Regional Studies Zusammenfassung №1 Introduction

· Logic of change: history, coherent, logical process à result: current situation, structure, behaviour of the US, political, social, economic development

· US most powerful single nation state

· Most influential country in history of the world

· Geographical isolation: after WW II not destroyed like other countries

· Democratic, liberal, capitalist order: model for thinking how humans society has to be constituted

· State, capitalism,(individual) rights à that’s the idea but is it right?

· Is there some kind of tension between the elements?

· Analyse this question by looking at the history of the US

· Historical analysis

· Europeans presented America as the ‘New world’ even though it was already inhabited by people living in complex societies

· In the eyes of the Europeans the native American people did not belong to the history of the world

· The conquest à what did the different groups think of each other?

· 1914-1915 Europe’s suicide

· Nuclear weapons

Colonization 17.04. №2

Economy

· Why did the Europeans travel across the Atlantic?

· 1450-1650: Britain, France, Portugal: major powers à “maritime empires”

· Expiditions: Atlantic & Indina Oceans

· Development in sailing technologies (galleon) and cargo à driving the colonization process à access to wealth of Asia/Mongol. Empire in India = very wealth + Chinese were much wealthy as the Europen

· Wanted to reach Asia with its goods: spices (big money maker), precious metals, porcelain, cotton à bring it to European markets à 100% profit à governments desperate for new sources

· Europe: maximal diversity in minimal space à competition which expressed itself in military form

· Looking for a route to the East à land routes were controlled à you had to pay à 75% paying taxes etc. à expensive and dangerous route

· Guns, steel swords, horses à found the “new world”

· They brought diseases à 98% of the people were killed but they found :

Natural resources; silver, sugar, cotton à exploitation

· The Asian was collonised.

· Double-entry accounting, new forms of credit, banking institutes, joint-stock trading company (royal charter) à become institutionalized

· First they thought they’d find gold (original motivation) à new techniques of mining

· Money making Organization: Between 1540-1700: 50.000 tons of silver reached Europe; 2/3 of it came from one mountain in Bolivia (àto Spain) à Spanish King used profits from Silver to pay debts to the Italian bankers & they in their turn sold it to China -> globalization

· Gold fever = Esp. in South America

· Various European powers searching for trading opportunities/access to resources

· Development of a modern nation state

· English settled 1607 Jamestown colony à founded by Virginia Company à private company à agricultural advantages. => Companies there = extension of the GB (British Impirial State)

· E.g. John Rolfe bought land: hybridize tobacco (Orinoco) à 1^st mass consumption product

· Big companies à expansion of British empire

· Dutch: beaver fur hats! Dutch spice trade in Indonesia; any aristocratic had a beaver fur hat à luxury

· Who were these people?

· Small rich group of elite

· Rich land owners

· Indentured servants (debt bondage):

people from England whose only chance to get money was to work for 5 to 7 years without payment and at the end they got the right to be an independant farmer & got a piece of land à make your own way as a land farmer

-> The growth of the cities

· Reality: less than 50% got their freedom à many were killed by diseases/whereas women had less rights – were often raped by their owners à structured in domination

· Land owners had already the good parts of the land à they got land on which it was nearly impossible to raise crops (àwestward expansion)

· Stimulated the westward expansion

Date: 2015-01-29; view: 757