The United States of America

Geography• The United States is about the same size as

China, although it has less than a quarter of the population.

• Most of the United States territory lies between Canada, in the North, and Mexico to the South.

• Two of the states of the US are separated from the rest: Alaska, in between Canada and Russia, and Hawaii, a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

• The US also has other territories which are not states.

• Various islands in the Pacific Ocean, such as Guam, the Midways, and American Samoa are US territory, as well as Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea.

History• The first people to live in North America were

tribes who came from Asia more than 20,000 years ago.

• Although the details are still not exactly known, it is thought that when sea levels dropped during this time, people could cross over what is now the Bering Strait, between Russia and Alaska.

• The people spread gradually through North America, and into South America, separating into many different tribes and cultures.

• The native North Americans developed gradually from the hunter-gatherer lifestyle into more complex farming cultures

• They did not leave behind the same evidence of great civilisations that the central and south Americans did, like the Aztecs, the Mayans or the Incas, but some of the societies were still quite advanced.

• The first European explorers to visit North America were from Scandinavia, commonly called Vikings.

• These explorers from Scandinavia discovered Northern America in about the year 1000, and the remains of their settlement were discovered in 1960.

• The settlement was at a place called L’anse aux Meadows in what is now Canada, and was called Vinland.

• This discovery by the Vikings did not have a great effect on American history, though, because the Vikings did not establish a new society there, and the Europeans did not know about it.

• 500 years after the Norsemen had started their settlement in North America, an Italian explorer found America for the Europeans.

• Christopher Columbus was hired by the King of Spain to try to find a way to reach Asia by travelling West across the ocean from Europe.

• The other sailors didn’t want to try this because they thought it was too far, and that they wouldn’t be able to carry enough food and water on their ships to last the long voyage.

• Christopher Columbus was not worried about the distance because he calculated that the earth was smaller than the other sailors thought, and that it wasn’t that far to Asia.

• Actually, he was wrong, and if he hadn’t accidentally found America, he and his crew would have died because of his mistake.

• Luckily, he landed in the islands of the Caribbean, and in his four voyages explored these islands and parts of the coast of the mainland of Central America, what is now Honduras and Costa Rica and Panama.

• Columbus thought that the land he had discovered was part of Asia, which Europeans called the Indies, and so he called the people there Indians.

• After he returned to Europe, other Europeans knew it was safe to sail to America.

• A few years after Columbus’ voyage, John Cabot , another explorer, sailed to North America

• Columbus was working for Spain, and so he claimed the lands he discovered for them, and John Cabot was working for England, so he claimed North America for England.

• After these first discoveries, many European countries sent people to North America to establish colonies.

• France, Sweden, Spain, Russia and the Netherlands all started colonies in North America, but it was the British colonies which ended up being the most powerful.

• Eventually, some of the colonies that had been started by the British separated from Britain, and took over the colonies started by other countries.

The British Colonies• 16th-17th century Europe:Text(1) pg 35-36• The first British colonies were formed from

various groups who had travelled to North America for different reasons.

• Virginia: Text(2) pg 36-37• Puritans:Text(3) pg 36-39• Some of the settlers were catholics, and

believed in the pope, but the even the colonies which they started themselves were soon overtaken by the protestants.

• The protestant settlers were less inclined to follow the old ways of governing, so when some of the leaders tried to continue the old systems of Europe, with lords and servants, the people refused.

• Quakers: Text(4) pg 41-42.• By the mid-1700s, there were 13 main British

colonies in North America, and soon the French and the British colonies started to fight over the territory, and each side got some of the American Indians to fight with them.

• Soon the French and British were also fighting in Europe in the Seven Years War.

• The British were at first doing poorly in the fighting in North America, but eventually a new leader took over in Britain, and soon the British were victorious.

• Unfortunately, the British had spent a lot of money on the war to try to save the colonies from France, and so they thought it was fair to try to make the colonies pay higher taxes to Britain.

• Text (5) pg 43

• Before the wars with the French, the 13 colonies had been mostly independent from each other, but during the war they had learned to work together.

• When the British imposed a tax on tea, the colonists in Boston refused to let the ships carrying tea from England unload.

• They believed that it was unfair to be taxed by Britain when colonists could not vote for representatives in the British Parliament (they had their own representatives in the colonies)

• The British tried to make the ships pay a tax anyway, so the colonists threw the tea into the water.

• This event is known as the Boston Tea Party.• The British tried to punish the colonists by

making new laws that reduced the land of the colony, closed the port of Boston until the tea had been paid for, and put the government of the colony under control of Britain.

• Text (6) pg 44

Declaration of Independence

• When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

• WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new Government,

laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed.

But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security. Such has been the patient Sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the Necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.