Well ahserman, I have a basic outline like what i've said this whole time is what i know, now im just confused about what to put in my essay after what satena has said...
Satena!..., please help me bro, I have my 1st paragraph that i wrote in a post i did like not too long ago... look this is the exact topic.. How would you characterize the societal and political changes in America, from roughly 1763-1877? what would you argue were the primary factors and influences that deteremined these changes? were these changes simple modifications of existing strucutres and traditions or did they represent a radical departure from earlier periods...?
my readings were Africa and Africans in the Making of the atlantic world by John Thornton, The name of war (king phillips war) by Jill Lepore, and Amercican Colonies by Alan Taylor
Focus, Sugar, focus!
Setanta's stuff is good and relevant, but you can't wait for me, or him, or anyone else to do the work you should have done long ago. That's water under the bridge. Now you have to concentrate on transmuting what you think you know into a essay that meets the assignment.
Outlining is a means of organizing your thoughts, and presenting supporting evidence for you opinion in a cogent way. Some of what you've written is clear and on point, but the total effect is still like the shot pattern from a sawed-off shotgun. Now, knuckle down and get this show on the road. You need a semi-finished draft by noon on Thursday, so you can do the final draft on Friday before delivering your effort late Friday, or early Saturday. You have to pick up the pace.
Well, Bubba, if your topic is no more specific than that, i'd say you're screwed. I don't mean that you can't cobble something together, only that it will bear that relationship to history that Christian Science does to science.
If i were constrained to choose one factor more than any other which fundamentally altered American society in the period 1763-1877, i'd choose the so-called industrial revolution. It didn't really mean much in the period 1763-1850, but by and large, industrialization and its concomitant social changes profoundly affected all European societies (and the United States is culturally a European society) from 1200 to the present, in an accelerating manner, and especially after 1400.
One of the aspects of southern society, for example, which is not often covered in high school or university history texts is that the institution of slavery kept the American south in the past. Small holders could not compete with plantation production, and most plantations relied upon slave labor for skilled work, such as blacksmithing and carpentry, rather than upon a local labor market. Slavery was as bad for poor whites as it was for blacks. Southerners who were not members of or affiliated with wealthy plantation families had to continually move west to stay ahead of the plantation system, because the prospect of anything more than bare subsistence farming or of small-scale craftsmanship as a living was negligible. The southern slave economies relied upon monocultures (the production of a single crop for export)--first tobacco, and then cotton. As long as the plantation families prospered, there was no reason to practice crop rotation, or diversified agriculture (as George Washington did when he decided that slave-produced tobacco was killing his farms). Small holders could feed themselves, and might produce some corn to make moonshine whiskey, but they had few other resources for making a living, because everywhere they turned, slave-labor operations either made their skills unsalable, or so far outproduced them in the monoculture as to make any effort at tobacco or cotton a very poor operation. The "industrial revolution" largely stagnated in the American south, except for rare exceptions such as the cotton gin which otherwise served to prove the rule. There was no reason to either improve agricultural method, or to diversify into other crops or other trades. Cotton was king in the antebellum south, and it brooked no competition. Therefore, the culture of the south was forever fixed in the values and attitudes of the south just after the revolution.
In the northern states, however, the constant influx of immigrants, who moved progressively west to get new land under cultivation, was a spur to greater production of manufactured goods to sell to the newly arrived farmers and herders, which in turn spurred innovation in manufacturing techniques in order to get an advantage over the competition. Despite the howls of the south, protective tariffs were relatively common in the pre-Civil War United States, and the industries of New England and the Mid-Atlantic states grew correspondingly. Initially, even some southerners, such John Calhoun, had supported a protective tariff, so as to reduce American dependence on English manufactures, and to provide the necessary industrial base for national defense. Men like Calhoun only gradually came to oppose the tariff as the threat of England receded after 1815, and the growth of northern states and their populations began to alarm the slave-holding states, who relied upon the three-fifths compromise for their relatively inflated political power.
(Before the XIIIth Amendment, three-fifths of slaves were counted for the purposes of determining representation in Congress. This meant that Representative from a slave-holding state had actually been elected by far fewer voters than a representative from a "free" state. This was the reason for the Missouri compromise and the insistence of southern states that one slave state be admitted to the union for each free state. They did not intend to acquiesce to a situation in which the free states eventually had the votes in Congress necessary to abolish slavery over their objections.)
