米国の歴史 means US. History. Which is exactly what this blog is supposed to be about and yet somehow we find ourselves reading random gibberish in Japanese. What an odd world we live in. And how fast time seems to go by. It seems like just yesterday I was sitting down in Mr. Bruns's room, plotting nefarious schemes such as who would be pwning history n00blets in my group. Now I'm settling down to summarize the semester. Aw, the silliness. Let it commence.
西方に拡大 means Expanding Westward, which is what we talked about way back in Chapter Five. So mostly, we learned about people in the US who thought life was icky, they traveled a long ways through many icky conditions, only to find life farther away from their old icky life was just as icky. Grass is not greener on the other side of the country, silly pioneers! I also learned that buffaloes are basically the most useful things ever. Even their poopy is worthwhile. Not many other mammals can boast such a feat. Assuming you completely disregard the whole 'fertilizer' thing. Ze white man basically killed off the entire buffalo population, or at least got AWFULLY close. Which was bad news for the Native Americans, because now not only were we taking their land and doing Judas Priest knows what to their women and children, we were killing their hairy cows. Who can really blame them for getting angry? I know I can't. Then there was the Homestead Act. Who can forget the fences?! ... FENCES! Basically the government was selling land really cheap / giving land away for free to people as long as they set up a home and some sweet farmland. Life in the West could be termed 'icky' because it was lonely, you were far away from cities in most cases (meaning you couldn't buy something if you needed it), and technology wasn't nearly as advanced it is today. Meaning, to everyone's vast horror and sympathy, they didn't have cell phones, computers, OR TELEVISION! :O Also, it was extremely dangerous traveling that far in lil wooden wagon fellas. The trails were hard to navigate and accidents happened more than not. Basically, this whole chapter was pretty depressing. People gave up their old lives to set out and make something new for themselves and ended up LOSING their lives in the process. Tsk tsk tsk.
産業革命 means Industrial Revolution, which is what we talked about way back in Chapter Six. This lil' dealy is the topic my group covered. We talked a lot about inventors, like Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell and what sorts of things helped this sweet revolution take place. Like how huge the US had become and how many resources it had. People were coming from all over the world and providing cheap labor in factories and stuff. The cities and population was growing, which gave the US places to sell stuff and people to buy them. Yay moneys! And the Bessemer Process came into place. Which is a pretty complication process that Kelsey explained super well that made it cheaper and easier to covert iron into steel. This lead to a lot more skyscrapers. Unfortunately, capitalism can lead to monopolies. Which is controlling a market of a product or service. There's horizontal monopolies, which could be accomplished by lowering your prices and running other businesses like yours out of business. And then there's vertical monopolies, where let's say you have a steel company, and buy a railroad and iron company and your business can basically do everything. Monopolies could be good if they kept their prices low. Though they could be bad if they had no competition and charged people whatever they wanted. Andrew Carnegie had a super successful steel company, some could even term it a monopoly. But he accomplished the American Dream and went from rags to riches. John D. Rockefeller was the head honcho behind Standard Oil, which is another one of those companies that could be termed a monopoly. He was quite ruthless in business but helped people, earning him the title of a philanthropist. People used the Darwin Theory as an excuse for what was happening. Their businesses were awesome, and it was only natural that other, weaker competitors would fail.
移住および都会化 means Immigration and Urbanization, which is what was discussed in Chapter Seven. Well, a lot of people came here from other countries. There were a lot of reasons for this, including escaping religious persecution (like the Pilgrims way back when!) and famines (like the Great Potato famine in Ireland!). There were also a lot more job opportunities here (especially in cities), and they wanted to end up up like Andrew Carnegie, rolling in the big bucks. Unfortunately that's usually exactly what DIDN'T happen. Most immigrants ended up in sweat shops and factories and got paid nearly nothing. Their living conditions were less than spiffy and disease ran rampant. If you traveled here from Europe and docked on the Eastern side of United States, you found yourself being harbored in through Ellis Island. Back then it was part of New York, but I guess technically it's part of New Jersey now. Lots of tourism coming in from that I bet. And if you traveled here from Asia and docked on the West side of the United States, you landed in Angel Island off the coast of California. Eventually immigrants from China who were unskilled laborers were limited.
