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U.s. History And American History

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US HISTORY
FINAL PAPER

Throughout the history of the United States from the 1500’s to 1865 a number of enduring motifs played out that shaped the future of the country. This is the place in time where the origins of racist ideologies can be traced back to the introduction of slavery to the American agricultural system in order to justify its malicious immorality. The 1500’s also saw the infancy of the specialization of the different regional economies of America to capitalize on what was closely available and abundant, and scarce and needed in another region; and by the 1860’s those regional economies had developed into behemoths that exported their products on large scales, not only domestically but internationally as well. But the most important theme of U.S. history from the 1500’s to 1865 was expansion, from Europe to colonial America, and then the westward expansion of the United States. I believe the theme of expansion is so integral to American history because it incorporates elements of the previous two themes (racism and racist ideologies, and specialized regional development) into it; the European colonial expansion is where the regional economies and values where first developed and still exist, in some aspects, to this day. This theme is also so important because the differing opinions on how to carry out the westward expansion of the United States, specifically whether the new states would slave states or free states, eventually became so contentious and

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