The main features of socio-economic development.
The formation of an independent state and the elimination of feudal elements created the conditions for the rapid development of capitalism in the United States. Important favorable factors of capitalist growth were the presence in the United States of vast lands and natural resources, massive immigration from Europe and the influx of foreign capital.
One of the characteristics of the profession, evident in its early days and today, is that it tends to follow the market for the goods and services it provides. It responds highly to perceived and expressed public demand. Supply-push is also a significant factor, but it tends to be very convenient and rarely allows engineers to structure and direct demand autonomously. Moreover, once the market is created, the technology is developed, and production moves forward, the system tends to drive output to maximize profits.
After the Revolutionary War, the socio-economic development of the United States proceeded along two main lines. An industrial revolution unfolded in the northeastern part of the country, and the main classes of bourgeois society were formed. The development of industry took place in the conditions of the growth of capitalism "in breadth", in the colonized areas of the West of the United States, farming was developing. In the southern states, the plantation slave economy was strengthened and spread to new territories. The simultaneous development of capitalist production in the North and slavery in the South later led to a clash of two social systems - to the second bourgeois revolution in the United States.
When it comes to small development of new technologies, the volume of production often increases as long as demand continues. This process stops only due to the drying up of demand, either through saturation, or through the obsolescence of technology. Since demand is influenced by factors such as competition and business cycles, it is not always possible to predict exactly what demand will be. Consequently, there is little to hinder the expected changes in demand on the internal “brake”.
Given these conditions, engineering is forced to closely monitor trends, this is true at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels. This means that the education system is struggling with current trends in demand and technology, and therefore “exit” is always slightly hampered by external conditions in skills and orientation. This was a notable problem for engineering schools even in the nineteenth century, and today it forms part of the basis for the modern argument that engineering education should emphasize the foundations rather than the trend of the moment.
Industrial revolution and its features.
At the end of XVIII - early XIX v. in the United States, the prerequisites for an industrial revolution arose. He had significant features here. In America, European technical and scientific achievements, capital, machinery and, most importantly, skilled labor. Another feature of the US industrial revolution was its uneven nature. In the first half of the XIX century. it was localized mainly in the northeastern states. The industrial revolution began in the cotton and wool weaving industries. In 1790, the first spinning mill was opened in the USA, and in 1814, for the first time, spinning and weaving processes were combined in one mill.
Strong adaptability to business requirements is a necessary king. Convergence with market conditions. Because by the early twentieth century, most engineers were employees of corporations, the fate of engineers and engineers was strongly identified with the fate of companies and industries. This meant that by that time there was relatively little professional self-determination for individual engineers, and that professional societies were largely subordinate to the interests and needs of the industries served by their members.
Thus, the group believes that adaptability is a strong point in technology, as it contributes to the preservation and economic survival of professions. But it is a weak point in that professional engineers depend on forces that are largely beyond their control.
The industrial revolution, which unfolded mainly in the 1920s and 1940s, stretched out over several decades. The reasons that hindered its development were, on the one hand, the economic dependence of the United States on England (competition with British industry), on the other, the process of capitalism development "in breadth": the colonization of the West was accompanied by a temporary return to manual technology (farmers and artisans carried with them the usual manual spinning wheel and hand loom). In the first half of the XIX century. handicrafts and manufactories retained a significant share in the economy. However, the industrial revolution developed irreversibly, embracing all new branches of production. Mechanical engineering grew. The reaper and sewing machine were invented and introduced into mass production. Colt introduced the standardization of parts in revolver production.
Much of the discussion so far has tended to view technology as a monolithic, homogeneous enterprise. Each of these branches tended to acquire its own characteristics and its own particular orientation towards the practice of technology, arising from the particular circumstances in which it operated. The existence of separate professional societies for each discipline is a factor. Another is the division of engineering schools. The close relationship of different industries with different industries has greatly reinforced this trend.
The expansion of the domestic market led in the first quarter of the 19th century. to extensive canal construction. The creation of a steamer in 1807 by R. Fulton revolutionized shipbuilding. In 1828-1830. the first railway was built, connecting the city of Baltimore with the Ohio River, and by 1848 in the United States there were already about 10 thousand km railways... However, most of the rails for them were still imported from England. The transition to steam engine... The originality of the industrial revolution in textile industry consisted in the fact that it almost exclusively used the energy of water as the main motive force. There were many rivers in the country, the cheap energy of which was easy and profitable to use.
In this way, the fragmentation of technique has made it possible to more firmly reinforce natural differences in personalities, interests, and perspectives. According to the group, the danger lies in this great variety is that it can contribute to a trend towards narrow specialization in engineering institutions and among engineering disciplines. The diversification followed a natural diversification of technology and product lines, but this meant that a somewhat narrow focus inevitably prevailed in the engineering career, which may have diminished the cohesion of the engineering profession so that there is less sense in sharing the commitment and value that is seen, for example, among clergy, such as the military or medical and legal professions.