分離および差別 means Segregation and Discrimination, and it mostly focused on the issues facing the African American population of the 1800's and 1900's. Well, at the end of the war the slaves were freed. Huzzah, right! Well, honestly, at that time being a slave and not being a slave were hardly different. Sure you weren't in shackles, but how people treated you and even how the GOVERNMENT treated hardly changed at all. For one, black people weren't allowed to vote. A lot of things kept this statement true. While slaves, black people were not allowed to learn how to read or write. Soon after they were freed, people were required to pass a literacy test. Unless of course your grandfather could vote before that law was passed. Then you could vote. Which makes total sense! Basically, even if you were a hillbilly missing half your teeth and incapable of writing your own name, you could vote, because grand-pappy BobbyBillBumshire could. There was also a poll tax at the time, meaning you had to pay to vote. There were a lot of hate crimes around, and the KKK was a group made famous for such cruel, racist acts. Lynching became 'popular'. Jim Crow laws were also established, which were basically segregation laws that established separate bathrooms and seating sections. Also, in the Plessy vs. Ferguson case a man who was 1/8 black was super angry because the taxi he had wanted had been taken away from him and given to a white man. The final verdict of the case was that that was legal and though the different races had separate items, they were of equal quality. Yeah... right.
進歩的な時代 means The Progressive Era, which was covered in Chapter Nine. Well way back before there was a lil' Mr. Fah, there was a political party that wanted to get-r-done! Now, what were these r's that must be done! Well, you silly little goosey, there were four main goals. The first one was protecting social welfare, which meant they wanted everybody to be A-otay. They accomplished this by opening libraries, soup kitchens, and having slum brigades go around and teach immigrants American values. The second was promoting moral improvement, which meant making everybody act better by doing things like banning alcohol. The third was making economic reform, which is making the economy better. Because let's face it, money CAN buy happiness. Improving minimum wage, lowering work hours, and getting rid of child labor once and for all! The fourth and final goal was fostering efficiency, which meant having the country work better, faster, and harder than ever before. By studying time management and using assembly lines, they did work son! Progressives also managed to get quite a few other positive things done, such as using a secret ballot when voting. This way people could decide who they would vote for by themselves, instead of being pressured/threatened to vote for somebody else. A lot of corruption in government and industries was exposed during this era. The 18th (Prohibition) and 19th (Womens Suffrage) Amendments were passed during this time.
米国の帝国主義およびスペインのアメリカ戦争 US Imperialism and the Spanish American War were covered in Chapter Ten. The New Diplomacy was basically just being more imperialistic, and stepping outside the dark lil corner the US had previously been in . The US became more imperialistic because the world was becoming smaller. Not technically of course, that would be weird. What I mean is with technology through communication and transportation it became a lot easier to... well, take over the world. Also, with the 'old' diplomacy we had our own country to settle and weren't really concerned with colonies. Now, we were pretty much settled and bored with ourselves :P We gained Alaska and Hawaii w00t w00t. Now, somehow we got all tangled up in a little mess I myself like to call the Spanish-American War. How you say? Well, yellow journalism had a lot to do with it. Newspapers were exaggerating, stealing, and flat out MAKING UP stories. Down in Cuba a general was controlling a rebel problem and somehow it ended up being described as concentration camps. The USS Maine exploded in the Havana Harbor and somehow it ended up being a Spanish sabotage. Then an ambassador named De Lome sent a letter to a buddy... well, that wasn't really exaggerated but it totally ripped on the then president McKinley. How unkind. Tsk tsk. People in the US were pretty upset over it, and they wanted some justice. Fo sho. In the end, Cuba became independent... sort of. Puerto Rico became ours... sort of. Spain basically lost a ton of power... period.
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Excellent once again!