Summary of Colin Woodard's American Nations

Everest Media

Description

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book.
Sample Book Insights:
#1 The first European subculture in the United States is found in the arid hills of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Spanish Americans have been living in this part of El Norte since 1595, and they remain fiercely protective of their heritage.
#2 The Spanish received the largest bequest in human history from Pope Alexander VI in 1493: 16 million square miles, spread across two continents, and populated by perhaps 100 million people. They were ordered to convert all the inhabitants to Catholicism and train them in good morals.
#3 The history of the Americas has been dominated by European and African actors. But there were many native cultures that had a higher standard of living than European ones.
#4 The Spanish Empire’s colonial policy was to assimilate the Native Americans into Spanish culture by converting them to Catholicism and supervising their faith, work, dress, and conduct in special settlements governed by priests.

Sujets

• Colonisation
• North America
• América del Norte
• Catholicisme

Informations

• Publié par: Everest Media LLC
• Date de parution: 21 mars 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669356271
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Insights on Colin Woodard's American Nations
Contents Insights from Chapter 1 Insights from Chapter 2 Insights from Chapter 3 Insights from Chapter 4
Insights from Chapter 1

#1

The first European subculture in the United States is found in the arid hills of northern New Mexico and southern Colorado. Spanish Americans have been living in this part of El Norte since 1595, and they remain fiercely protective of their heritage.

#2

The Spanish received the largest bequest in human history from Pope Alexander VI in 1493: 16 million square miles, spread across two continents, and populated by perhaps 100 million people. They were ordered to convert all the inhabitants to Catholicism and train them in good morals.

#3

The history of the Americas has been dominated by European and African actors. But there were many native cultures that had a higher standard of living than European ones.

#4

The Spanish Empire’s colonial policy was to assimilate the Native Americans into Spanish culture by converting them to Catholicism and supervising their faith, work, dress, and conduct in special settlements governed by priests.

#5

The Spanish colony of New Mexico had a caste system, with whites dominating the highest offices. However, by the early 1700s, mestizos constituted a majority of the population.

#6

Until the late 1960s, political commentators regularly noted that the votes of El Norte could be bought and sold like cattle futures.

#7

The northern provinces of New Mexico, Texas, and California were extremely isolated from the rest of Spanish America. They were forbidden from trading with foreigners, and they could ship goods and passengers to Spain only via Veracruz, not through closer alternatives such as San Francisco or Matagorda, Texas.

#8

The American West was developed by ranch hands who were given a lot of freedom and autonomy. This was unlike the central provinces near Mexico City, where Hispanics were under intense scrutiny from the friars and military officers.

#9

The Spanish were able to expand their ranching techniques in the eighteenth century, but they were also facing threats from the north and east. The first such challenger was New France, which was based in New Orleans at the end of the Mississippi Valley.

#10

In 1604, the first Europeans to encounter a New England winter were the French. They built a settlement on a small island in what is now eastern Maine, and named it Acadia. It was a conservative and decidedly monarchical society, but one more tolerant and with greater opportunities for advancement than France itself.

#11

The French colony in North America was not as successful as de Mons had hoped. The first snows came to the island in early October, and when the river froze in December, the strong tides from the Bay of Fundy shattered the ice, turning the waterway into an impassable field of jagged ice floes.

#12

The French colony in Nova Scotia, which was later called Port Royal, was the model for the future settlements in New France. It was a small community of about 100 men, but the gentlemen took little notice of their underlings.

#13

The French were very open to adopting Indian customs and lifestyles. They treated the Indians as equals, invited them to their feasts, and even learned their languages so they could better persuade them to become Christians.

#14

The French tried to assimilate the Indians into their culture, but they ended up becoming acculturated into the lifestyle and technology of the Mi’kmaqs and Passamaquoddies.

#15

Louis XIV sent thousands of settlers to New France, and most of them were from Normandy, the Channel provinces, or the environs of Paris. Very few settlers came from eastern or southern France, which were remote from the ports that served North America.

#16

The first generation of French immigrants to North America were the coureurs de bois, who were proud of their independence and freedom. They lived a semi-nomadic lifestyle, and were proud of their independence. They were also very comfortable living in an aboriginal setting.

#17

By the middle of the eighteenth century, New France had become almost entirely dependent on Native Americans to protect their shared society from invaders.

#18

The first lasting English colony in the New World was a hellhole of epic proportions, successful only in the sense that it survived at all. It was founded by private investors, and was poorly planned, badly led, and foolishly located.

#19

The first Virginians were such incompetent settlers because they had come to the New World to conquer and rule, rather than farm and build a new society. The Indians did not submit to English rule, and the English had to fight for years to secure their colony.

#20

The Virginia Company continued to send wave after wave of colonists to the Chesapeake, and by 1669 the Indian population had been reduced to 2,000, 8 percent of its original level. The English population had grown to 40,000, and they were spread out across Tidewater, clearing Indian lands to grow tobacco.

#21

Life as a servant was harsh and demeaning, but it did not last a lifetime. Those who survived their indenture received land, tools, and freedom. As the frontier pushed farther inland in the eighteenth century, servants were bought in large groups by notorious distributors called soul drivers.

#22

Maryland was an oligarchy from the start, and it remained that way for the majority of its history. It was a Protestant-dominated tobacco colony, and the emergent aristocracy commanded most of the profits.

#23

The English country gentleman was, in effect, the king of his domain in the seventeenth century. He directed the lives and labors of the tenant farmers and day laborers who lived in the villages associated with his manor.

#24

The planters and Royalist émigrés who came to America tried to replicate the society they had left behind in England. They built elegant brick manors and houses for their indentured tenants, and they bought servants with the skills to operate mills, breweries, smokehouses, and bakeries.

#25

Power in Tidewater had become hereditary. The leading families intermarried in both America and England, creating a close-linked cousinage that dominated Tidewater generally and Virginia in particular.

#26

The political philosophy of Tidewater gentry, which was based around the Latin concept of libertas, or liberty, was fundamentally different from the Germanic concept of Freiheit, or freedom, which informed the political thought of Yankeedom and the Midlands.

#27

The gentry in Tidewater had many liberties, but they did not share them with their subjects. They had a difficult time finding enough poor Englishmen to take on the role of serfs, and eventually they turned to slave traders to provide them with servants.

#28

The Puritans, who were the dominant colonists of New England, were not fleeing persecution at home. They were en route to establishing a completely new society, based on the teachings of John Calvin.

#29

The Yankee settlers were led by an elite distinguished by education. They were well-educated and middle class, and they came from a region that had been profoundly influenced by the Netherlands, one of the most commercially and politically advanced nations in Europe.

#30

The Puritans were hostile to royal and aristocratic prerogative, and they continued this tradition in America. Every community was to be completely self-governing, and the selectmen were to act as a plural executive.

#31

The Puritans, who were the first settlers in New England, believed that each individual had to encounter divine revelation through reading the Bible. They built public schoolhouses and required all children to attend, under penalty of law.

#32

The Puritans were very dangerous to have as neighbors, as they were very fearful of otherness.