Of both the reading assignments over the summer I enjoyed Colonial America by Alan Taylor, because of the writing structure, the footnotes/sources and the visual aids. This text is no more than what it is named for, the colonization of America. The book is a view of the events that led to colonization, and the effects said colonization had on the, now american, landscape. It is a clean a simple overview of the causes and effects of the colonization of America. The first thing that the author did that made this text standout was the structure he wrote it in. Most historical texts try to sound smart and use big words, or just give an overload of facts, but while this book does have many facts, making it a bit dry, they are spaced well enough …show more content…
(page 129 - 145) What makes that a good thing is, for example, you wanted to check the author’s facts, or read more in depth on a certain subject in the text just refer to the footnotes in the back of the text. This also gives the text a feeling of validity to it, or in other words looking at the footnotes makes you know the author actually did quite a bit of research prior to writing the book. This book is good for anyone who is interested in the topic of the colonization of America, because, say, for example, you were interested in the topic of New Spain you could read chapter 2, (pages 22 - 35) then refer to the chapter 2 footnotes, (pages 131 - 132) for more texts or readings that deal with the topic of New Spain. And there’s much more that goes beyond that. The author has a very thorough documentation in the back of the book he has almost twenty pages of sources cited in the back of the book. The author draws from many different sources so there is bound to be many diverse types of writing, some the reader may or may not like. But overall the author has a good number of sources all of which were reasonable to have in the book, and they all add extra information for those who are …show more content…
When author used aids he did not use them to pad out space, but to convey more information on his topic he was discussing. The map (page 2-3) is used to expose us to the difference of maps from Europe in the 1500’s to the maps of natives in the 1500’s. The natives had maps on a much smaller scale and those maps were not one-hundred percent correct geographically, whereas the maps from Europe were much grander, and geographically correct. The usage of visual aids helps you to grasp how Europeans and natives alike didn’t know how expansive their ‘New World’ was. The authors use of portraits can show you how the colonizers saw the natives as ‘savages’ and to them proper clothes were a sign of civilized people, the portrait of Pocahontas (page 57) shows her in much different clothing than that of what she would wear if she still was with her tribe. These portraits like the one of Theyanoguin (page 110) canbe used as an example of how different the natives looked from the colonizers and how strange they were. It can also show the cultural hybridity of the the native chief after he had made a visit to England to negotiate with Queen Anne. The author also includes one political cartoon depicting one of the rich family in Charleston during the 1800’s (page 88), this family most likely owned slaves, so to me this cartoon could be a attack on how most of the richest families in Charleston made
The author would jump from subject to subject in a confusing manner. For instance in chapter four, she was discussing jobs in one paragraph and in the next paragraph she started talking about crime pamphlets. She oftentimes repeated information from chapter to chapter which made one wonder if she was just trying to fill up space or did she think she need to remind us about the event? Also, the book spanned over three centuries (17th-19th), yet she only spent two chapters on the first one hundred and seventy-three years and concentrated seven chapters on the last sixty-four. Also, there were several typographical errors that I found while reading the book such as: on page 140, the word blacks was spelled “blaks;” on page 202, the word among was spelled “amog;” on page 261, the word poverty was spelled “proverty;” and on page 287, the word association was spelled
These books were similar to each other, however, he took an entirely different path when writing Everyday Life in Early America. This book is easily accessible to any education level, perhaps even an elementary school teacher could read and paraphrase the sections to their students. For anyone interested in what went on in the lives of people in America during the seventeenth century, this would be a good read. From high school to historical scholars, this book is an “introductory” level type of text. This book can stand alone, but it would also make for a very good text book if the
His emphasis in his writing has been antebellum reform movements, what makes this book unique from other historical novels is it attempts to only
This is very vital as it helps one to understand their real intention prior to going to the war and if it had any impact on their perception of things. The nature of the text also makes it easy for the target audience to grasp what they are being told. To begin with most of the students do not really like very long and detailed books, for this reason the author that is Dew makes the text to be just eight pages this makes it very easy for majority of the target audience to read it clearly as well as it evokes their real intention to clearly interact with the content this is explained the fewer number of pages. The style of writing is another key thing that makes it very easy for anyone to understand the text used in this particular case. It is very easy and jargon free. This makes it very easy for both scholars and members of the general public to interact with it without challenges. The representative documents are well chosen in that they can start off conversations among people. There are various themes that are well outline in this book, some of these themes include the one on secession and its impact, another one is the theme of slavery and slave trade and finally the theme of war is also much highlighted. Depending on one’s level technicality as well as understanding, the three themes may be able to be viewed in various aspects. The existence of appendix and a minimum of notes make it appealing to the students more so for the classroom
Gordon S. Wood describes America in 1760 as “only a collection of disparate colonies huddled along a narrow strip of the Atlantic coast” (6). This describes just the beginning of a big and powerful country. The American Revolution transformed America into a modern nation with radical changes in women and slaves, not having the aristocracy, and changing the political system towards democracy, so Gordon S. Wood believed colonial America was pre-modern. A pre-modern country is a country right before it modernizes. It leads to a modern country with specific views towards ideas as a result of past history.
