Answer the following question:

 Read and translate the following words and word combinations:

          to establish settlements                 to be bound to …

to set up colonies                          a cargo of …

to colonize(v.)-colonization(n)     to be far-flung-from

hostility                                         to share the pie

to be on the decline                       to buy for trinkets

to squat                                          unobvious

to be doomed to…                        outright mass extermination

to cede a territory                          barren land

indentured servitude                     forced relocation of people

to enact a law                                to be recaptured

to be ill prepared                           rugged existence

to be engulfed                                to be distressed

a joint-stock company                   to be beset

to be economic” white elephant”  to perish

a nightmare                                   to thrive

          to become drifters                         a mutiny

How did American history begin? For thousands of years America lay unknown to Europeans beyond the Atlantic Ocean. The very first discovery of the continent is supposed to have been made by Norsemen from Greenland who reached the New World and encamped there. The actual material on the voyages is very small and covered with mystery. But the voyage of Thor Heyerdahl’s papyrus craft, Ra 11, did demonstrate that ancient sailors could have crossed the Atlantic ocean even before the Christian era. Both archeological evidence and ancient sagas do reveal the activities of courageous Norsemen who reached North America around year 1100. An old Scandinavian saga tells that the Norsemen found there a lot of grapes and grape vines. They filled their ships with grapes and a cargo of timber and sailed away, naming the country Vinland. Another saga tells about a group of the Vikings who spent a winter in Vinland but failed to establish peace with the natives and returned to Greenland with their son , the first European born in what is now America.             

                It is well known that the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) rediscovered the “New World” in 1492 by accident while looking for a shorter route to the spice places in Asia. An all-water route to the Indies might reduce the cost of Oriental products, inflated by various middlemen along the traditional land-sea way. Finally the queen of Spain Isabella of Castile sponsored Columbus to sail westward with the fleet of three small ships. A navigational genius, Columbus made four successful voyages from Spain to the islands now called West Indies and claimed the land in the New World for Spain. The continent America however was named for another Italian explorer – Amerigo Vespucci (1454-1512) who completed many voyages to South America and was the first to understand that he had reached India but a new continent – the New World. After Vespucci’s accounts, published in Europe, geographer Martin Waldseemuller produced a world map (kept in the Library of Congress) on which he depicted the new continent and named it America after Vespucci’s first name.

        After Columbus’ voyages, Italian, Spanish, French and English explorers continued European expansion of the continent looking for riches and land to claim for their countries. Italian explorer John Cabot commanded the first European ship to reach the shores of North America. Like Columbus, Cabot hoped to reach Asia by sailing west. Like Columbus, Cabot had unsuccessfully offered his service to several countries before finding financial support from England’s port Bristol and formal authorization of King Henry Y11. In May 1497 Cabot sailed from Bristol with two small ships and made a remarkably quick journey to the coast of Newfoundland. He spent a month there exploring American waters.

     Driven by a search for personal glory as much as by a desire for wealth, a lot of brave and skilled adventurers repeated the initial contacts with the New World. Cabot’s attempt was followed in 1524 by another Italian seaman Giovanni Verrazzano who sailed in the service of the king of France and reached the eastern coast of North America.

. In 1528 five Spanish ships under the command of Panfilo Narvaez reached the west coast of Florida, staying on the continent in search of gold for several years.

In 1539 Spanish legendary explorer Fray Marcos de Niza was sent to America and described a “very beautiful city” as one of the “Seven cities”. His report stimulated further explorations into the area.

 In all areas of Spanish exploration, settlement and colonization soon followed and before long the Spanish Empire was far-flung-from Florida to California to Central and South America. It was an Empire based on Spanish culture, the Catholic Church and exploration of the native tribes, but eventually Spain found the task of mastering and controlling two continents too much for her resources. After the defeat of the Spanish Armada by England in 1588, Spain’s power started declining.

                    PART 2 The First Wave of North America Immigration

The English did not attempt to “share the American pie” and inhabit North America until the 17P^thP century settlements in North America. English first colonization steps were stimulated by their hostility to Spain. The accession to the throne in 1558 of a protestant, Elizabeth 1, turned English and Spanish nations into real enemies. Queen Elizabeth’s advisers Sir H. Gilbert, Walter Raleigh and Francis Drake proposed a more aggressive policy toward Catholic Spain and persuaded the Queen that New World colonies would serve as bases for attacks on Spain, which had already founded its colonies in the New World. The first English attempts at colonization in Newfoundland and North Carolina however failed. Sir H. Gilbert’s expedition in 1583 was destroyed by a storm. It was bound to be unsuccessful from the start as the boats were too light for the trans-Atlantic passage. Walter Raleigh’s first expedition to America in 1587 brought back glorious reports of the coast of Virginia, but the. outbreak of war between England and Spain in 1588 postponed the mission of England’s transatlantic ventures.

