Questions for Chapter 4 discussion

What is the difference between the Scottish and the Scotch Irish immigrants?

Why was the main reason the Scotch Irish came to America?

Why would someone indenture themselves just to come to America?

Why would the immigrants fight for American patriotism?

What led to the Huguenot misfortunes and why are they not an active part of our culture today?

How are the Pennsylvania Germans able to retain their culture without much American assimilation?

Week 3 Reading

Reading Assignment 3

It is fasinating how much changed after the invention of boats. People were able to live in different areas and hunt for different foods. Trade between civilizations also owes much to the invention of boats. Early boats had very unique designs:

reading assignment 2

I find it interesting how the early Americans were able to live in a interdependent society based on trade and similar beliefs. Conversely, colonization happened in the wake of Europeans trying to abandoned their customs and start fresh in a new world. This struggle between the old way of life and the new concept of the individual is still a relevant issue today.

Reading Assignment 1

In The Americas: A Hemispheric History, the author presents two different approaches of categorizing America (north and south)--one as the present set of divergent countries and another as a unified super continent encompassing the entire western hemisphere. The preferred categorization is never fully specified, but I believe the author to favor the latter based on his theory that "U.S. hegemony is not the end of history, just another phase of unpredictable durability" (pg. 19). While I agree that a certain amount of commonality is beneficial to such a large land mass, I believe it is the cultural differences that promote new thought and a synthesis of differing ideas; a difference that can only exist with explicitly categorized geographical boundaries for each culture. One example would be how the Olmec civilization influenced a large number of later cultures, as written in chapter 2, and how their civilization was founded on intense city-state competition, making them an ultimately divergent society that harmonized and progressed through diversity.