The last stage of the industrial revolution - the production of machines with the help of machines - began in the USA in the 1850s. The industrial maturity of American capitalism was evidenced by the involvement of the United States in economic crises. Cyclical crises of 1837 and
1847 were very destructive, thousands of workers were thrown into the street. The most important social outcome of the industrial revolution in the United States, as in other countries, was the emergence of the industrial bourgeoisie and the factory proletariat.
Structurally, however, diversity is only an issue if it prevents the occupation from adapting as it develops. One of the goals of the next chapter is to see if that was the case. In the late 19th century, immigrants came to the United States in droves. This increased the number of immigrants as a proportion of the population to 15%, from 10% during this period.
Most of them did not speak English, practiced different religious practices than the natives, and avoided politically or economically treacherous situations. Most of them were unskilled workers, although a small number were highly educated.
Formation of the farming path of development of capitalism in agriculture.
The industrial revolution in the northeastern United States went hand in hand with the colonization of the West. Lenin, giving a scientific analysis of this feature of the development of American capitalism, wrote: “The first process expresses the further development of the existing capitalist relations; the second is the formation of new capitalist relations in the new territory. The first process means the development of capitalism in depth, the second - in breadth ”29. Initially, the public land fund included lands immediately west of the Allegheny Mountains. Subsequently, this fund increased by capturing new territories. The struggle over land allocation has been an essential part of the class struggle in the United States, from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War. Under pressure from the farming and labor movement, the government and Congress were forced to gradually reduce the size of the plots for sale from 640 to 80 acres, and to allow the sale in installments. A significant number of settlers privately occupied the lands of the public fund that had not yet entered the market: the law of 1841 on the right of borrowing gave the squatters the right to purchase the land they had already cultivated at a nominal price. This legislation helped to increase the flow of migrants to western lands... If in 1790 to the west of Allegan lived 222 thousand people, then in 1850 10.4 million (45% of the country's population).
Immigrants from the late 19th and early 20th centuries had a surprisingly positive and lasting impact on the places where they settled, according to a recently published study. Not only have immigrants gone to the most economically promising places, but the presence of immigrants has boosted the economy. Researchers demonstrate this through a mentally identified natural experiment.
If the city was connected to the railroad, immigrants were more likely to settle there. If the county was first connected to the railroad during one of these boom years, it received an unusually large number of immigrants. Places that were first linked in more depressed years received fewer immigrants. Researchers found that the county was connected to the railroad during the boom year, making it an ideal natural experiment to understand the long-term implications of immigration.
Thus, on vast territories was created economic basis for the rapid development of capitalism. Since the migrant acquired land directly from the state, and not from the landowner, this land was free of absolute rent, which significantly reduced
29 Lenin V.I.Poln. collection op. T. 3.P. 563.
the cost of agricultural products. Only for a short time the settlers' economy was of a subsistence nature. In the colonized areas, there was a process of growing patriarchal farms into capitalist farms. In 1860, the number of agricultural laborers was 800 thousand people, with a total number of farms 2.4 million. By the middle of the XIX century. the economy of the farmer West was to a large extent commercial in nature, its products were sold in the industrial East and the slave-owning South.
Incompetent newcomers provided labor for industrialization, and highly skilled parishes helped spur innovation in agriculture and manufacturing. The data also show that the long-term benefits of immigration have not come to the short-term value for the economy as a whole. More immigrants almost immediately led to a more dynamic economy.
Even with an increase in immigration in the short term, the evidence suggests that the offspring of these workers will be better off. In the last century, different courses have been taken compared to Latin America. Independence movements in North and Latin America have produced different results. Unlike Latin America, the concept of Confederation was able to prevail in the North American revolution of independence. Social revolutionary movements from below, which were also hallmark Latin American independence movements were defeated or integrated relatively quickly.
Plantation slavery.
While profound changes in industry and agriculture were taking place in the North, the slave system continued to dominate the southern states. The fate of the slave-owning South was strongly influenced by the tremendous growth of the English textile industry during the industrial revolution (and then the development of the textile industry in the north of the United States) and the emergence of a new commercial cotton crop. Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793, which increased productivity a thousandfold, made it profitable to grow cotton of all varieties. Slavery, which was tending to decline, found a second wind. The production of cotton for the emerging world market made it fully commercial production. “... To the barbaric horrors of slavery, serfdom, etc.,” wrote Marx, “the civilized horror of excessive labor is added ... useful products. It was about producing the surplus value itself. ”30 Cotton production increased from Ztys. bales (in a bale of 1,000 pounds) in 1790 to 3.8 million bales in 1860. During the same period, the number of black slaves increased from 700 thousand to 4 million. the order of life.
This dispute was between different modes of production in the north and south. The decision in favor of internal market development has freed up the capitalist development potential. In Latin America, this dispute over shared economic orientation could hardly have been resolved in one country, despite decades of bloody conflict. This meant, first of all, the exclusion and destruction of the Indians of North America. It's about the trail under President Andrew Jackson. V economically behind the repression was the cultivation of the Great Plains for livestock.
