Summary Chapter 2 The Rise Of The Atlantic World

In 1893, at the 400th anniversary of the appearance of Columbus in the Americas celebrated in Chicago , Frederick Jackson Turner presented an academic paper entitled, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History” In this essay, Turner proposes that, “The existence of an area of free land, its continuous recession, and the advance of American settlement westward explain American development.” The group dynamic that Turner champions is the farmer. More directly it is white, male farmers. While the expansion of the west by white male farmers was a factor in the development of America, it is not the only explanation for this progression. Turner fails to incorporate all of the demographics present during this expansion which were essential to the evolution of 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

Document F states, "The worst [among us were the gold seekers who] with their golden promises made all men their slaves in hope of recompenses." This quote displays the major motive of emigrants to the Chesapeake region as gold seekers, or monetary prosperity. Documents G and H show that there were many indentured servants in the Chesapeake area. These indentured servants were often used for the tobacco farms. Since the soil was infertile in New England, the colonists there often focused on trade, small scale manufacturing, fishing, and other sea industries. The economy of each region impacted its social structure, which many indentured servants and slaves in the Chesapeake region while there was much more equality in New England.

Now for the economic reasons. The Chesapeake region developed a tobacco economy, everything they did was to grow or sell tobacco. Document H states that the poor were unhappy. In a society the poor are sometimes unhappy, but in this case the rich did nothing to make the poor feel any better. In New England the economy was not extremely important, but the average person here was wealthier than the average person in England.

For decades, the history of Latin America has been shrouded in a cover of Spanish glory and myth that misleads and complicates the views of historians everywhere. Myths such as the relationship between natives and conquistadors, and the individuality of the conquistadors themselves stand as only a few examples of how this history may have become broken and distorted. However, in Seven Myths of the Spanish Conquest Matthew Restall goes to great lengths to dispel these myths and provide a more accurate history of Latin American, in a readable and enjoyable book.

Throughout the 17th century, many European countries sent explorers and settlers to America. The two most eminent countries that colonized area of America were Spain and Great Britain. Britain began to establish colonies in the northeast; in the area they called New England. The Spanish interest lied in the southwest. Living in two unassociated areas caused the Spanish settlements and the New England colonies to be quite unlike each other. When faced with the task of finding similarities between the two, not much can be found. It is the differences that stand out when studying the English and Spanish, from religion to politics to ideals.

Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca is best known as the first Spaniard to explore what we now consider to be southwestern United States. His nine-year odyssey is chronicled within the book The Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition. His account is considered especially interesting because it is one of the very first documents that illustrates interactions between American natives and explorers. However, when examining the exploration of the modern United States, there are many arguments that have to do with the entitlement to the land and the motivations behind settling in the first place. Most explorers were obviously in favor of their own conquests and Cabeza de Vaca is of course no exception. In Chronicle of the Narvaez Expedition, Cabeza de

In a time when the Native Americans were building complex structures and had control of all of the Americas, the Spanish arrived, and took control from the natives conquering the Americas and leaving behind their influence until 1680. Also in a time when new colonists are arriving from England to America to form settlements, and settlers begin to reconsider their traditions. It is in this context that the Spanish and New England colonists are compared and contrasted. The Spanish and New England colonies from 1492 to 1700 were significantly similar in terms of treatment of indigenous people and considerably different in control of religion and control of European government.

As English settlers arrived in the Chesapeake and then New England in the seventeenth century, they disembarked their boats and marveled at the seeming abundance of the landscape. They arrived with hopes of recreating their “old world” and prospering from the merchantable commodities that were lying before them. However, English colonization did not occur in a vacuum, and the settlers soon discovered that their survival would be dependent upon a forged coexistence with the native inhabitants. Surrounded by Indian worlds, the colonists established unique regional identities, with the south becoming dependent upon the cultivation of tobacco and the use of slave labor, and the north establishing subsistence family farms and developing a commercial economy. This capitalist system eventually reshaped the colonies, leading to continued expansion that transformed the American landscape, destroyed the delicate intercultural diplomacy with the natives, and cemented territorial distinctions – creating “new worlds for all.”

The economy of the Chesapeake and New England were both directly affected by their geographical locations and surroundings. The Chesapeake colonies were very rich and fertile in soil, which allowed them to develop an agricultural-based economy; whereas, the New England colonies were

"The Colonization of North America." In Modern History Sourcebook. April 1999- [cited 17 September 2002] Available from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall.mod/modsbook.html., http://curry.eduschool.virginia.edu.

In chapter one Conquerors and Victims: The Image of America Forms (1500-1800) Gonzalez talks about the impact upon the arrival of the Europeans to America. This arrival was categorized as “the greatest and most important event in the history of human kind”. Spain and England were two countries that had a big impact on our modern world and transplanted their cultures around the territories they took over. Both countries created their empires in which they established on their identities and viewpoint of their language and social customs. Upon their arrival the native population was outnumbered, many of which live around Mexico’s Valley and others populate the Central Andes region and Rio Grande.

In the late 1700’s, the main conflict throughout the Atlantic was freedom to all. This period showed many views from different people in ways in which they tried to express the word. People in the America’s and eastern nations such as France were trying to rebuild their nations with an idea that all men are created equal, that they are given the right not from authority, but by birth. From the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” in France which was their laws to give men freedom, to a wealthy man in Venezuela named Simon Bolivar who helped free his country from Spanish rule only to struggle with making his country a federation after the destruction, you see that freedom is hard to concur. Independence cannot only be observed

Document F states, “The worst [among us were the gold seekers who] with their golden promises made all men their slaves in hope of recompenses.” This quote displays the major motive of emigrants to the Chesapeake region as gold seekers, or monetary prosperity. Documents G and H show that there were many indentured servants in the Chesapeake area. These indentured servants were often used for the tobacco farms. Since the soil was infertile in New England, the colonists there often focused on trade, small scale manufacturing, fishing, and other sea industries. The economy of each region impacted its social structure, which many indentured servants and slaves in the Chesapeake region while there was much more equality in New England.

There are many similarities and differences in the methods of colonization between the English and the French. Their land control and their motivation in establishing a colony in the Americas consisted of different many reasons. In addition, their settlements and their relationships with the Indians also had many great effects on how they maintained their establishments in the Americas. Although Spain had already claimed most of the Americas, the English, French establishments and the defeat of the Spanish armada diminished Spain’s opportunity to become one of the most powerful countries in the world.