English: culture and history
US: culture and history
US = NOT same as America
Chapters to know, not discussed in class
- Chapter 11: social services
- Chapter 12: education
LESSON 1: SETTLEMENT AND IMMIGRATION
Chapter: 3: The people – Settlement and immigration
Poem: ‘The New Colossus’ – Emma Lazarus
- America = country designed for immigrants
- Poem on statue of liberty
- To welcome all the poor and outsiders from other nations
- ‘naïve’ utopian description of a country welcomes all people that were rejected from other countries
Trump could not Disagree more
- Today Trump policies Biden: reverse effect on immigration = tension, stress, …
- America is not a country of infinite immigration
Early encounters between Europeans and Native Americans
- America = not an empty land when European colonists arrived
- Did not blend into a new race ‘The American’
= ideology
- US: accidental nation, stumbled into being
- Never such a thing as a ‘single national culture’
culturalism: people often seem to lament the loss of American identity
(“Make America Great Again” = nostalgia: America was once greater as it is now)
presuppose a ‘lost paradise’: Americans knew who they were + not as problematic as today
(movements, ethnic groups, smaller entities)
tone of cultural discussion today: based on false, mythical past: America used to be never been!!
- Anglo-Americas have tried to establish a white European culture attempted to turn America into a white
men’s paradise
- White ideology = tried to wipe out presence of native culture
- People arrived from two sides: England + Spain/Portugal
native people lived there for thousands of years: 10 million native Americas
Speaking several 100 languages
Often mutual incomprehensible
Huge culture: already there
- Confrontation with settlers (Spain and England Natives) = extremely problematic from day one
- Conflict: European Native Americans = tree different issues
a. HEALTH
- They made each other sick: caught diseases from each other
- Many deaths on both sides
- Immigrants: 50% died
- Native American: population 10 million 2 million
- Deadly from the beginning
b. LAND/TRADE
- Europeans and native Americans = different ideas of function of land and tray
- Europeans: land = commodity, instrument to be exploited, cultivate, try to make money from
working on a land => it becomes yours (to sell, inherit to children, …)
claiming more land + pushing Native Americans back into smaller pieces of land (= reservations)
- Native Americans: land = NOT a commodity
sacred, needs to be admired, respected rather than changed
not sell, trade, … but use for communal life + using nature to feed yourself, cure diseases but NEVER
claim it as property
c. RELIGION
- Europeans: mostly protestants: believed that nature (=wilderness) it is God’s assignment to cultivate it
into land
Work a land, make it lucrative = please god
believe in a personal god = who has no problem with people claiming land
dualism
- Native Americans: land = sacred, needs to be admired, respected, … not changed
land = great mother of nature + respect for mother nature
believe in a divine quality that humans and nature take part off: we are all part of a huge, divine
universe: no Lord, Jesus, God in one person but land was sacred and divine just like human beings
,English: culture and history
nature and human beings = continuum, merging into each other, …
The founders
- Two different voyages/approaches to this new world
St. Augustin, Florida (1565) = eldest settlement
Jamestown, Virginia (1607) = by the English
- From the very beginning: shortage of labor = inspired/forced the colonists to import African laborers
(=start of slavery)
indentured servants: African people who came to America, willing to serve for a period of 5-7 years in
order to be free citizens after in the New World
1619: First African laborers as indentured servants
- Two types of colonists:
separatists
Arrived on Mayflower
Protestant, separatist pilgrims
Belief = people had failed + God gives Christians one more chance to establish a truly Christian
ideal world on earth
Europe had failed to live up to God’s demand
Separatists: turn their back on Europe for good determined to set up an ideal, Christian culture
in the New World
Never to return
This escape by the separatist pilgrims= failed completely
diseases
‘first immigration move’ = mythical
FAIL
America was NOT founded by pilgrims on the Mayflower
1620: Pilgrims, separatists on Mayflower arrive
puritans
Variant of same stem
Arrived ten years later
Ship = Arbella
Reformers
Did not want to turn their backs/separate from Europe
Wanted to purify, set up an example for the Old World
To do better
Maybe not return physically to Europe but export their lifestyles, ideas, … to Europe
Still today: Why do Americans think they have to mingle in e.g. Middle East? Violent moves? Police
the entire world?
