GRE阅读资料之文科.docx

1、GRE阅读资料之文科American historyAfrican American Slavery eraAn artists conception of Crispus Attucks (17231770), the first martyr of the American Revolution.Main articles: Slavery in the United States and Atlantic slave tradeThe first African slaves arrived in the present-day United States as part of the

2、San Miguel de Gualdape colony (most likely located in the Winyah Bay area of present-day South Carolina), founded by Spanish explorer Lucas Vsquez de Aylln in 1526. The ill-fated colony was almost immediately disrupted by a fight over leadership, during which the slaves revolted and fled the colony

3、to seek refuge among local Native Americans. De Aylln and many of the colonists died shortly afterwards of an epidemic and the colony was abandoned, leaving the escaped slaves behind on North American soil.In 1565, the colony of Saint Augustine in Florida, founded by Pedro Menendez de Aviles, became

4、 the first permanent European settlement in North America. It included an unknown number of free and enslaved Africans that were part of this colonial expedition.The first recorded Africans in British North America (including most of the future United States) arrived in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia.

5、As English settlers died from harsh conditions, more and more Africans were brought to work as laborers. The Africans were likely treated as indentured servants, similar in legal position to poor English indenturees, who traded several years labor in exchange for passage to America.7 Africans could

6、legally raise crops and cattle to purchase their freedom.8 They raised families, marrying other Africans and sometimes intermarrying with Native Americans or English settlers.9 By the 1640s and 1650s, several African families owned farms around Jamestown and some became wealthy by colonial standards

7、.The popular conception of a race-based slave system did not fully develop until the 18th century. The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of eleven black slaves into New Amsterdam (present-day New York City). All the colonys slaves, however, were freed upon its

8、surrender to the British.10 Massachusetts was the first British colony to legally recognize slavery in 1641. It was not until 1662 that Virginia ruled that a slave mothers children would remain slaves.11The first black congregations and churches were organized before 1800 in both northern and southe

9、rn cities following the Great Awakening. By 1775, Africans made up 20% of the population in the American colonies, which made them the second largest ethnic group after the English.12 During the 1770s, Africans, both enslaved and free, helped rebellious English colonists secure American Independence

10、 by defeating the British in the American Revolution.13 Africans and Englishmen fought side by side and were fully integrated.14 James Armistead, an African American, played a large part in making possible the 1781 Yorktown victory, which established the United States as an independent nation.15 Oth

11、er prominent African Americans were Prince Whipple and Oliver Cromwell, who are both depicted in the front of the boat in George Washingtons famous 1776 Crossing the Delaware portrait.By 1860, there were 3.5 million enslaved African Americans in the United States due to the Atlantic slave trade, and

12、 another 500,000 African Americans lived free across the country.16 In 1863, during the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. The proclamation declared that all slaves in states which had seceded from the Union were free.17 Advancing Union troops enforce

13、d the proclamation with Texas being the last state to be emancipated in 1865.18Native AmericansThis article is about the indigenous people of the United States. Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental Unit

14、ed States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as intact political communities. The terms used to refer to Native Americans have been controversial. According to a 1995 US Census Bureau set

15、of home interviews, most of the respondents with an expressed preference refer to themselves as American Indians or Indians, and this term has been adopted by major newspapers and some academic groups.Since the end of the 15th century, the migration of Europeans to the Americas, and their importatio

16、n of Africans as slaves, has led to centuries of conflict and adjustment between Old and New World societies. Europeans created most of the early written historical record about Native Americans after the colonists immigration to the Americas.3 Many Native Americans lived as hunter-gatherer societie

17、s and told their histories by oral traditions. In many groups, women carried out sophisticated cultivation of numerous varieties of staple crops: maize, beans and squash. The indigenous cultures were quite different from those of the agrarian, proto-industrial, mostly Christian immigrants from weste

18、rn Eurasia. Many Native cultures were matrilineal; the people occupied lands for use of the entire community, for hunting or agriculture. Europeans had patriarchal cultures and had developed concepts of individual property rights in land that were extremely different.The differences in culture betwe

19、en the established native Americans and immigrant Europeans, as well as shifting alliances among different nations of each culture through the centuries, caused extensive political tension, ethnic violence and social disruption. The American Indians suffered high fatalities from the contact with inf

20、ectious Eurasian diseases, to which they had no acquired immunity. Epidemics after European contact caused the greatest loss of life for indigenous populations. Estimates of the pre-Columbian population of what today constitutes the U.S. vary significantly, ranging from 1 million to 18 million.45Aft

21、er the colonies revolted against Great Britain and established the United States of America, President George Washington and Henry Knox conceived of the idea of civilizing Native Americans in preparation for assimilation as United States citizens.678910 Assimilation (whether voluntary as with the Ch

22、octaw,1112 or forced) became a consistent policy through American administrations. During the 19th century, the ideology of Manifest destiny became integral to the American nationalist movement. Expansion of European-American populations to the west after the American Revolution resulted in increasi

23、ng pressure on Native American lands, warfare between the groups, and rising tensions. In 1830, the U.S. Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, authorizing the government to relocate most Native Americans of the Deep South from their homelands east of the Mississippi River to the West, to accommoda

24、te European-American expansion from the coastal United States. Government officials thought that by decreasing the conflict between the groups, they could help the Indians survive. American Indians have continued to live throughout the South. They have organized and been recognized as tribes since t

25、he late 20th century by several states and, in some cases, by the federal government.The first European Americans to encounter the western tribes were generally fur traders and trappers. There were also Jesuit missionaries active in the Northern Tier. As United States expansion reached into the Amer

26、ican West, settler and miner migrants came into increasing conflict with the Great Plains tribes. These were complex nomadic cultures based on using horses and traveling seasonally to hunt bison. They carried out strong resistance to United States incursions in the decades after the American Civil W

27、ar, in a series of Indian Wars, which were frequent up until the 1890s. The coming of the transcontinental railroad increased pressures on the western tribes. Over time, the U.S. forced a series of treaties and land cessions by the tribes, and established reservations for them in many western states

28、. U.S. agents encouraged Native Americans to adopt European-style farming and similar pursuits, but the reservation lands were often too poor and dry to support such uses.Contemporary Native Americans have a unique relationship with the United States because they may be members of nations, tribes, o

29、r bands of Native Americans who have sovereignty or independence from the government of the United States. Since the late 1960s, American Indian activism has led to the building of cultural infrastructure and wider recognition of their unique identities and contributions throughout United States soc

30、iety: they have founded independent newspapers, community schools, tribal colleges, and tribal museums and language programs; academic institutions across the country have created Native American studies programs; national and state museums have been founded to recognize American Indians historic an

31、d current contributions. American Indian authors have been increasingly published (with the vast majority writing in the colonial language, English); other American Indians work as historians and in a wide variety of occupations. Traditional and contemporary artists and craftsmen express their ident

32、ities. Cultural activism has led to an expansion of efforts to teach and preserve indigenous languages for younger generations. Their societies and cultures flourish within a larger population of descendants of immigrants (both voluntary and involuntary): African, Asian, Middle Eastern, and European peoples. At one time, the US required Native Americans to give up tribal membership in order to be accepted as citizens. This policy changed and in 1924, Native Americans who were not already U.S. citizens were granted citizenship by Congress.Civil rights movementThe civil rights movement was a w