  considered
• alien and unassimilable.

13
New Culture

• The intermingling of peoples, cultures, and
  ecosystems
• from the continents of Africa, Europe, and
  North
• America gave colonial American society its
  distinctive
• vitality and variety.

14
Human-Environmental Interaction

• The diversity of the environment and the climate
  
• spawned quite different economies and patterns
  of
• living in the various regions of North
  America.
• As the original settlements grew into prosperous
  and
• populous colonies, the transplanted Europeans
  had to
• fashion social institutions and political
  systems to
• manage growth and control tensions.

15
European Wars

• Imperial rivalries among the Spanish, French,
  English,
• and Dutch triggered costly wars.
• The monarchs of Europe struggled to manage often
  
• unruly colonies, which, they discovered,
  played crucial
• roles in their European wars.

16
Colonial Independence

• Many of the colonist had come with a feisty
• independence, which led them to resent
  government
• interference in their affairs.
• A British official in North Carolina reported
  that the
• residents of the Piedmont region were without
  any
• Law or Order. Impudence is so very high, as
  to be past
• bearing.

17
Road of Revolution

• As long as the reins of imperial control were
  loosely
• held, the two parties maintained an uneasy
  partnership.
• But as the British authorities tightened their
  control
• during the mid-18th century, they met
  resistance, which
• became revolt and culminated in revolution.