23.03.2015

This time the textbook reading was quiet extensive but it is not full of facts as names and dates. However it is full of stories which make the history more memorable and comprehensible for me. The first part of years of growth was dated in the text from 1783 to 1848 by a peace treaty between Americans and Mexicans where Americans gained a large territory. Interesting was the description of the president Andrew Jackson who was a founder of the Democratic Party but I did not find anything democratic in the way how he treated with Amerindians.

The second part of years of growth was from 1848 to modern history especially what concerns Amerindians. It started with the find of gold in California which set off a gold rush. It brought many new people in the area. Then the text talks a lot about the Great Plains which also brought a lot of new people at first the persons who passed by and then the cowboys and finally new settler to whom was the land offered very favourably by the government or the railway company. There were two railway companies the Union Pacific Railroad Company and the Central Pacific Railway Company that were appointed to build a railroad across the North American continent. It reduced time from weeks to days. Interesting information was about the workers on the railway. The Union Pacific used the Europeans mainly Irishmen on the other side The Central Pacific let Chinese bring to the country. In the text are also mentioned national parks and the system of care about these parks in America. The topic precedes the last chapter describing the issue of Amerindians, all the history of promised treaties and following breaches of them. Reference to diseases from which suffer and die Indians in reservations I see mostly lifestyle diseases that white people brought to the Indians´ land.  Reading it all made me sad and reminded me a film Dances with wolves.  I sometimes wonder what leads Americans to film these parts of the history where they definitely failed.

Movement, mobility and family is divided into two parts. First is about ties and roots which Americans have or do not have, this is probably a question why we Europeans see this a bit different. This is nicely compered in the second part by Ross Larson who talks especially about Czechs and I found myself in it and made me thing about it. We are called here particularly immobile and I could only guess that the previous political regime did not help this situation much. Steinbeck´s thought that all people were originally used to move from place to place (mainly for food) and that is why it could be the deeper need for people to move than to stay restless on one place, is attractive. He also described functions of mobile homes and it immediately reminded me the text about wagon trains.

From the text The west I understood that the character of Americans formed that fact that they were constantly moving westwards. They were not satisfied with their situation very often political and so they move to the frontier were not yet built system. This should have influenced people to become practical, self-reliant, mobile, adaptable and material. The idea about materialism is not new, in the previous text it was described in more details. Money was power and only power they could take with themselves by moving.  Anyway, the moving to frontiers formed the three basic values of American: individualism, democracy and nationalism. Last part called A woman´s point of view did not described nothing new. However this kind of living (of leaving family and families) is hard to imagine for me. The Homestead Act is mentioned here but more carefully is the topic described in Farming the Great Plains. All the texts were for me very neutral written and I did not feel any pressure on my opinion, though it has broadened my horizons.