Colonists: About 250,000 Spanish emigrants populated the newly established cities; they saw the New World as an opportunity for success. As the natives died off Africans and their children replaced them. As mixing production rose due to Spanish women scarcely traveling to the new world, the government created a hierarchy known as castas to keep social order.
The book is significant in the sense that it gives even the current generation the knowledge of slavery, how it
In 1419, Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal began the period of time known as the “Age of Exploration”. Europe’s leading superpowers, France, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and England, all competed for colonization in unknown territories. Samuel de Champlain colonized along the St. Lawrence River in 1608, Henry Hudson of Holland established Albany in 1609, and Spain established colonies in Mexico and Mesoamerica. In 1607, England established its first colony in North America around the Chesapeake Bay, and nearly a decade later established a second colony in present-day New England. Both New England and the Chesapeake were founded by the British around the same time; however, both colonies developed a different economy, government, and many
By the 1700’s, New England, the Chesapeake region and the Southern Colonies developed into three distinct societies, despite coming from the same mother country, England. The regions of Colonial America each had a distinctive culture and economy entirely different from the other regions. Religion and religious tolerance was completely different in each region, running from being free to complete persecution. Ethnicity and racial composition ranged from almost complete British descent to a wide range of composition. Each region was politically and economically structured different and had its own identity. Each developed differently based on immigration trends, geography and other features. Throughout the colonization of Colonial America,
The subject of this chapter summary will be the eighteenth chapter of Alan Taylor’s American Colonies. The chapter is called “The Great Plains” and discusses the history of that geographical region from 1680-1800. Taylor begins by explaining how warfare both sustained and weakened New Mexico. It maintained unity, because without an external enemy to focus on, the Pueblo people would rise up in revolt against Mexico. However, the constant warfare discouraged any new settlers from putting down roots there. Spain's holdings in North America were weakened by the foreign policy of the motherland, which focused on the colonial core of the territory, not the exterior regions. For Mexico, New Mexico was just a buffer zone between itself and other
Summary: This book describes how European settlers colonized America and founded the first colony of the New World, Jamestown. The book explores the life of the settlers in Jamestown and the
Colonialism is clearly evident through this text, so because colonialism was evident in Davis’s time we can understand this part of society, which helps me understand this piece of text where colonialism is shown. It helps me understand this text by showing its purpose, which relates to the main point of the play, they have ‘No Sugar’, so racism.
The Massachusetts colony, otherwise known as the ‘Massachusetts Bay colony’ was originally settled by Puritans in 1630. They were plagued by the religious persecutions of King Charles I and the Church of England. Weary from this dogged torment, they left England under the leadership of John Winthrop. These original colonists quickly established many small towns in the name of high religious ideals and strict societal rules. They also planted churches, spread Puritanism and religiously educated the masses, as these were some of their goals. A utopian society that other colonies looked upon with high regards was the ultimate goal.
The European conquest for establishing North American colonies began with various motivations, each dependent on different, and/or merging necessities: economics, the desire to flee negative societal aspects, and the search for religious freedoms. Originally discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1492 in search for a trade route to Cathay (China), North America remained uninhabited, excluding the Native American establishments. Following this discovery, Spain –along with other European nations such as France, England, Sweden and the Netherlands– soon began the expedition to the new land with vast expectations. Driven by economic, societal, and religious purposes, the New World developed into a diversely structured colonial establishment
Early American literature does a tremendous job of revealing the exact conditions and challenges that were faced by the explorers and later by the colonists of the New World. From early shipwrecks to the later years of small colonies barely surviving through dreadful winters, the literary works of the time period focus on some very recognizable themes. The theme of any given work – being simply the unifying subject or idea – is a very important element of any piece of writing. As one reviews some of this early literature, it becomes obvious that several themes appear repeatedly, and it is these subjects that were clearly very common among people from all over the New World. While a number of themes