The following master data gives a picture of the rate of this expansion. This allowed the animal husbandry of the Great Planets or their meat reserves to gain access to the world market. The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the United States. The Rationale for Slavery in the United States.
One of the means by which the planters sought to make slavery profitable was to intensify the already brutal exploitation of black slaves.
30 Marx K. Engels F. Op. 2nd ed. T. 23.S. 247.
At the same time, with the extensive nature of the slave economy, an unlimited reserve of free land was required. In this sense, the transition to new lands was the economic law of the existence of plantation slavery. By the 1930s, the center of the plantation economy had moved to the southwest, to the fertile lands of the lower Mississippi basin. The Cotton Belt now stretches 1,000 miles from east to west and 700 miles from north to south. Finally, slavery, based on poor technology and low labor productivity, could pay off and be profitable thanks to the cotton monopoly of the southern states, which accounted for two-thirds of the world's cotton production.
Cotton Gin - The Rise of Slavery in the United States. Effects of efficiency gains. The era of slavery in the United States of America is probably one of the darkest heads of this state, along with the genocide of the indigenous peoples and the subsequent land grab. It is still difficult for the American society to discuss or debate this chapter objectively, as evidenced by the controversial and heated discussions around Django Unchenen Quentin Tarantino. The legacy of slavery remains heavily dependent on the United States.
But this housework should not be about social discourse about the past of the slave owner, but about the history of slavery in the United States. What role did the young republic play in the transatlantic triangular trade? What are the reasons for your adherence to slavery for so long? How could people not only tolerate this "peculiar institution" at that time, but also justify it? These questions should be answered, although the answer may not be clear due to many aspects.
The slave system fettered the development of industry and agriculture. The agrarian South was not even able to feed itself and imported food. Here, in fact, a caste society was formed, at the top of which was the oligarchy of large slave owners: 50 or more slaves were owned by about 10 thousand planters; the vast majority of white southerners were poor white people, poisoned by racial prejudice.
Within a few years, this relatively unnoticed invention of the late twentieth century turned the United States into the largest cotton importer and helped slavery in the southern states in unimaginable ways, unlike the rest of the world, where slavery was gradually abolished.
The Transatlantic Slave Trade and the Role of the United States
To find out what are the implications for this machine and what are the long-term implications. At least in relative proportion to The Caribbean under British and Spanish; and Brazil under Portuguese rule. Of the millions of slaves sent across the Atlantic, North Americans only bought about six percent.
Features of the party political struggle.
Since the end of the 18th century. essential element the political life of the United States was the alternate dominance of two parties. Nothing was said about parties in the constitution, but they turned out to be necessary to protect the interests of the bourgeois-planter bloc that came to power and the uninterrupted functioning of the state mechanism.
The transatlantic slave trade included the transfer of goods between coastal regions West Africa, America and Europe. From Africa, kidnapped or purchased slaves were transported by ship across the Atlantic to South America, Caribbean and North America for work there, both in agriculture and in mines. From the colonies in the New World, raw materials were sent to Europe for profitable sale or further processing. England, in particular, needed overseas cotton for its textile industry during the Industrial Revolution.
From Europe, goods such as firearms, metal objects, alcohol and textiles were then sold to Africa or exchanged for slaves. Alternatively, goods and alcohol are sent to Europe directly to Africa, where they are. a. were exchanged for more slaves.
The most important feature in the activities of the parties was the gradual folding of the mechanism of the two-party system. During the period of "free" capitalism, the common platform of parties' consent was the recognition of the foundations of the existing bourgeois relations and the principles of the constitution of 1787. The differences between the bourgeois parties during this period were determined to a large extent by the difference in the interests of developing capitalism "in breadth" and "in depth", agrarian and commercial industrial development; the rivalry was complicated by the fact that the southern planters-slaveholders were on the side of agrarian interests. At the end of the XVIII - the first half of the XIX century. in close connection with the socio-political development of the country and the course of the class struggle, the bipartisan system went through a number of stages. The first national political parties of federalists and republicans, which dominated in 1790-1810, were replaced by the one-party "era of good agreement", and in the second quarter of the 19th century. a bipartisan system "Whigs - Democrats" was constituted, which crashed in the 50s on the rock of slavery.
By the century it is estimated that some twelve million Africans had been sent across the Atlantic by ship, many of whom died as a result of miserable conditions. Aside from miserable hygiene conditions, poor food and water supplies and travel times were an acute shortage of space. Each slave on the slave ship averaged just under 1.5 square meters of space. An estimated 10 to 20 percent died during the trip. Although this number subsequently dropped significantly, the rate was still very high compared to normal crossing deaths.
Federalist rule.
The first decade of the existence of the United States under a "new roof", under the auspices of the 1787 constitution, was the time of the political dominance of the federalists. They represented the interests of the commercial, manufacturing and financial bourgeoisie, whose positions were firmly established primarily in the states of New England. The political philosophy of the federalists, which had been taking shape back in the days of the struggle over the constitution, was imbued with anti-democracy; it openly viewed the state as a tool designed to serve the interests of the haves and keep the people in check.