puritan origin: ‘we have to set up a religious utopia to inspire the entire world’
Survival of mankind = high
White America not founded by pilgrims on Mayflower (myth) but by puritans on Arbella
1630: Pilgrims, puritans on Arbella arrive
Four waves of immigration
- First wave: colonial immigrants 1680 – 1776
- Second wave: old immigrants 1820 – 1890
- Third wave: new immigrants 1890 – 1930
- Fourth wave: Latino and Asian 1965 – present
Renewed immigration debate and migration restriction
- 1890-1914: 15,5 million new immigrants
- 1875: federal government began listing ‘banned groups’
= contract laborers, convicts, prostitutes, lunatics, idiots, paupers, polygamists, political radicals, the
Chinese, the Japanese, illiterates
- 1892: Ellis Island: screening depot for immigrants
- 1908: The Melting Pot by Israel Zangwill
play
popularized the idea, introduced metaphor that: eventually in the US would fuse many races and
cultures (through intermarriage) and become new people, new race = Americans
,English: culture and history
to this day: notion of melting pot survived: multiculturalism ‘I am German-American, Afro-American,
…: my ancestors are German, African, … but I am American
= hybrid, multi-layered cultural identity
= hyphenated America
Still consider, treat them as American
‘Make America great again’ = slogan looks backward to some kind of imaginary past were all Americans
were white, Anglo-Saxons
melting pot = nostalgic idea of people who were never willing/able to embrace complexity of America
= America + something else (Afro-American)
being American = ideally: not dependent on who your parents/language/religion were (Not who you used
to be) Who you decide to be = open idea
- 1921: Emergency Quota Act: each European nation = certain number of immigrant visas per year
already 100 Belgians in US? = every new year another 3 Belgians allowed in the country
very serious constriction
nationality quotas 3%
- 1924: Asian Excusion Act: ended all immigrations from Asian nation
+ National Origins Quota Act: reduced European nationality quotas to 2%
- 1965: immigration Act
- 1986: immigration Reform and Control Act
- 1990: Immigration Act
2018:
increase of immigrants in the US dropped to 70% compared to 2017
John Winthrop
- Puritan: leader of Arbella ship
- Religious people: on voyage from known to the unknown
- John W. held a speech: spoke to people on board of Arbella
- Suddenly extraordinary passage: he prepares these religious people for a class society
= what they left behind + point of voyage to create egalitarian paradisa?
religious originis of America = offer a justification for raw capitalism
God says: ‘some will be rich, some will be poor’
= justification of everything they left behind: not sailing into ‘socialism’ but sailing into pretty much
the same (= model of Christian charity)
Gordon Wood: What 18th century America must have felt like
Face to face society
culture/society of very small entities, villages, communities where people knew each other personally
biggest city back than = Philadelphia
America = rural, agrarian, backwaters of Europe
UK: less and less agriculture and more manufactures
everybody knew each other
no distinction: private – public
= huge social control: people would turn each other in
reputation is VERY important
(people started gossiping, could destroy reputation)
stories told not true? Brought to court => clear your name, damage of symbolic capital
Friendship
web of social relations that linked people to one another
not just ‘friends’ in meaning today
friends = people in your community
once a reputation was established (he uses cocaine, she is possessed by the devil,…) not much to do
about it or go to court
Husbandry
to husband = verb
to deal with scarce means in a frugal manner
smart distributing, deal, … scarce grounds
bad husbandry? = ‘wanbeheerr’
deal with economic resources: bread, liquid, milk, … and use them in a wise manner
husband: links family sphere to market sphere
Father as a king of the family
Husbandry = more than a family man
, English: culture and history
difficult to have goods circulate beyond a certain sphere: primitive no bank, stock exchange, difficult
to trade beyond village
lack of paper money
Book accounts:
listings that register everything people owed to one another
complicated register
‘he owns me X, I own her Y, ...’
technical term for all the economical interdependency that linked one another
whole network
source of conflict and social cohesion
= conflict: remind your neighbour he has to give you X back, he can’t because waiting to be paid
by Y, …= led to conflict
social cohesion: you could not just run away stay in same circle
Proprietary wealth
wealthy people in town accumulated wealth: make more money than already had
land = plenty = cheap
wealth produced by rents, interests …
= main source of income of the rich
network of interdependencies
Patronage
society run by patrons
the rich people would also be the powerful
economic independence: only an economic independent can be a fair judge can’t be blackmailed
All together: small scale, agricultural, tide knit communities: no sign that seems to anticipate the formation
of a new nationstate
The war of independence
- All about money
- Story begins in 1763: end of Seven Years War: England France
English won the war + lot of new territory from France: Canada + Eastern Mississipi territory
so much land so far away how to protect it?
financial ‘problem’ even though they had won the war
- George Grenville: chancellor in 1763
discovered: American custom service (colonies) were costing more to operate than it was bringing in
introduced acts (Sugar Act – 1764 and Stamp Act – 1765)
= to generate money in the colonies to fund the English bank
levy taxes on importation of sugar (Sugar Act)
all official documents have a particular stamp in order to be officially legal = would generate
money (Stamp Act)
- Opposition to these taxes
new ‘tax’: Townshend Act: money that taxes raise can be invested in colonies (money goes not even
back to England)
but no
- People started resenting from beginning: English people that lived in colonies
colonists were not represented in parliament: no right to levitate taxes!
how can we be taxed by a parliament in which we have no representatives?
‘No taxation without Representation’
- English: sent Customs Commisioners = were hated by the locals
- To prevent social protest: England sent 2 regiments of British Army: to teach colonists a lesson
to make sure they would obey mother country
- Americans: demotivated the regiments = by behaving like ideal school children, lived by the rule, …
regiments felt like they had no use
= pacifist provocation
- March 1770: English soldiers were unguarded in Custom House, Boston
some locals started provoking the soldiers
from out of nothing: violent confrontation between provocative colonists military representatives
