Category: American history homework help

1.  
Analyzing Global Developments: Deng Xiaoping and China’s So-Called Economic Miracle
How do China’s GDP overall growth rates and per capita growth rates compare with those of Britain during the industrial revolution and hte United States from 1850 to 1989? How do you account for any extreme difference?
Why have Deng Xiaoping and his successors been able to resist demands for democracy and maintain the dominant political position of the Chinese Communist Party?
Based on your reading, compare Gorbachev’s perestroika reform movement with Deng’s vision for economic and political reform in China. 
Do you think the Chinese are likely to maintain high growth rates over the long run, given the experience of Britain and the United States? Explain your answer.
 
2.  
Primary Source 21.3 Why Gender Matters (2000), World Bank
Describe the effect of tuition on girls’ school attendance. 
Evaluate the relative importance of barriers to girls’ education posed by culture on the one hand and poverty on the other. 
What effect does expanding educational opportunity for girls have on boys?
 

1.  
The discussion for this week is on the video clip on New York during the period leading up the the Civil War.  The prompt for this weeks discussion is:
What was New York’s reaction to the growing tensions between the North and the South?
 New York Disc 2 02 Toward a Civil War – YouTube 
As with many questions there is not just one right answer, so don’t feel you have to look for one.
Requirements for this assignment:
Your post should be about 1 paragraph long and is due on Friday by midnight. (14 points)

As you’ve seen from this week’s resources, President Hoover and President Roosevelt took different stances concerning the Great Depression. What were the causes of the Great Depression? Compare and contrast Hoover and Roosevelt’s response to the crisis. How did they illustrate American’s changing attitudes of government intervention?
Discuss the transition from laissez-faire to federal government intervention in business and governmental programs found in the Three R’s of the New Deal. Remember to bring in material from this week’s readings and media to support your argument.
Must be 200 words

 
Doing History: Texas
Read the excerpt from Meir y Teran about Mexican worries of American expansion in Texas
Meir y Teran to Pueblo Viejo, Nov 24, 1829
The department of Texas is contiguous to the most avid nation in the world. The North Americans have conquered whatever territory adjoins them. In less than half a century, they have become masters of extensive colonies which formerly belonged to Spain and France, and of even more spacious territories from which have disappeared the former owners, the Indian tribes. There is no Power like that to the north, which by silent means, has made conquests of momentous importance. Such dexterity, such constancy in their designs, such uniformity of means of execution which always are completely successful, arouses admiration. Instead of armies, battles, or invasions, which make a great noise and for the most part are unsuccessful, these men lay hands on means, which, if considered one by one, would be rejected as slow, ineffective, and at times palpably absurd. …. The territory against which these machinations are directed, and which has usually remained unsettled, begins to be visited by adventurers and empresarios; some of these take up their residence in the country, pretending that their location has no bearing upon the question of their government’s claim or the boundary disputes; shortly, some of these forerunners develop an interest which complicates the political administration of the coveted territory; complaints, even threats, begin to be heard, working on the loyalty of the legitimate settlers, discrediting the efficiency of the existing authority and administration; and the matter having arrived at this stage—which is precisely that of Texas at this moment—diplomatic maneuvers begin: They incite uprisings in the territory in question and usually manifest a deep concern for the rights of the inhabitants.
Read the excerpt below from a Tejano elite
Tejano elite favors American immigration
What shall we say of the law of April 6, 1830? It absolutely prohibits immigrants from North America coming into Texas, but there are not enough troops to enforce it; so the result is that desirable immigrants are kept out because they will not violate the law, while the undesirable, having nothing to lose, come in freely. The industrious, honest North American settlers have made great improvements in the past seven or eight years. They have raised cotton and cane and erected gins and sawmills. Their industry has made them comfortable and independent, while the Mexican settlements, depending on the pay of the soldiers among them for money, have lagged far behind. Among the Mexican settlements even the miserable manufacture of blankets, hats and shoes has never been established, and we must buy them either from foreigners or from the interior, 200 or 300 leagues distant. We have had a loom in Bexar for two years, but the inhabitants of Goliad and Nacogdoches know nothing of this ingenious machine, nor even how to make a sombrero.
The advantages of liberal North American immigration are innumerable: (1) The colonists would afford a source of supply for the native inhabitants. (2) They would protect the interior from Indian invasions. (3) They would develop roads and commerce to New Orleans and New Mexico. (4) Moreover, the ideas of government held by North Americans are in general better adapted to those of the Mexicans than are the ideas of European immigrants. 
Instructions:
Historians have to interpret sources with conflicting opinions and viewpoints and try to make an argument. This can be complicated and difficult. Sometimes you have to take a side on a complicated argument, other times, you have to thread the needle between two valid historical viewpoints.
Write a long paragraph or several short paragraphs using the sources above to make an argument about American immigration to Texas from the Mexican perspective?

