1. Monika Ahmadi
Final Essay
The structure of the international system differed in 1914 from that
off 1880 because there was a major shift of power in Europe between Great
Britain and Germany. Germany was challenging Great Britain's power outright
while the United States was indirectly challenging Britain on an economic
scale. This essay will demonstrate how a country's geography directly
influences it's economic and military statistics from 1880-1914 and also the
significant tensions between the European countries.
The dominant power at 1880 was Great Britain and she remained a
powerful country up to and beyond 1914. Britain held the greatest imperial
empire of all time and with that she also had to maintain the biggest navy of
that time. The British had a policy that her navy had to be twice in size to the
nearest competitor for her to be able to maintain her empire and fend off any
attacks or aggressions made by other competing countries.
Historical texts have documented the countless technologies, ideas,
diseases, plants and animals the European ships delivered around the world
during the Age of Exploration. However, these texts fail to include one key
cargo item: deforestation. European shipbuilding triggered an epidemic of
forest depletion that gradually spread to the lands they encountered. Beginning
in the early fourteenth century, wood fueled the increased production of
exploratory sea vessels. The loss of trees coincided with the rapid rate of
shipbuilding. Eventually, Europeans exploited their timber reserves to such an

2. extreme that they began looking elsewhere for wood, including colonies in
North America and Southeast Asia. With newfound resources, the European
shipbuilding machine churned on, yet before long deforestation also became an
issue in the colonial areas. Although shipbuilding played an integral role in a
period of European advancement, it devastated not only the European
environment but the forests of other continents as well.
Contributions to America Early American society was comprised of many
different elements. The biggest contributions to the society was the American
Indians, Africans, and, of course, the English, the biggest of the three. Their
relationship together was far different than what we have today. You wouldn’t
just see some African and view him as just another American. It also didn’t
have a triangular connection, where everyone interacted in some way with
everyone else. Instead it was more along the lines of the Africans relationship
with the English, and the Indians relationship with the English, not the Africans
and Indians relationship together. To take a closer look at this we need to first
look at each people separately. Native Americans
weren’t the same as a whole. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of
different tribes. These tribes had different ways of living than others. They
were hunters, agriculturists, hunter-gatherers, or fishers, and each one had
some different and some similar views. All of them had sexual of
their labor, but in different ways. The hunters had the men do the hunting and
the women do the food processing and clothing production. Such a sexual
division is not always common, however. In certain agricultural societies the

3. men were responsible for the agricultural labor. In others, the
men did the clearing of land, women did the rest of the work, and the men did
the hunting. It doesn’t seem like any one sex had more power than the other
did.
Squanto is a Native American who lived in the early seventeenth century in
what is now the Northeast United States. When the English came to this area of
America to settle, they became very fond of Squanto and used him as a
translator due to his unique knowledge of the English language acquired
through an earlier voyage to Europe. Squanto helped the Pilgrims adapt to their
new surroundings by providing them with the knowledge that he and his
ancestors used to survive when they first settled in this area. He became
known as a friend to the English and a spokesman for his Native friends.
However, in helping the English, Squanto realized the power he had obtained
through his position and used it for his own gain against the Native Americans.
He helped the English to destroy some Indian tribes and used trickery to obtain
undeserved favors from many people in his own tribe. While Squanto was
essential to the survival of the English in their American colonies, he betrayed
his Native American friends in the process of providing the English with what
they needed to survive.
Squanto spent much of his life living in the Plymouth Colony teaching
his newly acquired English friends how to survive in this foreign land. He helped
them greatly in the area of growing and gathering food. Without the help of

4. Squanto, the English never would have discovered many important methods
involved in growing a decent crop.
After Christopher Columbus landed in the West Indies in 1492, Spain
and Portugal started disputing areas of influence on the South American
continent. The dispute was eventually settled by the Pope (Alexander VI), who
in 1493, drew up defined areas of influence for the two nations with the idea
of spreading Christianity to the natives in those territories. In time the
Portuguese territory became known as Brazil, hence the working language of
that country to this day is Portuguese, while most of the rest of the continent
speaks Spanish.
On 1 August 1498, during his third voyage, Columbus finally sighted the
South American mainland for the first time. The next white explorer to reach
the continent was the Portuguese navigator Pedro Cabral, who anchored off
the coast of present day Brazil in April 1500 - a territory which he then claimed
for Portugal. However, the claim was ignored for more than 30 years by
Portugal itself, whose sailors had in the interim sailed round Africa to India.
During this time of Portuguese indifference, the Spanish seized the
initiative in Central America and the West Indies. In 1519, the Portuguese
explorer Ferdinand Magellan, then employed by the Spaniards, first sailed up
the Rio de la Plata River. He then proceeded south and in November 1520, first
sailed round the southernmost part of South America and sighted the Pacific
Ocean.

5. We have been one nation for so long that it is hard to imagine a major
difference between the thirteen original colonies. After all a quick glance at a
map of these thirteen original colonies will tell you that they all where
established along the East Coast and where most generally located on a river or
body of water. What is strange about this is just how different each of these
separate areas of settlement turned out to be. After all they where located
relatively close to one another and should have had adequate communication
available to them by the numerous water channels close at hand. So why was
there such a huge difference in the way that they developed? The two most
contrasting of these would have to be the Puritans and other religious groups
that chose to settle in the New England region, and the colonies founded for
profit in the Chesapeake Bay region. If you look closely at these two
concentrations of people you will see that they have great differences in their
religion, government, family, economics and the very geography that they
where established in. These differences coupled with a very different reason
for journeying to the New World helped to form two very unique cultures that
exist to some extent today.
Between the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the Treaty of Paris in
1763, the most important change that occurred in the colonies was the
emergence of society quite different from that in England. Changes in religion,
economics, politics and social structure illustrate this Americanization of the
transplanted Europeans.
By 1763, although some colonies still maintained established churches, other

6. colonies had accomplished a virtual revolution for religious toleration and
separation of church and state. Between the two established churches, in the
colonies, Anglican and Congregational, a considerable number of people didn't
worship in any church. But in the colonies with a maintained religion, only a
few belonged to it. As in England, Catholics were still discriminated against,
but since their numbers were fewer the laws were less severe. Similarly, The
Church of England was established in America, as it was in England already
Native Americans had inherited the land now called America and
eventually their lives were destroyed due to European Colonization. When the
Europeans arrived and settled, they changed the Native American way of life
for the worst. These changes were caused by a number of factors including
disease, loss of land, attempts to export religion, and laws, which violated
Native American culture.
Native Americans never came in contact with diseases that developed
in the Old World because they were separated from Asia, Africa, and Europe
when ocean levels rose following the end of the last Ice Age. Diseases like
smallpox, measles, pneumonia, influenza, and malaria were unknown to the
Native Americans until the Europeans brought these diseases over time to
them. This triggered the largest population decline in all recorded history. Fifty
percent of the Native American population had died of disease within twenty
years. Soon after, Native Americans began to question their religion and
doubted the ability of shamen to heal. This was the first step towards the
destruction of Native cultures. The Native Americans had never experienced

7. anything like these deadly diseases before and they came to believe that
Europeans had the power to kill or give life.

8. Reference:
The World Almanac. http://www.worldalmanac.com/
DOAJ - Directory of Open Access Journals, 2009, Lund University Libraries,
http://www.doaj.org/
Wikipedia.http://www.google.com/search?
hl=en&q=wikipedia&rlz=1R2GGLL_en&aq=0&oq=wik&aqi=g10