George Washington became the first president of the United States in 1789. Although he claimed to be an opponent of the parties, in fact, his sympathies were completely on the side of the federalists. Treasury Secretary A. Hamilton (later the leader of the Federalist Party) became a key figure in the Washington cabinet. A man of conservative political views (the British constitutional monarchy served as a model for him) and outstanding energy, he formulated and implemented the economic policy of the young bourgeois state - the United States. In the interests of war loan holders, Hamilton offered to pay the huge national debt at the expense of the federal government. As a source for repayment of the debt were the funds received from the sale of public land, and taxes from the population. In 1791, on the initiative of Hamilton, the National Bank was founded. Its task was to provide loans to public and private businesses. He also received the right to issue paper money for the entire country. Major finance took an active part in it.
sista, English capital was also widely attracted. Hamilton put forward a program to encourage industry and trade through the introduction of protective tariffs, improved communications, etc.
The farming poor were the first to feel the burden of the new tax policy. Excitement reigned in the western regions of the country. In 1794, in Pennsylvania, the dissatisfaction of the farmer masses resulted in an open uprising. Then Washington ordered the suppression of the "rebellion", and in order to demonstrate the strength of the government, a 15,000-strong army was thrown against the violators of the law.
The foreign policy of the Federalists, an important part of which was the economic and political orientation towards England, also had a clearly expressed class character. This was especially evident in the course of the development of the Great French Revolution. The overwhelming majority of Americans greeted news of events in France with enthusiasm. Democratic clubs were created in the cities to defend the revolution in France and political freedoms in the United States. The ruling classes viewed the revolution in France differently, especially after the overthrow of the monarchy. Paying tribute to the American Revolution, Lafayette sent Washington the keys to the Bastille. But the federalists did not accept the idea of the continuity of revolutions. When the Ambassador of the French Republic Renet arrived in the United States in 1793, he was greeted with emphatic coldness by President Washington. In the residence for the reception, portraits of the executed Louis XVI and members of his family were demonstratively displayed. Renet's attempt to renew the allied treaty of 1778 and to get help from the United States ended in failure.
The anti-democratic political course of the federalists reached its climax under President John Adams, who replaced Washington in 1797. Fearing the rise of radicalism in the United States, laws were passed that posed a serious threat to political freedoms and the Bill of Rights. The Aliens Act, directed against European revolutionaries who emigrated to America, gave the president the right to expel them from the country. The Treason Act provided for fines and jail time for criticizing the government in print.
Jeffersonian Democracy.
An important consequence of the domestic and foreign policy of the federalists was the party demarcation: the formation of the opposition Republican Party began. As a result of a bitter political struggle, Jeff-Pherson was elected president in 1800. The period of Jeffersonian Republican rule came. The fall of the Federalists was not accidental. In a country where 90% of the population was engaged in agriculture, they pursued an economic policy in the interests of the narrow system of the trade and financial bourgeoisie. In the political sphere, the federalists launched an offensive against the bourgeois democratic gains brought about by the War of Independence. The focus on England did not contribute to the strengthening of the national sovereignty of the United States.
The Republican Party of that time expressed the interests of planters, farmers, small owners of the city, intertwined in a complex knot. Its main strength was farming, whose ideologues harbored illusions about a republic of independent small farmers that could supposedly save America from the harmful consequences of industrial development and the domination of the commercial and financial bourgeoisie. But this was not a conservative patriarchal utopia, the struggle for a democratic solution to the land issue objectively created the conditions for the fullest development of capitalism in agriculture and throughout the country. The right flank of the party was made up of slave-owners-planters, for whom the understanding of freedom was reduced to the autonomy of the states. Under her protection, it was easier for them to preserve the "special institution" of slavery - the "king of cotton" began to gain strength.
Of the economic transformations carried out by Jefferson, the most important was the partial agrarian reform: the size of the plots that were acquired from the state land fund was reduced. In softening the acuteness of the agrarian question, the acquisition by the United States in 1803 of French Louisiana, a huge territory west of the Mississippi, was of no small importance. Swallowed up by the war with England Napo-
Leon sold Louisiana for $ 15 million. Streams of planters and farmers rushed to new lands.
Reflecting the demands of the popular masses in the political field, the Republicans abolished the laws on foreigners and treason, the state apparatus was reduced and cheapened, and the size of the army and navy was significantly reduced.
Though domestic politics Republicans significantly differed from the federalist, and there was continuity in many spheres of state activity. Jefferson the president was much more moderate than Jefferson the educator. He abandoned the US development program along a purely agrarian path and, guided by pragmatic considerations, pursued a policy of encouraging US commercial and industrial development. Tariffs protected the young American industry, the resources of the state were used for the development of shipping and road construction. The Republicans did not touch the National Bank, the stronghold of the New England financial bourgeoisie.