 In 2008, Barack Obama was the first African American elected president of the United States.  full detailes in the file attached.

 In 2008, Barack Obama was the first African American elected president of the United States.  full detailes in the file attached.

 PLEASE DONT MAKE IT SOUND ALL SUPER SUPER SMART USING CRAZY BIG WORDS, ITS JUST A SIMPLE DOCUMENT ANALYSIS. 
Document Analysis: Tenskwatawa
Please read the following excerpt from Shawnee Chief Tenskwatawa:
Tenskwatawa Speech
I died and went to the World Above, and saw it. I had done every sin against my people and myself. You knew me! I was a sinner, I was a drunkard! I had another name then. That name is so smeared with the filth of my old sins that my mouth will not utter it, for my mouth is now pure! Tenskwatawa has never spoken a lie or an obscenity, and never will. I have come back cleansed. I am as we were in the Beginning! In me is a shinning power!
In the Beginning, we were full of this shinning power, strong because we were pure. We moved silently through the woods. With a silent arrow we killed the animals and ate pure meat. In silence the fish swam in pure rivers, and we caught them in silence and ate them. In silence our corn and beans and squashes grew from the earth, and those we ate. We drank only clear water, after the milk of our mother’s breast.
I have heard that lost silence. You have not heard it because you have not been dead. Up under the roof of the sky, there is that pure silence!
In the beginning, our people broke that beautiful silence only to pray to the Great Good Spirit, or to speak wisely in council, or to say kind words to our children and our elders, or to give the war cry when we avenged wrongs.
Our Creator put us on this wide, rich land, and told us we were free to go where the game was, where the soil was good for planting. That was our state of true happiness. We did not have to beg for anything. Our Creator had taught us how to find and make everything we needed, from trees and plants and animals and stone. We lived in bark, and we wore only the skins of animals. Our Creator taught us how to use fire, in living, and in sacred ceremonies. She taught us how to heal with barks and roots, and how to make sweet foods with berries and fruits, with papaws and the water of the maple tree. Our Creator gave us tobacco, and said, Send your prayers up to me on its fragrant smoke. Our Creator taught us how to enjoy loving our mates, and gave us laws to live by, so that we would not bother each other, but help each other. Our Creator sang to us in the wind and the running water, in the bird songs, in children’s laughter, and taught us music. And we listened, and our stomachs were never dirty and never troubled us.
Thus were we created. Thus we lived for a long time, proud and happy. We had never eaten pig meat, nor tasted the poison called whiskey, nor worn wool from sheep, nor struck fire or dug earth with steel, nor cooked in iron, nor hunted and fought with loud guns, nor ever had diseases which soured our blood or rotted our organs. We were pure, so we were strong and happy.
But, beyond the Great Sunrise Water, there lived a people who had iron, and those dirty and unnatural things, who seethed with diseases, who fought to death over the names of their gods! They had so crowded and befouled their own island that they fled from it, because excrement and carrion were up to their knees. They came to our island. Our Singers had warned us that a pale people would come across the Great Water and try to destroy us, but we forgot. We did not know they were evil, so we welcomed them and fed them. We taught them much of what Our Grandmother had