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History of the Americas
Explore questions in the History of the Americas category that you can ask Sparky!
- The development of industrial capitalism led to increased standards of living for some, and to continued improvement in manufacturing methods that increased the availability, affordability, and variety of consumer goods.
- The "second industrial revolution" led to new methods in the production of steel, chemicals, electricity, and precision machinery during the second half of the 19th century.
- Railroads, steamships, and the telegraph made exploration, development, and communication possible in interior regions globally, which led to increased trade and migration.
- The global nature of trade and production contributed to the proliferation of large-scale transnational businesses that relied on new practices in banking and finance.
- The expansion of U.S. and European influence in Asia led to internal reform in Japan that supported industrialization and led to the growing regional power of Japan in the Meiji Era.
- As new methods of industrial production became more common in parts of northwestern Europe, they spread to other parts of Europe and the United States, Russia, and Japan.
- People around the world developed a new sense of commonality based on language, religion, social customs, and territory. This was sometimes harnessed by governments to foster a sense of unity.
- Demands for women's suffrage and an emergent feminism challenged political and gender hierarchies.
- Discontent with monarchist and imperial rule encouraged the development of systems of government and various ideologies, including democracy and 19th-century liberalism.
- The ideas of Enlightenment philosophers, as reflected in revolutionary documents-including the American Declaration of Independence during the American Revolution, the French "Declaration of the Rights ofMan and of the Citizen" during the French Revolution, and Bolívar's "Letter from Jamaica" on the eve of the Latin American revolutions-influenced resistance to existing political authority, often in pursuit of independence and democratic ideals.
- Colonial subjects in the Americas led a series of rebellions inspired by democratic ideals.The American Revolution, and its successful establishment of a republic, the United States of America, was a model and inspiration for a number of the revolutions that followed. TheAmerican Revolution, the Haitian Revolution, and the Latin American independence movements facilitated the emergence of independent states in the Americas.
- The development of the factory system concentrated production in a single location and led to an increasing degree of specialization of labor.
- Nationalism also became a major force shaping the historical development of states and empires.
- Enlightenment ideas and religious ideals influenced various reform movements. These reform movements contributed to the expansion of rights, as seen in expanded suffrage, the abolition of slavery, and the end of serfdom.
- A variety of factors contributed to the growth of industrial production and eventually resulted in the Industrial Revolution, including:▪ proximity to waterways; access to rivers and canals▪ geographical distribution of coal, iron, and timber▪ urbanization▪ improved agricultural productivity▪ legal protection of private property▪ access to foreign resources▪ accumulation of capital
- Enlightenment philosophies applied new ways of understanding and empiricist approaches to both the natural world and human relationships; they also reexamined the role that religion played in public life and emphasized the importance of reason. Philosophers developed new political ideas about the individual, natural rights, and the social contract.
- The term ____________ associated with Lewis Cass and Stephen Douglas, meant that the people of a territory would decide, whether the territory would enter the Union as free or slave state. The Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 provided for popular sovereignty in the two territories of Kansas and Nebraska, thereby nullifying the Missouri Compromise line and igniting a mini-civil war in Kansas.
- Newly imagined national communities often linked this new national identity with borders of the state, and in some cases, nationalists challenged boundaries or sought unification of fragmented regions.
- The ____________, negotiated by Henry Clay, provided that Missouri would enter the Union as a slave state and Maine as a free state. It also drew a line at 36 degrees 30 minutes across the area of the original Louisiana Purchase (and ONLY the Louisiana Purchase). The Compromise prohibited slavery north of that line (except in Missouri) and allowed it south of the line. Note that the Missouri Compromise did not apply to states east of the Louisiana Purchase, or to the vast area under Spanish (and then Mexican rule) that lay west of the Louisiana Purchase in 1820. After the compromise, politicians agreed to try to keep the issue of slavery out of American politics.
- The term ____________ referred to the belief, first articulated by abolitionists and then embraced by a growing number of northerners in the 1850s, that southern slaveholders were attempting to control the federal government and would stop at nothing, including violating the rights of whites, to protect and extend slavery in the territories, and dictate the future economic, political, and social direction of the nation.