Interesting Historical Facts You Never Learned in School
Interesting Historical Facts You Never Learned in School
新东方前途美国本科留学
获取每日新鲜优质内容
开启精彩的留学旅程
The Columbian Exchange (1492-1607) – Contested Discoveries and Ancient Exchanges
When discussing the Columbian exchange, history books will usually focus on how the flow of people, plants, animals, and microbes between the New World and the Old World forever changed the social and physical landscapes of both hemispheres. The simplistic version of this exchange begins in 1492 when Christopher Columbus sailed to the American continent.
Beginning in the late 8th century, the Viking Expansion saw settlers from Scandinavia move into new lands in the north Atlantic, including Iceland and Greenland. The Vikings did not halt their expansions in these locations, however, but continued onward to settle some lands in North America as well. The 13th century tales
The Vikings who settled in North America likely engaged in some form of interactions with the indigenous population of the area.
Perhaps the greatest maritime expansion in human history was that of the Polynesians across the Pacific Ocean. Navigating thousands of miles of open ocean using no technology beyond an understanding of the stars, the Polynesians populated the most remote spaces on earth. More than 1,000 years ago, it seems that the Polynesians also reached the coasts of South America. The evidence for this moment being the true start of an exchange between the two hemispheres is quite convincing. Not only did the Polynesians return to their Pacific island homes with sweet potatoes, they also adopted the Incan word for the vegetable, which is still used today. Modern DNA testing on Pacific sweet potatoes seems to confirm that these crops indeed originated in South America. Moreover, Polynesian seafarers apparently introduced quintessential Old World livestock to the Incans – chickens, which the conquistador Pizaro noted were present in the years before the arrival of Europeans.
The Colonial Period (1607-1776) – European Proxy Conflicts
Although separated from Europe by thousands of miles, America represented great promise to European powers for both commercial and territorial gains. In the years before strict national boundaries began to form, the political landscape of what is now America and Canada was an ever-shifting tapestry of different nationalities and religious denominations contending for a foothold in a hostile land. Much of this hostility came not necessarily from conflicts with Natives, but from conflict with other Europeans. The most well-known struggle between European powers is the misleadingly-named French and Indian War, which saw Britain and France, as well as their American Indian allies, fighting for control of territory in North America. Other instances of warfare between European nations, however,
Although most people remember Britain, France, and to a lesser extent Spain, as the dominant powers in the Americas, other European nations attempted to exert control over the area as well.
Following Sweden’s defeat in the Second Northern War, the Dutch seized the land and expanded their own colony of New Netherland, which also included the island of Manhattan. Sweden would not feature prominently in the demography of America again for more than 200 years until a massive flux of immigration to the midwestern states, such as Minnesota, began in the late 19th century. A similar fate befell the Dutch however, who likewise lost control of their New World holdings at the end of the Third Anglo-Dutch War in 1675.
Revolutionary Period (1776-1789) – Diverse Origins of American Democracy
Although the Constitution and the American Revolution of 1776 are the birth of democracy in the Americas, the exact political and philosophical origins of this event are less straight forward than one might think. Three of the Founding Fathers, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay, wrote the Federalist Papers in support of American democracy. In their writings, these authors borrow heavily from European examples including the Italian city-states, the English and Dutch Republics, and polities as far back as the Roman Republic and ancient Athens. Earlier experiments with egalitarian rule on the American continent, such as the first democratically elected legislative body in the colonies, the House of Burgesses at Jamestown, also featured as examples in these essays.
By the time of the arrival of the earliest Europeans in North America, one of the largest American Indian groups, the Iroquois Confederacy, had already existed for several hundred years. This confederacy, which began in the 12th century, is in fact the oldest living democracy on earth. The main figure in the story of the Iroquois Confederacy is a man named Hiawatha, who was known among his tribe, the Mohawk, as a skilled orator and advocate for peace.
Hiawatha and the Great Peacemaker successfully united several groups into their confederacy. The final group to join was led by a man named Tadodaho, who was a fierce warrior who was opposed to peace (he had even previously killed Hiawatha’s wife and daughters). Eventually, however, the five tribes were united in a system that exhibits many of the same features established in the Constitution, including: a process of removing leaders, two branches of legislature for the passage of new laws, a clear prescription for who has the power to declare war, and outlining a balance of power between the federal government and its component political entities. To this day, the leader of the Iroquois nation is known as the Tadodaho.
Interactions with the Iroquois helped to inspire the Founding Fathers as they pondered the form of governance that they hoped to create in America. In 1744, the Iroquois leader Canassantego gave a speech urging the thirteen colonies to unite.
The Era of Jeffersonian & Jacksonian Democracy (1800-1848) – Global Cases in Democracy He became the representative of a spiritual leader named The Great Peacemaker, who also supported peace among different groups, but who had a speech impediment that initially limited his influence.