The course of international events had a strong influence on the internal political situation of the United States. The wars in Europe, which killed and ruined millions of people, enriched American merchants. The US fleet increased from 1789 to 1807 more than sixfold. The largest fortunes rose on income from foreign trade. The United States supplied food to all the belligerent countries. On this basis, relations between the United States and France and Britain have become aggravated.
In subsequent years, the contradictions between the United States and Britain intensified so much that they led to the war of 1812-1814. The British government sought to take revenge, again to make the United States dependent on England. On the US side, the just goals of protecting national sovereignty were intertwined with expansionist aspirations for Canada. The war was unfavorable for the United States. Attempts to invade the territory of Canada failed, only at sea did American privateers operate successfully. In 1814, after the end of the war in Europe, the British sent new troops to America. They took the capital, Washington, and burned the Capitol. With the threat of US independence, the war acquired a patriotic character, and the morale of American troops increased. The British failed to take either New York or Baltimore. The peace treaty signed at the end of 1814 restored the pre-war situation. The news of the signing of the treaty coincided with the major victory of the American General E. Jackson near New Orleans in January 1815.
From the period of "good agreement" to the bipartisan system of "Whig-Democrats".
The war with England delimited the first stage of the US party political history. The policies of the Republican administrations, taking into account the needs of the commercial and industrial development of the United States, knocked the ground from under the feet of the federalists as a rival party. The war of 1812-1814, in which the federalists took a pro-British position, finally swept them out of the political arena. The onset of the sole rule of the Republican Party, known as the "era of good agreement", was a time of political regrouping, taking into account changes in the balance of power in ruling classes... And there have been significant changes. The incipient industrial revolution brought the industrial bourgeoisie into the political arena. The plantation South entered a period of cotton boom, and its most eloquent orator, J. Calhoun, was sophisticated in sophistry about the "natural inequality" of people. Any political group had to reckon with the growing role of farming as the West was colonized.
In 1819-1820. there was a sharp political clash over the issue of slavery. The reason was the discussion in Congress about the admission of the state of Missouri to the union, but it was actually a question of whether there should be slavery or freedom on the land of the previously acquired Louisiana. In a compromise adopted by Congress, Missouri was accepted as a slave state and Maine as a free state. The number of free and slave states remained equal in the union. It was also established that in the future on the lands of Louisiana, lying north of 36 ° 30 ", slavery would be prohibited.
The Missouri Compromise temporarily delayed the inevitable conflict between the two social systems.
The "era of good agreement" did not last long. At the turn of the 1930s, a bipartisan "Whig-Democrats" system emerged on the ruins of the Republican Party. The rival parties were very variegated in their social composition. The democrats were dominated by the plantation-farmer bloc (such heterogeneous forces were temporarily united by the opposition of the northern bourgeoisie and a common interest in expansion to the western lands). The backbone of the Whigs was the commercial and industrial circles of the North and part of the planters, connected with them by commercial ties.
The Democratic Party was in power with short interruptions for thirty years before the Civil War. The most important period was the so-called era of Jackson - the time of the two-time stay of the Democrat General E. Jackson as president (1829-1837). At a time when the issue of slavery had not yet come to the fore in the socio-political life of the country, Jackson very successfully maneuvered among heterogeneous political forces. Coming from a poor family, who made his way up, he was known among Western farmers as a radical and an enemy of the hated financial tycoons. For southerners, Jackson (himself a slave-owning planter from Tennessee) was a man who would never go against slavery.
The political struggle during Jackson's presidency developed around issues of the National Bank, tariffs, and the democratization of political life. Jackson liquidated the National Bank, which embodied the interests of the old financial aristocracy and, moreover, was closely connected with English capital. This act was in the interests of the independent development of American capitalism. Established local banks facilitated credit and capitalist entrepreneurship.
The conflict over the issue of tariffs received a great public response - it was about priorities in economic development country. US fledgling industry developed under the protection of protective tariffs. The planters of the South, who sold cotton mainly in England and bought cheap goods, were interested in lowering duties. Bill of 1832, the tariffs were slightly reduced, but this was not enough for the planters, South Carolina declared them invalid and threatened with secession from the Union. Jackson acted energetically. He reinforced federal troops in South Carolina. True, Jackson subsequently yielded to the slave owners by lowering tariffs, but the firmness shown in protecting state unity was important.
Under Jackson, a number of reforms were carried out: imprisonment for debts was abolished (a significant part of the prisoners were debtors), compulsory service in the militia (military formations of the states) was abolished, and a 10-hour working day was introduced at state enterprises. The development of the system of free public schools was of great importance, which led to a significant increase in literacy. The party-political system was democratized: the elimination of the property qualification dramatically expanded the contingent of voters (if in 1824 the number of voters did not exceed 350 thousand, then in 1836 there were 1.5 million of them), candidates for the presidential elections did not begin to be nominated. party factions of the Congress, and party congresses. All these reforms led to the expansion of bourgeois democracy in the United States. However, "Jacksonian Democracy" was not bestowed from above, it is primarily the fruit of popular movements that were gaining strength during this period. The growth of the labor movement and the increased political activity of the farmer masses played an important role.