taught us, how to hunt, grow corn and tobacco, find good things in the forest. They saw how much room we had, and wanted it. They brought iron and pigs and wool and rum and disease. They came farther and drove us over the mountains. Then when they had filled up and dirtied our old lands by the sea, they looked over the mountains and saw this Middle Ground, and we are old enough to remember when they started rushing into it. We remember our villages on fire every year and the crops slashed every fall and the children hungry every winter. All this you know.
For many years we traded furs to the English or the French, for wool blankets and guns and iron things, for steel awls and needles and axes, for mirrors, for pretty things made of beads and silver. And for liquor. This was foolish, but we did not know it. We shut our ears to the Great Good Spirit. We did not want to hear that we were being foolish.
But now those things of the white men have corrupted us, and made us weak and needful. Our men forgot how to hunt without noisy guns. Our women dont want to make fire without steel, or cook without iron, or sew without metal awls and needles, or fish without steel hooks. Some look in those mirrors all the time, and no longer teach their daughters to make leather or render bear oil. We learned to need the white men’s goods, and so now a People who never had to beg for anything must beg for everything!
Some of our women married white men, and made half-breeds. Many of us now crave liquor. He whose filthy name I will not speak, he who was I before, was one of the worst of those drunkards. There are drunkards in almost every family. You know how bad this is.
And so you see what has happened to us. We were fools to take all these things that weakened us. We did not need them then, but we believe we need them now. We turned our backs on the old ways. Instead of thanking Weshemoneto for all we used to have, we turned to the white men and asked them for more. So now we depend upon the very people who destroy us! This is our weakness! Our corruption! Our Creator scolded me, ‘If you had lived the way I taught you, the white men could never have got you under their foot!’
And that is why Our Creator purified me and sent me down to you full of the shinning power, to make you what you were before! As you sit before me I will tell you the many rules Our Creator gave me for you. I will tell you how I went to the World Above. When I tell you of the punishments I saw, they will terrify you! But listen, those punishments will be upon you unless you follow me through the door that I am opening for you!
No red man must ever drink liquor, or he will go and have the hot lead poured in his mouth! You know I have been a slave to liquor since first I tasted it. But never again will I take any! If ever you saw me taste it again, you would know that what I tell you is false!
There are two kinds of white men. There are the Americans, and there are the others. You may give your hand in friendship to the French, or the Spaniards, or the British. But the Americans are not like those. The Americans come from the slime of the sea, with mud and weeds in their claws, and they are a kind of crayfish serpent whose claws grab in our earth and take it from us.
 Instructions:
What was the story that Tenswatawa told in this speech? What was the advice he gave to the Shawnee? Anything interesting or knew you learned? Any criticism or critiques you have? 
For full credit you should complete your own post and comment on another student’s post. Your comment on a fellow student’s post should be either praise, or constructive criticism (respectful disagreement or advice)