The first half of the 19th century was a period of great change in the area of not only American politics but also public opinion towards many social issues.Not only did new and old political parties alike rise and fall, but the definitions of freedom and democracy began to expand to include more than just white land-owning males. Although the legal system of the United States was extremely slow in acknowledging the rights of non-whites, one important instance in the pre-Civil War era highlights the incremental gains that have been made throughout the country’s history, as well as the kind of contentious debates that existed at that time.
By 1808 America had outlawed the trade of new slaves from Africa. Despite this, slavery was still an entrenched institution in the southern states, and the import of slaves from existing populations in other areas of the Americas was still common. In 1839, Spanish plantation owners bought 53 slaves from Cuba, who had been illegally trafficked there after being abducted from Africa and labeled as Cuban slaves to avoid the law. Several days into the journey back to the plantations, a slave known as Joseph Cinque managed to free himself and several other captives.Armed with knives, the captives killed most of the sailors and took control of the ship, the
Once in America, the debate over the fate of those aboard the
The Civil Strife Era (1850-1877) – Local Violence, Global Consideration
The Civil War is the deadliest conflict in American history; more Americans died in this war than in World War I, World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War combined. In the south, approximately 20% of all men of fighting age perished. Despite the fighting taking place exclusively on American soil, the Civil War attracted international attention from individuals and governments alike, and at times threatened to erupt into a full-fledged world war.
Britain hoped to establish peace between the two belligerents and thereby secure its cotton imports, which derived from southern plantations.
In the end, it was as much skilled diplomacy as it was new technologies, such as modern battleships, that helped the Union prevail over the Confederacy. Compared to the sophisticated and experienced statesmen of the Union, the Confederacy cycled through several inept and inexperienced politicians, including three different Secretaries of State in its first thirteen months of existence. Moreover, Confederate president Jefferson Davis took for granted that European powers would be necessarily inclined to recognize and support the independence of the Confederacy due to a reliance on its agricultural exports.
One final example of international involvement in the American Civil War is the fact that one out of every four regiments in the Union army contained a majority of immigrant soldiers. These immigrants came from countries whose governments were sometimes in support of the Confederacy, such as England and France, as well as other nations such as Germany, Poland, and Italy. These soldiers, along with a large number of former slaves and other African-American recruits, bolstered the Union army’s strength.
The Gilded Age (1877-1900) – To Read or not to Read
Following the tumultuous years of the Civil War and Reconstruction, American society underwent more peaceful, though no less dramatic, changes.
Prior to the Gilded Age, schools were a relatively rare institution in America.
Attitudes towards the structure of the school year also changed during this time. In the 1840s, most American students spent between 250-260 days in school each year, and as late as 1890, most students were in school for 11 months out of the year. Around this time, however, reformers, who often also advocated for labor issues such as the 8-hour work day, began to push to standardize the academic calendar for both urban and rural schools across the country. These reformers combined their ideas with the rapidly growing wave of support for ending child labor and argued that spending too much time in school was detrimental to children’s intellectual, emotional, and physical growth.
America on the World Stage (1900-1945) – The Rise of Entertainment
First, board games became widely popular. One of the most impactful board games to appear during the Depression was none other than Monopoly, which allowed players to indulge in the fantasy of earning money at a time when the national unemployment rate was around 25%. Next, the film industry entered a kind of golden age as an average of 70 million Americans visited the movie theater every week. During this time, a ticket included not just a feature film but also a cartoon, a newsreel, and a B-feature, approximately four hours of total content. Popular pictures such asSnow White
Although miniature golf might not be a current global phenomenon, many aspects of tabletop games such as monopoly still endure to this day. Moreover, American cinema dominates theaters around the globe, and is one of the most recognizable aspects of American cultural production. In many ways America rose to become a global leader during the war-torn years of the First and Second World Wars. On the other hand, prominent aspects of American cultural influence, specifically its entertainment industry, developed during the peaceful, if not difficult, years of the Great Depression.
The Cold War Era (1946-1988) – Hot-Headed Plans for a Cold War
The Cold War era was a time of tense global posturing between the world’s two leading powers, America and the Soviet Union. Struggle for ideological dominance between these two nations included not only proxy wars, fought in so-called “Third World” countries in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and South America, but also attempts to manipulate public opinion and soft power across the globe. Despite being one of the most technologically developed nations, some of the plans that America came up with at this time seem to be less than intelligent in hindsight.
American espionage during the Cold War might generously be called creative.
A perhaps more sinister plan, which was actually implemented, was the notorious MK-Ultra.
Most history books will discuss the triumph of America in the Cold War, which ended in dramatic fashion with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the Soviet Union two years later. In terms of setbacks or otherwise regrettable actions taken up to that point, most books will discuss American involvement in fledgling independences movements in the so-called Third World, which were at the time in line with the principles of global containment. Beyond these often-publicized events,