Whether in Europe, or the United States, the use of steam engines in industry meant that factories were no longer small affairs reliant upon the power of a water mill. Someone with the capital could now set up anywhere that had a cheap source of fuel--usually, but not exclusively coal--with which to fire the boilers. Steam-powered ships and railways meant that goods and people could travel faster, and therefore farther in any given period of time. American society in the early 19th century was characterized by a mobility unknown in Europe. David Crockett is a prime example. He would go into the woods, stake a claim, build a cabin and clear ground, and then go off hunting. Soon thereafter, he would sell off his land, usually on a promissory note, and move on to clear more land, build a cabin, etc. Many Americans went to Canada--for most of the history of British North America, United States citizens were the largest immigrant in Canada. Of course, they largely just moved further and further west. The introduction of the railways meant more of them could move west in a shorter period of time, and in more saftety, and far more of them could be supported by the goods which could be transported to them by rail. That is largely a tale, however, which took place after 1877, but the steam-powered river boats performed the same function, and were going up the Missouri River in the West within a few years of steamboats being established on the Ohio and Mississippi.
The use of steam-power in the textile industry had another, sinister effect, too, though. The steam-powered cotton and wool mills of England and New England meant that there was a greater demand for cotton and wool, and of course, the American south produced cotton. In fact, cotton overtook tobacco as the monoculture of choice because of demand, and the fact that tobacco was produced in many, many places in the world in 1800, but cotton still came largely from Africa, India and the American south. The crop became so valuable that huge slave-driven plantations blossomed all over the "mid-south" (Tennessee, Mississippi and Alabama principally, and most especially the latter two states) in the years after the end of the Creek War (1813) and the War of 1812 (ended 1815), and unlike the old tobacco plantations of the Atlantic coast slave states, there was no long establish relationships between slave and slave-owner. Most of the horror stories about how slaves were treated came from "get-rich-quick" operations in the bottom lands of Alabama and Mississippi where a man with sufficient capital could buy a large slave work force, and quickly clear land and start producing cotton on a large scale. They had little reason to do anything more for their slaves than the bare minimum to keep them alive and working. This was, of course, also made possible by the crucial invention of the cotton gin, which made rapid, large-scale cotton production possible (previously, the cotton had to be carded by hand, and that doubled the number of slaves necessary to produce a bale of cotton). So in a perverse way, the "industrial revolution" made the worst abuses of slavery, and the perpetuation of the institution of slavery profitable.
Since 1200, and at an accelerating rate, improvements in technology have swept away many of what were once considered the timeless forms of life. The example of King Cotton and slavery is deceiving, because it ignores that the institution as practiced was destroying the soil, and impoverishing white small holders and craftsmen. It was much like the Holy Alliance in Europe after the defeat of Napoleon. Austria, Prussia and Russia formed the Holy Alliance, and enshrined the repressive monarchical systems which the French Revolution had threatened to sweep away. But while it appeared to Metternich and his fellows that they had saved monarchy, and were conserving a valuable cultural past, France and England went from relative economic stability to increasing wealth and larger and larger overseas empires. By the time Germany attempted to compete with them at the end of the 19th century, they had relatively stable and prosperous economies to which the only response which the Germans could come up with was to invade France, and to rattle their naval saber at the English. After the 1870 war against France, the Germans imposed an indemnity of 700,000,000 gold francs on France. They thought that would hobble them economically and make them the financial slaves of Germany for at least a generation. The new Republic formed in the wake of the 1871 defeat, however, knuckled down, passed austerity measures which the people accepted, and the indemnity was paid in less than three years. And the French went on to fresh economic propserity.
The so-called industrial revolution, which was not an event, but a process which continues to this day, could not help but alter people's lives. Without regard to anyone's specific culture or society, the effect of newer technologies was to overturn all the old equations of social relationship, social mobility and mobility in time and space, and the relationship of people to one another and to their governments.
When is was a boy in the 1950s, we listened to the radio at night or read books. We didn't have a television, which would have pointless before there was a television station broadcasting within in range of our little town. We were one of six families on a party-line telephone line, and there were no portable phones, no mobile phones, no cell phones. There were no computers, no text-messaging, no You-tube, no video games, no cable television . . .