Jackson was the last major figure to preside in the pre-Civil War era. After him followed, in the words of Marx, a number of mediocre presidents. In the 40s of the XIX century. the question of slavery came to the fore in political life. Neither the Whigs nor the Democrats were able to resolve it. In 1848, a very influential radical party of freesoilers was founded (from the words free soil - free land), the motto of which was “Free land, free
word, free labor, free people. " Freesoilers demanded a ban on the spread of slavery to new territories. The bipartisan system has entered a period of crisis.
Expansion of the United States.
The growth of capitalism "in breadth" and "in depth", the need for plantation slavery in new lands were critical factors defining foreign policy USA. The entire North American continent was open for colonization: the indigenous population could not offer serious resistance, and the wars of the European powers among themselves diverted their forces from the American continent. Late 18th - first half of the 19th century were a time of rapid US territorial expansion. The direction of expansion was determined by the internal political balance of forces: the bourgeoisie and farmers strove to seize the western lands and Canada, the eyes of the planters were turned to the south and southwest.
The Louisiana purchase almost doubled the US territory, but even before the deal was finalized, a stream of farmers and planters flocked there, seizing land along the Mississippi River. Florida was next. In the years 1810-1813. I was busy
Spanish-owned West Florida. The invading armed American settlers overthrew the Spanish authorities and filed a declaration to Congress about the "desire of the population" to join the United States. The request was granted. Then it was East Florida's turn. In 1818, General E. Jackson, under the pretext of persecuting the Indians who allegedly received aid from Spanish territory, seized East Florida. Retroactively, the annexation was framed as a purchase.
Further territorial acquisitions soon followed. Back in the 1920s, slave owners began to invade Texas and, bringing with them black slaves, set up plantations there, and in 1836 they proclaimed a slave republic. Attempts by Mexican troops to prevent secession were unsuccessful. Soon Texas, equal in territory to France, was annexed by the United States. In 1846, the United States launched a new war against Mexico. The economic and military superiority of the United States left no doubt about its outcome. American troops defeated the Mexicans and occupied the capital city of Mexico City. Under the peace treaty, Mexico, giving the United States New Mexico, Northern
California and recognizing the loss of Texas, lost half of its territory. In the years 1853-1854. Mexico was imposed new deal on the forced sale to the United States of a vast area in the Jila River Valley.
Expansion also continued in the northwest. In 1846, the United States obtained from England the recognition of its claims to the territory of Oregon. Farmers and the bourgeoisie were primarily interested in joining it. By the middle of the XIX century. USA reached The Pacific all over from Canada to Mexico. Since 1776, the area of the United States has increased eightfold.
The colonization of the occupied territories was accompanied by the pushing back and mass extermination of the country's indigenous population - the Indians. Disunited and poorly armed tribes, although they fought very courageously, could not resist a strong state.
The dream of liberation never left the Indians, often it was clothed in the religious shell of messianic movements, which combined the preaching of rejection of everything that the "white man" brought with him, and calls for struggle. One of the most famous of these movements was led by the Tekumse chief, who sought to unite the Indian tribes. However, the uprising was suppressed in 1811, Tekumse fell in battle, and the colonialists made souvenirs from his skin in the form of belts.
In the 30s, the resettlement of all Indians from the eastern states across the Mississippi River to the "Indian territory", which was essentially a huge reservation, began. The resettlement, carried out forcibly in a phased manner, has become one of the most tragic pages in the history of the Indians. The peaceful tribe of teals, which had its own constitution, alphabet, schools, newspapers, was forced to yield to force; it was escorted by soldiers hundreds of miles west. Every fourth person fell on this “road of tears”. With the annexation of Texas and California, "Indian Territory" found itself in a ring of white settlements. The unprecedented expansion that continued over the course of many generations has influenced the most diverse aspects of the American worldview and contributed to the formation of myths about national elite. These theories clearly emerged in the second quarter of the 19th century. in the doctrine of "Destiny of Destiny", which asserted that the United States is predestined from above to dominate the American continent and carry a special mission in the world.
The ripening broad expansionist plans found expression in an important political document of this time - the Monroe Doctrine. The doctrine proclaimed by President Monroe in 1823 was preceded by rumors of the threat of the Holy Alliance's intervention in Latin America to restore Spanish colonial rule. The doctrine was ambiguous. It declared the opposition of the republican principles of the American states to the monarchical ones, shared by the leaders of the Holy Alliance, and put forward the idea of prohibiting the further colonization of the American continent by European powers. The doctrine promoted the slogan "America for Americans." All of this had a positive meaning. However, under the lush democratic phraseology of Monroe's message, expansionist tendencies were clearly visible, determined by the internal laws of the development of capitalism and plantation slavery in the United States. The essence of the Monroe Doctrine was revealed not so much in the attitude of the United States to European countries as in the US policy in the Western Hemisphere itself, which was outlined as a field for North American expansion. It was this feature that turned out to be the main one in the Monroe Doctrine, and the slogan “America for Americans” proclaimed by her soon began to sound like “America for North Americans”.
