Americas North and South in the 1800s

1
Americas (North and South) in the 1800s
2
Discuss the significance of regionalism
throughout the Americas as regionalism became a
factor in shaping Latin American nations as well
as the US.

• Regionalism in Latin America was very divisive,
  often splitting nations into competing factions.
• On a larger scale, it ensured the failure of all
  attempts at creating federations of states.
  Students should identify
• Bolívars failed at creating Gran Colombia
• Within nations, the wealthy jealously guarded
  their positions and often instigated civil wars
  or secession movements to safeguard them.
• This caused more localized divisions, which
  threatened to split countries apart.
• Dictators often arose in attempts to unify
  regions under stronger centralized control.
• By 1900, every Latin American country had
  undergone at least one dictatorship.
• On the other hand, the United States, with a
  longer British and colonial history of
  constitutional and representative government,
  never experienced a violent usurpation of power
  or rejection of an election.
• Still, the United States Constitution did
  specifically try to address regional problems and
  concerns, which included sanctioning slavery.
• The problems of regionalism and internal
  differences were significant enough that they led
  to the Civil War in 1861

3
What factors led to the alteration of the
American environment in the 1800s? How was the
environment altered?

• Population growth, economic expansion, new
  technologies, and the introduction of plants and
  animals to new regions dramatically altered the
  American environment.
• Many of Cubas forests were cut to expand sugar
  production.
• The expansion of livestock-raising put a heavy
  burden on the fragile environments in Argentina,
  Uruguay, southern Brazil, and the southwestern
  United States.
• Commercial agriculture, such as increases in
  cotton production, led to soil exhaustion and
  erosion.
• The use of plows on the North American prairies
  and the Argentine pampa eliminated many native
  grasses and increased the threat of soil erosion.
  
• Coffee planters in Brazil exhausted soil
  fertility with a destructive cycle of
  overplanting.
• In addition, rapid urbanization put heavy
  pressure on the environment. New York, Chicago,
  Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, and Mexico City
  were among the fastest growing cities.
  Governments strained to keep up with the need for
  sewers, clean water, and garbage disposal.
• The rising demand for building materials led to
  the spread of the timber industry.
• Mining also advanced into Nevada, Montana, and
  California after 1860 and erosion and pollution
  resulted.
• Also, efforts to meet increasing domestic demand
  for food and housing and to satisfy foreign
  demands for exports led to environmental
  degradation but also contributed to the world
  economy and regional prosperity.
• By the end of the nineteenth century, small-scale
  conservation efforts were under way in many
  nations.

4
What impact does industrialization have on the
Western Hemisphere?

• Industrialization affected the Western Hemisphere
  and the evolving world economy.
• While some Western Hemisphere countries
  industrialized, most did not, and this led them
  to greater dependence on the export of
  agricultural goods and minerals during the
  nineteenth century. Industrializing nations like
  the United States grew richer in comparison to
  the exporters of raw materials.
• The Western Hemisphere countries also became more
  vulnerable to the volatility of the international
  markets.
• The example of sugar production demonstrates the
  impact that world sugar competition had on the
  abolition of slavery in the Caribbean.
• There were significant differences between United
  States and Latin American development.

5
Compare the revolutionary movements in Venezuela,
Mexico, and Brazil.

• Venezuelan independence was initiated by creoles
  (colonial-born whites), who were large landowners
  seeking to hold on to their power and wealth.
• They wanted to retain slavery and keep power from
  the black and mixed-race populace. Their narrow
  aims angered most Venezuelans, who broadened the
  movement, unifying behind Simón Bolívar.
• Although defeated on many occasions, Bolívar
  successfully adapted his objectives and policies
  to attract new allies and build coalitions.
• Although initially opposed to the abolition of
  slavery, he agreed to support emancipation in
  order to draw slaves and freemen to his cause and
  to gain supplies from Haiti.
• Bolívar made astute adjustments in his goals both
  politically and militarily and won independence.
• Mexico was much more conservative and wealthier
  than other Spanish colonies, with a higher
  percentage of Spanish-born settlers as well.
• On hearing of Napoleons invasion of Spain, the
  wealthiest Spaniards in Mexico feared that the
  local viceroy would be too sympathetic to the
  creoles, and so they overthrew him.
• Establishing a precedent of undermining the
  colonial government, the revolution spread to the
  rural and urban poor.
• It was the news of a military revolt in Spain in
  1820 that shattered the conservative coalition.
• In 1821, Colonel Agustin de Iturbide and other
  loyalist commanders forged an alliance and
  declared Mexicos independence. However this
  transition to independence was conservative and
  highlighted by the decision to create a
  monarchial form of government and crown Iturbide
  emperor.
• In 1823, Mexico became a republic.
• The situation in Brazil was different mainly
  because of its Portuguese affiliation.
• When Napoleon invaded Portugal, the Portuguese
  royal family fled into exile in Brazil.
• Even after the French in Portugal were defeated,
  the royal family remained in America.
• The king returned to Portugal only when a liberal
  revolt threatened the Iberian government.
• His son Pedro declared Brazilian independence in
  1822 and established a constitutional monarchy
  with himself as its head.

