History of the Americas HL 1 +2

1607 to the Cold War Era

Main

Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade

1450 - 1874

Began with the Portuguese ended with the Portuguese Brazilians

Slaves in Latin America

1494 - 1888

the Portuguese king had entered agreements with the rulers of several West African states that would allow trade between their respective peoples, enabling the Portuguese to "tap into" the "well-developed commercial economy in Africa... without engaging in hostilities." And in 1516, Bartolomé de Las Casas gets permission from Spanish emperor Carlos V to use African slaves to replace the exterminated natives in the island's mines and sugar plantations.

Jamestown Settlement

May 4, 1607 - 1699

Jamestown was a settlement in the Colony of Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in the Americas.

Slaves in Virginia

1619 - 1865

England introduces African slaves in Virginia

Plymouth Settlement

1621 - 1690

Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America.

American Revolutionary War

1764 - October 19 1781

War between the British and Americans for independence.

Treaty of Paris

September 1783

Officially ended the war after the British loss at Yorktown, recognized the US as a nation and established boundaries that extended far to the west of the 13 original colonies (Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island and Virginia).

Northwest Ordinance

August 7, 1787

Accelerated westward expansiona and put the world on notice not only that the land north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi would be settled but that it would eventually become part of the United States. Until then this area had been temporarily forbidden to development.

Cotton Gin

1793

Cotton Gin is invented allowing for the planting of short-staple cotton to be planted anywhere easily replacing tobacco, indigo, rice, long-staple cotton, and sugar. This resulted in "Cotton Kingdom."

Louisiana Purchase

April 30, 1803

This purchase doubled the size of the US for $15 million dollars to be paid to Napoleon. Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Nebraska; parts of Minnesota that were west of the Mississippi River; most of North Dakota; most of South Dakota; northeastern New Mexico; northern Texas; the portions of Montana, Wyoming, and Colorado east of the Continental Divide; Louisiana west of the Mississippi River, including the city of New Orleans; and small portions of land that would eventually become part of the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Convention of 1818

1818 - 1846

The Britain and the United States would jointly occupy Oregon Territory. Clarified the northern border of the Louisiana Purchase. The land acquired by the United States in the treaty, known as the Red River Basin, would ultimately become part of the states of Minnesota and North Dakota.

Florida

1819

Adam-Onís Treaty ceded Florida to the United States. In exchange, the United States agreed to pay up to $5 million in damages to Americans who had claims against Spain and to forfeit any claims to Texas

Cotton

1840

Cotton counted for 60% of the US exports and 1/5 workers in England were for cotton production.

Texas Annexation

1845

The Republic of Texas voluntarily asked to become a part of the United States, and the government of the United States agreed to annex the nation. Mexican leaders had long warned the United States that if it tried to make Texas a state, it would declare war. And, almost immediately after Texas joined the union, the United States and Mexico went to war about where the proper border for the state of Texas should be

Oregon Country

1846

Britain and the US reached an agreement to divide the territory at the 49th parallel.

Mexican Cession

1848

Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo let Texas and California be recognized as official states for the cost of $15 million. The Mexican Cession included land that would later become California, Nevada, and Utah, as well as portions of Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Wyoming. The treaty also stated that Mexicans who remained in the state would be permitted to become U. S. citizens, and that they would be allowed to keep their property. However, the treaty was never fully honored. In the decades following the signing of the treaty, Mexican-Americans were stripped of nearly 20 million acres of their land by American businessmen, ranchers and railroad companies, as well as by the U.S. Department of the Interior and Department of Agriculture.

Gadsden Purchase

1853

The Mexican government was in desperate need of money, and it agreed to sell a small strip of land along the U.S.-Mexico border to the United States for $10 million and included parts of New Mexico and Arizona.

Dred Scott v. Sanford

1858

This court case by Chief Justice Robert B. Taney ruled that all Blacks (including freed) were to be seen as property under the 5th Amendment Property Clause and their owner could relocate them anywhere. This caused much controversy in the Union as freed/ born free Blacks were scared of this ruling.

Border States

1861 - 1865

Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia.

Union

1861 - 1865

California, Connecticut, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island,
Vermont and Wisconsin.

Confederacy

February 4, 1861 - May 5, 1865

Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Virginia (seceded then only West Virginia came back), Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tenessee.

Alaska

1867

Secretary of State William H. Seward met with Russian diplomats and arranged for the United States to purchase Alaska for the cost of $7.2 million — about two cents per acre. The purchase was widely unpopular among Americans.

Hawaii

1898

American sugar plantation owners came to increasingly dominate the Hawaiian economy so that they could sell the sugar that they raised to Americans without worrying about the U.S. government imposing a tariff