Daniels Chapt 5, Ethnicity and Race in America

The big question asked back in colonial times and still brought up today, "What is an American?", echoes the United States' struggle of finding its true identity which historically has been given many definitions. What is an American all about, regardless if his or her ancestors's culture originated in North America or not? French author, Michael Guillaume-Jean de Crevecoeur, had an interesting take when he defined an American as "either an European or the descendant of an European, hence that strange mixture of blood, which you will find in no other country." He classified America as one the place where "individuals of all races are melted into a new race of men , whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in the world." One can presume Crevecoeur meant Americans of European descent and that his perception of American life is more romanticized than what really made the United States of today. This nation has had a long history of racial prejudice and segregation, in fact, more than most would think during its colonial era. During that time, great conflict occured between the English settlers and their European counterparts.

As such, we know of the destructive conflicts that arose between white settlers and Native Americans that soon changed the face of America forever. What was interesting to me was the amount of cultural hatred the English had towards their European neighbors. At one point, settlers from England were the majority until Africans were brought over for slavery and numerous non-English immigrants arrived. While many English felt the need to establish organizations to help their shrinking community, their culture, law, language and other customs greatly dominated the colonial way of life in America. Many aspects of this system have had a profound effect on how the legal, political, and economic systems work in this country today. Yet, tensions were still high between English Americans and other ethnic groups such as the Germans and the Irish for a number of reasons.

In the case of the Irish, I always knew it was due to the different interpretations of God between Catholics and Christians that spurred the hatred between the two cultures. The American colonies did pass some non-Catholic legislation out of fear of the Irish community growing, even though Catholics were a minority at the time. The mere sight of a Catholic and his ways was enough to frighten colonial Americans into thinking their way of life might be threatened. In time, the religious tensions between Catholics and Christians in the United States soon came to pass.

The majority of German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania, but they made up a third of the population. They were looked down for being the one group that didn't seem fully assimilated into colonial society. Ben Franklin himself didn't think too well about Germans, especially since they mistakenly voted for his opponents in a number of elections. Despite the prejudices, the new German Americans thrived as agricultural workers and continued to have great future impacts on this country's prosperity; one of them involving their work in the automobile industry.  

Daniels, Chapt 4, Euro immigration to America

When we think of immigration to the United States, up until recent years, the majority of people who flocked to this country (then colonies) were mainly Europeans from the Western or Northern-most countries. While the first were English, about two fifths of the rest that came around 1790 were from elsewhere in the British Isles. Other groups migrated from Germany, Swedan, and parts of France. I was fascinated by what it took for these continental Europeans to make it all the way to the American colonies and the attitude that helped them through the toughest times.

At the time, Germany was nothing more than a few scattered states with people of diverse backgrounds, ranging from Austrian to Russian. Each of these groups were divided according to their religions (Protestant, Catholic, and Judaism) which proved to be difficult to determine what ethnic groups the German immigrants belonged to, especially the so-called "Deutsch" people who come either from the Rhineland or Switzerland. Colonial Americans were under the impression that these German groups left their country to escape religious persecution, but that was not the case. During the early 18th Century, many Rhinelanders were suffering from the War of Spanish Succession as King Louis XIV's forces went after Germans who sided with the British. The promise of new opportunities in the "New World" gave German immigrants enough incentive to escape their political turmoil. Many ended up in various parts of New York, but more went to Pennsylvania where few immigrants had settled in, so this was a great delight for propietors and European agents to attract more newcomers to the colony. What really shocked me was not just the vastness of Germans in Pennsylvania, but what they really cared for despite the hardships they endured to get to America.

In each family, every person was entitled to a contract of paying for their passage to the New World and to what length of service they'll go into. Children had to work until they were 21 and the adults would serve for three to six years, causing a great separation between family members. When one or more of the family dies en route to the colonies, the surviving members were responsible to pay the fares for not just themselves, but for their deceased parents or relatives as well. Despite these payments, many German immigrants prefered "being slaves in America to being free townsmen" in their home country. The situation back home was that awful enough to keep Germans out for good. In contrast to their English and Irish counterparts, German indentured servants generally had better working and living conditions. Some freely went into that line of work, while others were sold to make good on their contracts of travel. Often, free family members used some of the money they earned from work to help their "unfree" relatives be successful in the American colonies. How well German immigrants handled their rough transition into America says a lot to what it can take for any newcomer, who arrives in this country with the attitude to start a better life, no matter what obstacles they may face coming to or just being in the United States.   

