The Discovery of the new world, colonial literature, Native Americans, Beringia, Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Britain, Spain, Slavery, American Literature. by Nikki Akraminejad
2. The “Discovery”?
Although called “the discovery” of the New World of
America, in fact it was a rediscovery.
Numerous Asians are believed to had formed the
very first settlers of America who immigrated there
thousands of years ago.
500 years before Columbus was born, Leif
Erikson went to America along with his father and
other Vikings(Norse).
3. Native Americans
The Native Americans or the
Indians are the preColumbian inhabitants
of North and South America and
their descendants.
Application of the term
"Indian” originated
with Christopher Columbus, who
thought that he had arrived in
the East Indies, while seeking Asia.
4. Native Americans
The New World was first inhabited
anywhere from 40,000 to 12,000 years
ago, by people from eastern Asia.
By 1500, Native Americans numbered 15
million in North America and spoke 300
different language.
5.
According to a prevailing New World migration
model, migrations of humans from Eurasia to
the Americas took place via Beringia, a land
bridge which connected the two continents across
what is now the Berin Strait.
6. Columbus Found the Americas
Christopher Columbus
discovered America in 1492 whilst
he was searching for a new trade
route to the indies (china).
This unwanted discovery that
huge land masses lay between the
way to the Orient caused huge
disappointments at first.
7. Amerigo Vespucci
In1499 Amerigo Vespucci
explored the coast South
America. He demonstrated
that the New World was not
Asia but a previouslyunknown forth continent.
The name America derives
from the Latin version of his
first name- Amerigo.
8.
The centuries after the arrival of Columbus
witnessed the eradication of the native tribes
by Europeans settling upon their hunting grounds
and, later, by Americans intent upon the great drive
westwards in the search of new land and
opportunity.
9. Britain
Inspired by the Spanish riches from colonies
founded upon the conquest of
the Aztecs, Incas, and other large Native
American populations in the sixteenth century,
the first Englishmen to settle permanently in
America hoped for some of the same rich
discoveries when they established their first
permanent settlement in Jamestown,
Virginia in 1607.
10. Britain
The British claimed most of the Atlantic seaboard
north of Florida as belonging to Britain soon after
Columbus discovered land across the Atlantic
Ocean.
11. Britain
Thirteen colonies were well established by the
middle of the eighteenth centuries and although each
had a governor, the were ultimately answerable to
the British crown.
In the French colonial regions, the focus of economy
was on sugar plantations in Caribbean. In Canada
the fur trade with the natives was important. About
16,000 French men and women became colonizers.
Their colony was taken over by Britain in 1760.
13. The search for riches
the hope of finding gold etc.
From the beginning of Virginia's settlements in
1587 until the 1680s, the main source of labor and
a large portion of the immigrants were indentured
servants looking for new life in the overseas
colonies. Most of the indentured servants were
teenagers from England with poor economic
prospects at home. Their fathers signed the papers
that gave them free passage to America and an
unpaid job until they became of age.
14. Religious Immigration
Many groups of colonists came to the Americas
searching for the right to practice their religion
without persecution.
A strong believer in the notion of rule by divine
right, England's Charles I persecuted religious
dissenters. Waves of repression led to the
migration of about 20,000 Puritans to New
England between 1629 and 1642, where they
founded multiple colonies.
15. Forced immigration (Slavery)
Slavery existed in the Americas, prior to the
arrival of Europeans, as the Natives often
captured and held other tribes' members as
captives.
The Spanish followed with the enslavement of
local aborigines in the Caribbean.
16. Forced immigration
As the native populations declined (mostly from
European diseases, but also and significantly
from forced exploitation and careless murder),
they were often replaced by Africans imported
through a large commercial slave trade.
By the 18th century, the overwhelming number
of black slaves was such that Native American
slavery was less commonly used. Africans, who
were taken aboard slave ships to the Americas,
were primarily obtained from their African
homelands by coastal tribes who captured and
sold them.
17.
18. Education
In the absence of schools the higher education
naturally languished. Some of the planters
were taught at home by tutors, and others
went to England and entered the universities.
But these were few in number, and there was
no college in the colony until more than half a
century after the foundation of Harvard in the
younger province of Massachusetts.
19. Colonial Literature
The literature produced in the part of America
known as the United States did not begin as
an independent literature. England bestowed
on the earliest settlers the English language,
books, and modes of thought. England had an
established literature long before the first
permanent settlement across the Atlantic was
considered.
20. Colonial Literature
American writing began with the work of
English adventurers and colonists in the New
World chiefly for the benefit of readers in the
mother country.
Some of these early works reached the level
of literature, as in the robust and perhaps
truthful account of his adventures by Captain
John Smith.
21. Colonial Literature
From the beginning, however, the literature of
New England was also directed to the
edification and instruction of the colonists
themselves, intended to direct them in the
ways of the godly.
22. Religious Literature
The first work published in the Puritan colonies
was the Ba y Ps a lm Bo o k (1640), and the
whole effort of the divines who wrote furiously
to set forth their views to defend and promote
visions of the religious state.
23.
The approach of the American Revolution and
the achievement of the actual independence
of the United States was a time of intellectual
activity as well as social and economic
change.
25. North vs. South Literature
The rising conflict between the North and the
South that ended in the Civil War was reflected in
regional literature. The crusading spirit against
Southern slavery in Harriet Beecher Stowe's
overwhelmingly successful novel Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852) can be compared with the violent
anti-Northern diatribes of William Gilmore Simms.
26.
27. Post-civil war Literature
Once the war was over, literature gradually
regained a national identity amid expanding
popularity, as writings of regional origin began to
find a mass audience.
28.
The most important of original sources for the
history of the settlement of New England are the
journals of William Bradford, first governor of
Plymouth, and John Winthrop, the second governor
of Massachusetts, which hold a place
corresponding to the writings of Captain John
Smith in the Virginia colony, but are much more
sober and trustworthy.