6
What was the effect of independence and the end
of colonialism on Amerindians? Consider former
British, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies.

• Toward the end of the colonial era, European
  nations strove to control the expansion of their
  peoples in an effort to end the perpetual
  fighting with Amerindians.
• Independence removed that check on expansion, but
  at the same time the revolutionary struggles for
  freedom weakened newly independent peoples.
• Amerindians took advantage of that temporary
  weakness to push back Euro-American advances.
• Amerindians continued to resist expansion,
  adapting in unique ways to new technologies and
  opportunities, such as horses and firearms.
  Euro-American setbacks were only temporary,
  however.
• In places such as the United States, military
  efforts led by the national government forcibly
  removed Amerindians to more remote and less
  viable reservations.
• In Argentina, powerful Amerindian groups were
  kept at peace only through an elaborate system of
  gift giving and prisoner exchanges.
• Ultimately, however, Amerindians lost their land.
  Increases in population and new technologies
  enabled their opponents to overwhelm them.

7
Discuss the process of abolishing slavery in the
Americas. Did the movement for abolition of
slavery differ in the United States, Latin
America, and the Caribbean?

• During the movements for independence in all
  three places there were strong anti-slavery
  sentiments.
• The ideas of the Enlightenment that provided an
  ideological foundation for independence also
  addressed the evils of slavery as well.
• In regions where plantation economies were most
  prevalent, abolition met with the most
  resistance however, slave revolts and resistance
  persisted in all of these areas.
• Both women and African-Americans were active in
  the abolitionist movement in the United States.
• In the United States as the debate over slavery
  in the new territories boiled over, the
  Confederacy seceded from the Union.
• In 1863, President Lincoln issued the
  Emancipation Proclamation, which ended slavery in
  the Union states, and the Thirteenth Amendment to
  the Constitution ended it for good in 1865.
  Slavery persisted for twenty years more in
  Brazil, where it was finally abolished in 1888.
• In the Caribbean, slave revolts and resistance
  weakened European imperial commitment to slavery,
  and the decrease in sugar plantation
  profitability convinced the British to push for
  the abolition of slavery there as well.
• The remaining Spanish colonies, Puerto Rico and
  Cuba, were the last to free the slaves.

8
Discuss the processes of development and
underdevelopment.

• All western hemisphere economies grew between
  1800 and 1900.
• The growth of markets, technology, and population
  caused increases in wealth however, growing
  economic interdependence and increased
  competition also caused structural problems in
  some cases.
• Two distinct tracks of development evolved
  development and underdevelopment.
• These were divided post World War II into 1st
  World, 2nd World, and 3rd World countries
• Today they are referred to as ECs or emerging
  economies instead of underdeveloped (Developed
  countries and Developing Countries)
• Development included industrial development and
  prosperity, and underdevelopment included
  continued colonial dependence on exports of raw
  materials and low-wage industries.

9
What were the underlying reasons for the
struggles for independence in Latin America in
the early nineteenth century?

• Many of the causes were the same as those that
  helped spark the American and French Revolutions.
  
• Colonists chafed at the political power of
  colonial officials, the lack of representation,
  and the inability to shape their own
  institutions.
• Their subordinate position as suppliers of raw
  materials and consumers of goods manufactured in
  Europe stirred economic unrest, for colonists saw
  themselves as victims of high prices and
  state-supported monopolies.
• The same Enlightenment reasoning that affected
  the American and French Revolutions influenced
  Latin American radicals.
• The final event that triggered Latin American
  revolutions was Napoleons invasion of Spain and
  Portugal.
• The dislocation of authority and control
  resulting from those invasions was the final
  impetus toward a new revolutionary era.

10
What was the nature of immigration to the
Americas in the nineteenth century? What were
some of the problems and contributions of
immigration?

• As the African slave trade came to an end, the
  nature, sources, and numbers of immigrants to the
  Americas changed dramatically.
• For instance, hundreds of thousands of Indian and
  Chinese emigrants came to North and South
  America.
• Still, most free immigrants came from Europe,
  particularly those emigrating to the United
  States, Canada, Argentina, and other nations of
  southern South America.
• This was due in part to discrimination against
  Asian immigrants in the United States, Canada,
  and other countries.
• While this influx of people contributed to the
  Industrial Revolution in the Americas, supplying
  the labor for new factories and agriculture,
  workers in the Americas viewed immigrants
  differently.
• To workers, immigrants were a threatpawns used
  by capitalists to lower wages and degrade working
  conditions.
• Native-born Americans blamed the immigrants
  cultures for these immigration-related problems.
• However, aside from the previously mentioned
  economic benefits, immigrants made many
  significant contributions in food, music,
  literature, folklore, and other areas of their
  cultural heritage.
• Schools attempted to assimilate immigrants
  through acculturation.
• Patriotic songs, symbols, and history lessons
  were used to this end.