Chapt 3, Daniels, Slave Trade

The Atlantic Slave Trade of the colonial period had a very significant role to play in stimulating business investments in the "New World." It is one of the greatest crimes in displacing and mistreating human beings, as well. What surprised me was that this part in American history was greatly ignored for some time, given that the Southern American colonies (and the North for a brief time) prospered from resources, such as sugar and cotton, made by the slaves themselves. While slavery did oppress the human rights of the Africans, in some ways this system is linked with the progression and development of Western and American capitalism.

Apart from producing and exporting products such as textile fabrics, some have argued that the slave trade has brought numerous immigrants to the "New World." However, other historians have argued that slavery had nothing to do with luring foreigners into the United States. I liked how author Maldwyn A. James put it that even if Africans weren't immigrants in a strict sense, their arrival to America helped in the "peopling of the colonies." My understanding is that since slavery did make products used to create clothing and other such fabrics, immigrants and United States citizens were probably pleased with the wide range of resources available for them. Of course, if slavery in America had treated the Africans better, there would have been a more positive outlook of how benefical the system was to American prosperity.

There is much history that, until recently, has been neglected due to popular depictions of slavery and the fact that Africans were a nonliterate culture. The assumption then was that African Americans came from a large continent (Africa) that contributed nothing to the world and was full of nothing but tribes of savages with no sense of culture. Today, we know that Africa was home to one of the most developed civilizations, Egypt, and was the place where hunter-gatherers spread across the continent and eventually into the neighboring land masses. Other glimpses of the Slave trade's history didn't receieve enough attention such as the African slaves who eventually became free, particularly in the North where the abolitionist eventually spurred. Then there was black immigrant population in the Caribbean which would later have great influence on American life through sports, literature, and politics. These groups, while greatly affected by slavery negatively, did impact American culture in a way that would change the face of the country forever. Although they never asked to be brought to the "New World," African slaves and slavery in America each were significant in how they raised the question of what it means to live in Western society and whose rights are meant to be protected.

The American Indian and Problem with History

One of the greatest mistakes ever made in American history was the injustice and destruction inflicted on the indigenous natives by European Americans. No one, I think, should deny what it took for White Americans to stretch from the East to the West in creating the United States we know today. The results of European and White American conquests of the native population were the renowned myths that narrowly defined the history of the United States for a substantial amount of time. They classified American Indians as blood thirsty savages who were eventually brought to their demise by the “civilized” Christians of the eastern United States. In every sequence of events, history while written by the victorious is always filled with lies and many biases. The winning side feels that only their history is worthy of remembrance since they’re more powerful culturally, technologically, and politically. Even some historians have altered new research with their narrow cultural/religious perception of the events that took place. Recently, that barrier has been broken with new studies of the origins of Native Americans tribes all the way back around 40,000 to 12,000 B.C.

Although I have previous knowledge of the so-called Bering ‘land bridge’ that brought many tribes from Asia into North America, I was amazed by the amount of history there was about the migration into the continent and the establishment of the new North American tribes. Essentially, these tribes came onto the American continent in search of big game such as reindeer, moose, bison, and woolly mammoths. While there are hints of these people hunting great game across North America, most the evidence has been found within Alaska where the hunters cornered their prey at many ‘kill sites.’ Many of these tribes went as far as modern day Pennsylvania, which I suppose isn’t much of a surprise, but I was under the impression most of the tribes then settled in Canada and in the mid – western United States. In despite of leaving their original homes, these people made use of the tools and hunting methods they developed in Siberia, thus passing on their most ancient of traditions. Many of these traditions had been drawn from other cultures from East Asia to Europe, hinting that discovering the “New World” was merely an expansion of the old world. From reading that information, one can easily draw the similarities shared between Native Americans, Europeans, Asians, and so on.

Another interesting find in Native American history was the systematic process of adapting to the new environments and the creation of many substances to sustain the native way of life. Such innovations included making specially “fluted” spear points within camps located near rich quarries. These enable tribesmen to sharpen their spears in a way that allows them to kill their prey on site. In the areas where flint flourished, numerous animals were trapped in those regions, providing tribes with enough food and turning these people into a complex, organized society, greatly different from their ancestors. It all really shows how similar Native Americans are with other cultures, in terms of survival and maintaining their way of life.