Need help with my US History document analysis assignment. Please don’t use big fancy words or make it sound super over the top like a history genius did this. Just a paragraph or 2, basic answers.
 
9.5 Doc Analysis: Democracy & the Family
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Democracy Analysis: Democracy & the Family
Read an excerpt of Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America,” which he observes how family life had been altered in America. 
I have just been considering how among democratic peoples, particularly America, equality modifies the relations between one citizen and another. I want to carry the argument further and consider what happens within the family. I am not trying to discover new truths, but to show how known facts have a bearing on my subject . Everyone has noticed that in our time a new relationship has evolved between the different members of a family, that the distance formerly separating father, and son has diminished, and that paternal authority, if not abolished, has at least changed form. Something analogous, but even more striking, occurs in the United States. 
In America the family, if one takes the word in its Roman and aristocratic sense, no longer exists. One only finds scattered traces thereof in the first years following the birth of children. The father then does, without opposition, exercise the domestic dictatorship which his sons’ weakness makes necessary and which is justified by both their weakness and his unquestionable superiority. 
But as soon as the young American begins to approach man’s estate, the reins of filial obedience are daily slackened. Master of his thoughts, he soon becomes responsible for his own behavior. In America there is in truth no adolescence. At the close of boyhood he is a man and begins to trace out his own path. 
It would be wrong to suppose that this results from some sort of domestic struggle, in which, by some kind of moral violence, the son had won the freedom which his father refused. The same habits and principles which lead the former to grasp at independence dispose the latter to consider its enjoyment as an incontestable right. 
So in the former one sees none of these hateful, disorderly passions which disturb men long after they have shaken off an established yoke. The latter feels none of those bitter, angry regrets which usually accompany fallen power. The father has long anticipated the moment when his authority must come to an end, and when that time does come near, he abdicates without fuss. The son has known in advance exactly when he will be his own master and wins his liberty without haste or effort as a possession which is his due and which no one seeks to snatch from him … 
When the state of society turns to democracy and men adopt the general principle that it is good and right to judge everything for oneself, taking former beliefs as providing information but not rules, paternal opinions come to have less power over the sons, just as his legal power is less too. 
Perhaps the division of patrimonies which follows from democracy does more than all the rest to alter the relations between father and children. 
When the father of a family has little property, his son and he live constantly in the same place and carry on the same work together. Habit and necessity bring them together and force them all the time to communicate with each other. There is bound, then, to be a sort of intimate familiarity between them which makes power less absolute and goes ill with respectful formalities. 
Moreover, in democracies those who possess these small fortunes are the very class which gives ideas their force and sets the tone of mores. Both its will and its thoughts prevail everywhere, and even those who are most disposed to disobey its orders end by being carried along by its example. I have known fiery opponents of democracy who allowed their children to call them “thou.” 
So at the same time as aristocracy loses its power, all that was austere, conventional, and legal in parental power also disappears and a sort of equality reigns around the domestic hearth. 
I am not certain, generally speaking, whether society loses by the change, but I am inclined to think that the individual gains. I think that as mores and laws become more democratic the relations between father and sons become more intimate and gentle; there is less of rule and authority, often more of confidence and affection, and it would seem that the natural bond grows tighter as the social link loosens ….
Democracy too draws brothers together, but in a different way. 
Under democratic laws the children are perfectly equal, and consequently independent; nothing forcibly brings them together, but also nothing drives them apart. Having a common origin, brought up under the same roof, and treated with the same care, as no peculiar privilege distinguishes or divides them, the affectionate and frank intimacy of childhood easily takes root among them …. 
This gentleness of democratic manners is such that even the partisans of aristocracy are attracted by it, and when they have tasted it for some time, they are not at all tempted to return to the cold and respectful formalities of the aristocratic family. They gladly keep the family habits of democracy provided they can reject its social state and laws …. 
I think that may be able to sum up in one phrase the whole sense of this chapter and of several others that preceded. Democracy .loosens social ties, but tightens natural ones. At the same time as it separates citizens, it brings kindred closer together.
Instructions:
Write a response to the following questions:
1. What was the relationship between fathers and sons in America? 
2. How was this relationship different based on class (how were poor families different than rich families) 
3. What is de Tocqueville’s assessment of this? ls it good or bad? 
For full credit you should complete your own post and comment on another student’s post. Your comment on a fellow student’s post should be either praise, or constructive criticism (respectful disagreement or advice)

1.  
The discussion for this week is on the video clip on New York’s growing trade and manufacturing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  The prompt for this weeks discussion is:
What change described in this video had the greatest impact on New York and why?
 New York Disc 1 06 Trade & Economic Growth in the Early 1800s – YouTube 
As with many questions there is not just one right answer, so don’t feel you have to look for one.
Requirements for this assignment:
Your post should be about 1 paragraph long and is due on Thursday by midnight. (14 points)
You will also need to respond to one other person’s post by midnight Sunday (6 points)
2.  
So first you need to read chapter 6, and then answer the following 3 questions:
Discuss Turner’s thesis. Why was it a “significant” thesis? What prevailing assumptions did it challenge?
How is the thesis a product of Turner’s time (i.e. how was it influenced by ideas and events that were prominent around the time it was produced)?
What was the topic of Thomas Abernethy’s research? What did his research conclude, and what was its effect on Turner’s theory?

1.  
Comparing and Contextualizing Totalitarianism, Analyzing the context of Totalitarianism
Read Primary Sources 19.1, 19.2 and 19.3 and answer the following:
How does Arendt’s view of totalitarianism apply to the three subsequent documents? To which document does the term totalitarian seem most appropriate? To which does it apply least well?
What role do ordinary people play in supporting or resisting the regime in the final three documents?
Identify the nature and limits of state power in the final three documents. 
2.  Watch this video

 
Complete the following worksheet