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American colonies
The Mayflower -
Slavery (beggining)
Portuguese and Dutch conquistadors captured people born in Africa who then sold as slaves in the English, Spanish and Portuguese colonies in America. Sold for work in mines and plantations. -
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1607: Virginia and Colonial literature
- England Jamestown Settlement
- Colonial American Literature: Influenced by Brittish writters in poems, journals, letters, narratives, histories and teaching material. Puritan writings and poetry
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1620: Massachussets
England´s Plymouth Colony founded by the Pilgrims -
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1681: Penssylvania
England´s Penssylvania colony -
13 colonies established
(divided into New England, Middle and Southern)
The 13 colonies were chiefly governed by the British until the time of the Revolutionary war. However, others did try to seize control of the colonies several times, such as during the French and Indian war . -
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1767: The Townshend Acts
The Townshend Acts passed by Parliament in 1767 and imposing duties on various products imported into the British colonies had raised such a storm of colonial protest and noncompliance that they were repealed in 1770 -
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Americas meet at the continental congress.
Together with the “Sons of liberty” started to mobilize for independence and to store ammunition. -
Boston Tea Party
Political protest occurred at Griffin's Wharf in Boston, Massachusetts, where American colonists, frustrated and angry at Britain for imposing “taxation without representation,” dumped 342 chests of tea, imported by the British East India Company into the harbor. -
American revolution
The American Revolution was the insurrection through which 13 of Great Britain's North American colonies threw off British rule to establish the sovereign USA. -
The golden door
So many immigrants wanted to enter the United Stares in the late 1800s that the governmeni found it difficult to keep check on them. To control the situation, it opened a special place of control in New
York harbor. This place was called Ellis Island.
All intending immigrants were examined there before they we re allowed to enter the United States. Millions of poor European immigrants worked their way into the middle class thanks to the city's booming economy and its free schools. -
The beggining of American literature
American literature is often divided into five major periods:
The Romantic period (1830 to 1870)
Realism and Naturalism (1870 to 1910)
The Modernist period (1910 to 1945)
The Contemporary period (1945 to present) -
The romantic period
Any list of particular characteristics of the literature of romanticism includes subjectivity and an emphasis on individualism; spontaneity; freedom from rules; solitary life rather than life in society. -
Trascendentalism
Beginning in New England in 1836, various visionaries, intellectuals, scholars, and writers would come together regularly to discuss spiritual ideas. The Transcendentalists believed that for every person there exists a private relationship between the self and the universe. -
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Years of growth
In 1848 the population was 15.000 people. By 1852 the population was more than 250.000. Some of the new arrivals traveled by sea to the port of San Francisco.
Congress in 1862 it granted land and money to the Union Pacific Railroad Company to build a railroad west from the Mississippi towards the Pacific. At the same time, it gave a similar grant to the Central Pacific Railroad Company to build eastwards from California.
By 1884 four more major lines had crossed the continent. -
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American Civil War
Began in 1861, after decades of simmering tensions between northern and southern states over slavery, states’ rights and westward expansion. The election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 caused seven southern states to secede and form the Confederate States of America; four more states soon joined them.
The conflict was the costliest and deadliest war ever fought on American soil, with some 620,000 of 2.4 million soldiers killed, millions more injured and much of the South left in ruin.
Ended in 1865. -
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Reconstruction
The period that followed the American Civil War and during which attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak of war. -
Abolition of slavery
The 13th Amendment officially abolished slavery, but freed Black peoples’ status in the post-war South remained precarious, and significant challenges awaited during the Reconstruction period. -
Inventors and Industries
In 1876 President Ulysses S. Grant travelled to Philadelphia to open the Centennial Exhibition. The main American
inventions were typewriter and the telephone as well as machines for countless other uses- for sewing, grinding, screwing, printing, drilling, pumping,hammering.
In the years that followed American industries grew quickly. The production of coal and iron grew especially fast. These were the most important industrial raw materials in the nineteenth century. -
The last stand of Amerindians
In December, 1890 the Amerindians left their reservation led by a chief named Big Foot, but soldiers stopped them on the way. Within minutes, most of the Amerindians were dead or badly wounded. For the survivors, that marked the end of all hope of a return to their old way of life.
In 1924, Congress passed the Indian Citizenship Act. This recognized Amerindians as full citizens of the United Stares and gave them the right to vote. -
African American Literature
The body of literature produced in the United States by writers of African descent. It begins with the works of such late 18th-century writers as Phillis Wheatley and includes themes: the exploration of black identity, the condemnation of racism, and the celebration of the unique aspects of African-American culture.