In 1850, the United States entered into an agreement with England to control the future channel through Central America. At the same time, the United States tried to buy or seize Cuba, which belonged to Spain. In the 40-50s, the United States began to penetrate into the countries Of the Far East... The United States imposed an unequal treaty on China, and in 1854 Commodore Perry's squadron, threatening war, "opened the doors" to Japan, forcing it to conclude a treaty of "peace and friendship."
Labor movement.
The plight of the American workers was somewhat better
than European ones. In contrast to Europe, where the ruined peasantry was sent from the villages to the cities, an ebb tide took place in the USA. work force from cities to the West. At the same time, this trend was counteracted by another, associated with the increasing flow of European immigration. From 1820 to 1860, about 5 million people immigrated to the United States. Permanent European immigration also generated fluidity and national heterogeneity in the American working class. The industrial revolution in the North was accompanied by the rapid growth of the proletariat (its number by 1860 was about 2 million people) and the intensification of its exploitation. The working day was 12-14 hours a day. Female and child labor was widely used. Thus, in 1820, almost half of all workers in the textile industry were children.
Until the supply of "free" lands dried up, until the spread of capitalism "in breadth" was possible, the acute conflicts that arose between labor and capital did not result in finished forms. This circumstance affected both the ideology and the organizational forms of the labor movement. However, the general laws of the class struggle were manifested here very clearly. Since the mid-1920s, a strike movement developed in the United States. The main demands of the workers were economic, above all a 10-hour working day. The trade unions, which had emerged in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, began to grow especially rapidly in the 1920s and 1930s on the wave of the strike struggle; their numerical strength increased to 300 thousand people. The largest local associations of trade unions existed in Philadelphia, New York, Boston. In 1834, the National Association of Trade Unions was created, which existed for three years.
In 1828, the first political workers' party in the United States emerged; over the next six years, such parties arose in more than 60 cities. The demands of the local workers' parties were similar. They advocated measures in favor of the workers and put forward general democratic demands: a 10-hour working day, a system of public schools, granting voting rights to the poor, etc. The workers supported the movement for land reform, the opening of western lands for free settlement. It was the working class that formulated the most radical reform program in the Jackson era and represented the left flank of the general democratic movement. Under influence economic crisis In 1837 and with the intensification of the colonization of the West, a significant part of the workers' organizations disintegrated.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, immigrants who arrived from Germany after the defeat of the 1848 revolution played a significant role in the American labor movement. Among them were followers of Marxism. The most prominent propagandist of Marxism in the United States was a former member of the "Union of Communists" Joseph Weidemeyer. He published the Communist Manifesto and other works by Marx and Engels in the United States. In 1852, on the initiative of I. Weidemeyer and F. Sorge, the first Marxist organization in the United States, the Proletarian League, was established in New York.
In the first half of the XIX century. The United States, thanks to the availability of free lands and a significant degree of political freedom, has become a field of social experimentation for various currents of European utopian socialism. Back in the 1920s, Robert Owen founded the New Harmony Colony in Indiana. The followers of Kabe were looking for their Ikaria in the United States. The greatest success among the American workers and intellectuals was enjoyed by Fourierism, according to the recipes of which they wanted to rid America of the ulcers of capitalism. In the 40s, the Fourierists created about 30 phalanges in the USA, the most famous of which was Brook Farm. All these undertakings collapsed under the rule of capitalism, but by criticizing the vices inherent in capitalism, the utopian socialists made their contribution to the workers' and general democratic movement.
The fight against slavery. Abolitionist movement. Since the beginning of the 30s, a massive nationwide movement of abolitionism has developed in the United States, (from the word abolition - destruction, abolition), speaking
neck for the abolition of slavery. Among the abolitionists were representatives of the intelligentsia, farmers, workers, the urban petty and industrial bourgeoisie.
The most important component of the democratic movement against slavery was the struggle of the blacks. Terror in the South could not prevent slave revolts. G. Apteker, a leading American researcher of this problem, has dozens of such speeches. The largest slave uprising in the first half of the 19th century. there was an uprising in 1831 in Virginia led by Nat Turner, a slave and Baptist preacher nicknamed the "Prophet." The rebels, armed with axes and scythes, killed the planters. The uprising was suppressed, many of its participants were executed, but Turner's name entered the Negro epic.
Escape was one of the most common and effective means of fighting slaves. The "Underground Railroad" is what the abolitionists called their system of helping blacks who fled from the southern states. The "underground road" had its "stations" - houses where they sheltered the fugitives, their "conductors" - the guides. Former black slave Harriet Tubman entered the South 19 times to bring out hundreds of slaves. During the years 1830-1860. 60 thousand escaped slaves passed the "underground road". Free blacks of the North took an active part in the struggle. The famous pamphlet Walker's Call, published in 1829, contained an impassioned, repeated call for the Negro people of the South to rise up in arms. In response to plans for the resettlement of free blacks in Africa, Walker reminded that the land of America was watered with the sweat and blood of black people, and concluded: "America is our home."