Think about what your life would be like without all of those things, and then you will have some idea of how much the world has changed in just 50 years. Those same types of changes have taken place in European societies for 800 years, it is simply that the process goes faster and faster with time.
okay asherman!., thanks for the advice..., i thank you both again!.., u guys are too kind and cool!
I'm sorry, i didn't answer your earlier question. Some of these changes were simply modifications of earlier systems and technologies, and in the realm of government, the new Constitution combined ideas from 16th, 17th and 18th century political thinkers. But many of these changes were radical departures, too. John Locke is a source of many of the concepts of the form of government which the framers of the Constitution put into effect in the real world. But Locke served as a personal physician to a member of the aristocracy, and his notions of a just and balanced government weren't far from the concept of the King in Parliament. But the American Constitution was a radical departure in that it relied wholely upon the concept of the consent of the governed. The nations of Europe did not believe that a democracy, even a republican democracy could survive and prosper.
So, some changes were incremental, and simply modified existing ideas and systems. Others were radical departures. Being able to identify which were which would help your thesis.
Setanta, how do you know so much? Are these preplanned essays that your are posting or is thing coming out of your brain fresh and clear?
Just popping in to say this is homework nirvana. I'm thinking of enrolling in a history class just so I can be tutored by Asherman and Setanta.
You guys are so smart.
SugarTea wrote:Are these preplanned essays that your are posting or is thing coming out of your brain fresh and clear?
from watching Setanta prepare some of his posts, I can tell you a whole whack of it is coming straight out of his brain. Fascinating to watch the composition process.
(the downside? he's got a heavy keyboarding hand - fast and loud)
You said it, Boomerang. I could have pasted some of those replies into a wordprocessor and turned them in unaltered.
thats messed up.., you shouldnt use other peoples work and tell them its yours.., shame on you..., dont worry i still love you though.., mwa!
Oh. Okay, I won't do that.
I'm not really sure the internet had been invented when I was in college, anyway. I should have waited.
Hey Sugar, get back to work. Either Setanta or I could write an essay that would probably blow your teacher away, BUT we aren't going to do it. We already been there, done that. We've done nothing that you can't do if you put your mind to it. Self-discipline and an incurable curiosity about things can carry you far.
We need to see your outline, and the beginnings of a completed draft. Maybe we can critique it quickly and give you a bit of a head start tomorrow. D minus three, and counting. If you really try that means approximately 24 hours left. Get back to work. Also bear in mind that the assignment calls for a discussion of "social and political" changes between 1763 and 1877, the Industrial Revolution and the various wars are causative factors, not the actual social or political state of being at any particular point. The Industrial Revolution, wars, etc. influenced and drove change, but what were the changes, and what was the connection.
BTW, you might find it useful to keep a record of these posts and counter-posts for later reflection.
yeah i've been working on it all along..., can i copy some stuff from what sentata wrote? it seems that i cant reword some of his stuff, it just sounds too good how it is
Most of us reading this thread wouldn't cut and paste information so offered here to get a grade. If you do, you're in the soup. This is all to help you connect, work out the maneuvers of thinking. We don't even care if you disagree.. more care that you go on thinking.
On the other hand, I'm not so sure it is bad to link the exact post (click on the post number at the post) as part of your exploration.
But that still won't do you any good unless you process the information yourself in some way.
SugarTea wrote:yeah i've been working on it all along..., can i copy some stuff from what sentata wrote? it seems that i cant reword some of his stuff, it just sounds too good how it is
Not a good idea. Your writing and Setanta's writing is nothing alike. A semiconscious teacher would spot the seams at 50 yards.
Also not a good idea on general principle.
Quit mucking about and get on with your mission. Your alloted time isn't going to get longer, and the effort isn't going to get easier.
Until you determine what form your essay is going to take, all you are doing is assembling information. The time for that is pretty much past.
I'm off to bed now, and in the morning I expect to see some solid progress. Capice?
You can cite anyone's link here but it won't do you any good unless you can discuss it, re your own views, however much your views may be Beginning.
Really.... try to figure out a coherent take on what you have been reading - if only that you have need to explore more. Which, yah, you do.
well im almost done with my work, i have to go to a gig and im really busy but i atleast want to thank you guys for all the help, i appreciate it greatly., love you guys@@@!!!!
