North America

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 421.

Originally inhabited by Indians, North America long remained a sparsely settled and economically undeveloped land in global terms, but, with the coming of the Europeans (particularly the Spanish, French, and British), and the Africans they introduced as slaves, the

⁵ continent underwent a profound transformation. The European col­onizers regarded much of the continent as empty and waiting to be developed; hence, they bought out or pushed out the Indians and took over the country. The process of removing the Indians from their lands in the United States led to bitter disputes and to the cre-

¹⁰ ation of Indian "territories" that were eventually reduced to rela­tively small, isolated "reservations," most of which were located west of the Mississippi River. In Canada, the system of reservations was adopted early and protected Indian settlements throughout the eastern part of the country, even in rich agricultural areas. Intermar-

¹⁵ riage between whites and Indians was much more common in Mexi­co than in the United States and Canada; mestizos, of mixed Indian and white descent, now account for some three-fifths of the Mexi­can population.

North America can be divided into five cultural regions (north to

20 south): Canadian, American (U.S.), Mexican, Caribbean, and Central American. In Canada, the English Canadian culture domi­nates life in all the provinces except Quebec, where a separate French culture has remained active. In the United States a distinctively American culture has developed from the admixture of British and

²⁵ other European influences, the country's own frontier heritage, and cultural strains from Latin America, Africa, and Asia. In Mexico

the arts have been shaped by both Spanish and Indian cultural herit­ages. In spite of the divergencies in ancestry, language, and history, the island countries of the Caribbean share many elements of a' common culture, the result of their often parallel experiences as ³⁰ plantation colonies of African and Asian labourers dominated by distant European economic and political powers. Central America's cultural life has been largely shaped by Indian, Spanish, and black African cultures.

The first inhabitants of North America, the American Indians, are ³⁵ believed to have come from Asia, mostly by way of the Bering Strait land bridge, out of eastern Siberia. The dating of these migrations is imprecise, but they probably originated anywhere from 35,000 to 20,000 years ago, during the last interglacial period. These migrants remained Stone Age hunters and fishermen for millennia; indeed, a ⁴⁰ number of them were still in this state when the first Europeans saw them.

The greatest North American pre-Columbian civilizations were in Meso-America. The Olmec were the earliest, dating from about 1150 ВС. Olmec civilization developed in what is now southern Veracruz ⁴⁵ and Tabasco states, Mexico, and became best known for its sculpture. The Maya of Guatemala and the Yucatan Peninsula (300 ВС — AD 900) possessed one of the greatest civilizations of the Western Hemi­sphere. They built large stone buildings and pyramid temples, worked gold and copper, developed a precise calendar, and made use of hiero- ⁵⁰ glyphic writing. The Toltec (c. 10th to 12th century) are believed to have built a large empire in north-central Mexico, which by the 14th century had become the empire of the Aztec, centred on the city of . Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City). All of these Meso-American peo­ples achieved high levels of civilization. The Aztec, however, were no ⁵⁵ match for the technologically superior Spaniards, who by the mid-16th century had conquered all of Meso-America.

The population of pre-Columbian Mexico and Central America has been estimated at between 5,000,000 and 10,000,000, that of North America north of Mexico at between 1,000,000 and 4,000,000. The Indians north of Mexico did not develop intensive agriculture or an urban way of life, but various semisedentary peoples had estab­lished villages; and, among the Cherokee and the Iroquois, powerful federations of tribes had arisen by the time of European contact.

The European discovery of America resulted from a desire to find a western water route to the Orient. When it became obvious that North America stood in the way of this objective, the continent at­tracted the attention of those European powers interested in empire and mercantile trade. The Spaniards were the first to colonize the New World beginning early in the 16th century. The French estab­lished their first colony at Port Royal in Nova Scotia in 1605, the British at Jamestown in 1607. Both the Dutch and the Swedes set up short-lived colonies, and the Russians settled Alaska in the late 18th century. The British colonized the Eastern Seaboard of what is now the United States, while the French settled eastern portions of present-day Canada. The British became supreme in all of northern North America after defeating the French militarily in 1763 in the French and Indian War. The British were, in turn, evicted by the 13 colonies that officially became the United States of America in 1783. Canada remained in British hands until independence in 1926, and independence from Spain for Mexico and Central Ameri­ca came in 1821. By the time the westward-moving Americans had formally acquired the northern portion of Mexico in 1848, the cur­rent political boundaries of North America, for the most part, were

⁸⁵ established. The North American style of life became Latin Ameri­can (Hispanic) south of the Rio Grande and Anglo-American to the north, with enclaves of French influence in Quebec (Canada) and Louisiana (U.S.). Slavery, carried on between the 16th and 19th century, and its legacy added a significant minority culture of Afri­can origin, particularly in the United States and the Caribbean Is­lands.

The United States industrialized during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and, by the end of World War II, it had become the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the world. The United States'

⁹⁵ huge economy, abundant natural resources, large population, and military might gave North America and its peoples considerable glo­bal influence.

The nations of North America have sought hemispheric unity as members of the Organization of American States (OAS), a group whose membership also includes South American countries. The OAS aims to strengthen the security of the Western Hemisphere and promote the peaceful settlement of disputes among member states.

TASKS.

14.1Answer the following questions to check how well you have read the text:

1. What do you know about the inhabitants of North America? When
did this continent undergo a profound transformation?

2. What cultural regions can be found in North America? How did
culture develop in each region?

3. What was the style of life of the American Indians when the first Eu­
ropeans saw them? When and how did the first inhabitants of North
America reach this continent?

4. What civilizations existed in North America in pre-Columbus time?
What were the peculiarities of those civilizations?

5. What is known about pre-Columbian population of North America?

6. What brought about the European discovery of America? How did
Europeans colonize North America? What style of life was there in
different parts of North America?

7. When and why did North America become a powerful center of
world influence? What gave North America and its people consider­
able global influence? What did the nations of North America do to
achieve hemispheric unity?

14.2Transcribe the following words. Pay attention to the stress.

contribute ________________

ancestry___

hemisphere _ hieroglyphic

Maya_____

Yucatan___

Aztecs ____

Iroquois___

14.3Give English-Russian equivalents of the following expressions:

европейские колонизаторы; sparsely settled continent; глубокие изменения; the system of reservations; cultural regions; островные государства; cultural heritages; первые обитатели континента; the divergencies in ancestry; the dating is imprecise; каменный век; западное полушарие; pyramid temples; to develop intensive agricul­ture; открытие Америки; pre-Columbian civilizations; semisedentary

In the tenth century, Scandinavian seafarers known as Norsemen or Vikings actually established settlements in the New World, but al­most a thousand years passed before they received credit for their ac­complishment. In the year 984, a band of Vikings led by Eric the Red sailed west from Iceland to a large island in the North Atlantic. Eric, who possessed a fine sense of public relations, named the island Greenland. A few years later Eric's son Leif founded a small settle­ment he named Vinland at a location in northern Newfoundland. At the time, the Norse voyages went unnoticed by other Europeans. Soon the hostility of Native Americans, poor lines of communica­tion, and political upheavals in Scandinavia made maintenance of these distant outposts impossible. At the time of his first voyage in 1492, Columbus seemed to have been unaware of these earlier ex­ploits.