An organized national abolitionist movement began with the founding of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1833. It was headed by William Harrison, editor of Liberator magazine (1830–1865), who had branded the evil of slavery for 35 years. The abolitionists operated in an environment of enmity and persecution. They were persecuted and lynched, but they did not give up. Abolitionists opposed slavery from the standpoint of humanistic morality, combined with religious argumentation. The Anti-Slavery Society of America did not, however, take a clear position on the means of freeing slaves. The main weapon of society was moral admonition. Harrison believed that slavery would fall as soon as the people realized its sinfulness. The doctrine of non-resistance to evil by violence threatened to isolate abolitionists from the anti-slavery movement in the South and led to a rejection of political action as a means of fighting slavery.
In 1840, the American Anti-Slavery Society split. Frederick Douglas represented the views of proponents of political action. The son of a black slave woman, Douglas fled North and took part in the abolitionist movement. For more than half a century, the passionate, angry voice of this outstanding political figure and publicist, a fiery orator did not stop. Sharing Harryson's gaze at first, Douglas managed to rise above them. Harrison's slogan "No alliance with the slave owners!" Douglas countered with the slogan "No Alliance With Slavery!"
Social Struggle and American Literature.
USA writers first half of the XIX The romantics, transcendentalists, abolitionist writers have done a lot to expose the social ulcers of American society from the standpoint of humanism. American romanticism arose out of disillusionment with the results of the 1775-1783 revolution. The country's independence was achieved, and this aroused a sense of legitimate national pride, but the principles of "freedom, equality and the pursuit of happiness" proclaimed in the "Declaration of Independence" came into conflict with life, where, in the words of Washington Irving, the "almighty dollar" ruled. American romantics, for all their differences, are united by a protest against bourgeois morality, politics, and mores. The negative sides of American "business" and political mores became the subject of satirical depictions in the works of G. Breckenridge (Modern Chivalry), W. Irving (The History of New
York "), F. Cooper (" Monique "). Each of the romantics strove to find their ideal outside the merchant world. W. Irving created the poetic world of "old-world America" of the 18th century, G. Melville and F. Cooper were looking for their ideal in the life of the uncivilized peoples of the Pacific Ocean and Indians. With great force, humanistic motives were reflected in the work of Fenimore Cooper, who created an epic about American pioneers-pioneers in the five-league of novels about Kozhany Stocking. The main problem of the novels - the conflict of pioneering with bourgeois civilization - is presented here in moral, economic and philosophical terms. Honest and courageous tracker Natty Bumpo and his loyal friend the Indian chief Chingachgook eventually got lost in the wilds of capitalist civilization and were crushed by the world of money-grubbing owners. Another important problem is posed in Cooper's novels: the inhuman extermination of the Indians leads to the destruction of a unique culture.
The Indian theme received the most striking continuation in the work of Henry Longfellow. In the magic poem "The Song of Gai-avat", written based on Indian legends, he sang a folk hero fighting for the happiness of all people. Like Cooper, Longfellow painted a picture of a brotherhood of whites and Indians.
The criticism of capitalism by the early romanticists was continued at the end of the 1930s by writers, many of whom belonged to the social and philosophical movement of transcendentalism, 31 which saw the main means of combating social ailments in moral and moral improvement. At the same time, Ralph Emerson, Henry Thoreau and others gave sharp criticism of bourgeois civilization, which turns man into a "money-making machine." Thoreau gave famous description railroad, where “every sleeper is a man, Irish or Yankee. On them, on these people, rails have been laid ... and the carriages are rolling smoothly. " “Sleepers may still
31 Transcendental, that is, outside of experience. The followers of this doctrine contrasted the sensuously cognizable reality “ upper world", Cognizable intuitively.
wake up and get up someday, "added Thoreau. While preaching simplification and merging with nature, Thoreau occupied at the same time radical positions on the acute political issues of our time. In protest against the war with Mexico, he refused to pay taxes and was imprisoned. Thoreau was at the forefront of the fight against slavery.
The abolitionist movement opened one of the finest pages in 19th century American literary history. Continuing the humanistic traditions of romantics and transcendentalists, abolitionist writers denounced black slavery. The largest abolitionist prose writers were R. Hildreth and G. Beecher Stowe. Harriet Beecher Stowe showed especially terrible pictures of the inhumanity of slavery in America in her famous novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852). The strength of the book lies in the deep truthfulness of life. The everyday phenomena of the slave-owning South appeared in the coverage of Beecher Stowe in their monstrous and immoral meaning. The accusatory resentment that permeated Uncle Tom's Cabin was intertwined with a Christian mentality. However, through groans and prayers for forgiveness, readers heard the bubbling of the class struggle in the South. Thousands of Americans have read Uncle Tom's Cabin crying and clenching their fists.