  Only two decades later King James I authorized the chartering of a joint stock company to colonize Virginia. In 1607 Virginia Company landed 144 men near the mouth of the James River as a site for permanent settlement. The Virginia Company resembled English joint-stock companies of Africa and Asia, but the small Jamestown colony proved to be economic “white elephant” for investors and a nightmare for many of its earliest inhabitants. The location was low, swampy, covered with trees full of malaria-carrying mosquitoes. During the first six months fever and disease killed approximately half the settlers.

The English pictured the new land of America as New England – a region not noticeably different from old England. In 1609 the reorganized Virginia Company petitioned for a charter, fixing the limits of the colony at two hundred miles north and south and including all islands within one hundred miles of the coast.

Over the years, the company established more liberal land grants, encouraged immigration of men and women, and slowly but steadily built strong political and economic institutions. Finally the Crown recognized Virginia’s elective assembly, and as the population increased the planter class created effective units of local government. Tobacco eventually gave Virginia colony a valuable export crop. Maryland, Virginia’s neighbor to the north, became the first private estate of a single family – the Calverts who became the owners of a vast New World estate by charter of 1632.

    The next group of the immigrants to the New World consisted of the English who disagreed with the teaching of the Church of England and fled from persecution at home to Holland .Later in July 1620 a group of 102 so-called pilgrims sailed on the ship “Mayflower” to North America with the hope to set up a colony and find there civil and religious freedom. After a long trans - Antlantic crossing the pilgrims landed in a place now called Province Town and started building one of the first permanent Massachusetts’s villages called New Plymouth. The group was ill prepared for the rugged existence of the New World. Although only a few people perished in the trans-Atlantic crossing, many of them were weakened by the journey, had little skill in hunting and fishing and survived through the following winter only thanks to the help of the neighboring Indians.

The first religious group was followed by a thousand so-called English Puritans who came to Massachusetts Bay and founded in 1630 some communities in Boston. Like the Pilgrims, the Puritans had been distressed by the policies of the English crown, alarmed over growing immorality in English society and beset by economic anxiety. But unlike the Pilgrims, the Puritans claimed not separating from the English church, but establishing a purer version of it. Puritans built the first small towns centered around a church and a meeting house. The colony’s political leaders were also church leaders who tried to create the orders based upon true and strict Christian rules and the family as the basic unit of society. Good harbors, especially at the new town Boston, provided the foundation for a thriving commerce. The growth of trade and the development of shipping industry assisted the colony’s prosperity.

   While the English settlers were adjusting to the new region, France and the Netherlands also tried to acquire the territories in America. In 1609 an English adventurer Henry Hudson employed by Dutch East India Company in his small vessel the “Half Moon” sailed up the river in North America, which now bears his name. He changed little trifles and some firearms for the beautiful furs, given by Indians. In 1624 the Dutch ship “New Netherlands” brought thirty families to the mouth of the Hudson River. In 1626 the governor of the Dutch Colony bought from Indians Manhattan Island for the trinkets valued approximately $24, built a trading fort and a town, which he called New Amsterdam. The defenses of New Amsterdam were poor and later when English warships appeared in the bay the Dutch had to surrender the fort and the town to the English. In 1664 King Charles II gave a large area of Manhattan Island to his brother Duke of York and New Amsterdam was turned into New York in honor of the duke

. As English settlements spread to the north, west, and south, they grew into thirteen colonies, populating the gap between New England and other British settlements.

In 1681 William Penn, a son of the famous admiral of the English Navy, and a follower of religious group called Quakers made an agreement with the King, about the land in America. He called this land Pennsylvania (“Penn’s woods”). W. Penn did very much to build up Pennsylvania, writing advertisements, telling people in Europe about the beauty of his colony, promising that it would be a place open to settlers of all faiths.

  One of the most striking characteristics of the mainland colonies in the 18th century was their rapid population growth. European immigrants flooded New England attracted by beautiful stories about America. In 1700 only 250,000 people resided in the colonies, but from the meager beginnings the population began to double every 25 years, sprawling along the Atlantic coast. By 1760 the colonies already had contained over a million inhabitants – rich and poor, white and black, rural and urban, commercial and agricultural, Protestant and Catholic.17 -century settlers came largely from Britain, bringing with them the English language, institutions and cultures.

  But in the 18th century other groups of immigrants began to arrive. The largest of them were the Scots and Irish who fled from economic distress, failure of crops and religious discrimination. Many Europeans, mostly from Germany, came to America through so-called “redemption”. Under that form of indentured servitude, so-called redemptioners paid as much as they could of their passage before sailing from Europe to America. After they landed in the colonies, they were indentured for a term of service proportional to the amount of their debt. The term of service lasted from one year to four or longer. According to American historians only two of every ten indentured servants became successful farmers or artisans. The remaining 80% either died during servitude, became drifters or caught the land belonging to native tribes.

The development of American colonization was dramatically influenced by two most important aspects: the relationships of Europeans and Native Americans and the importation of more than two hundred thousand Africans into North America.

                                             Native Americans

          It is well known that when Christopher Columbus arrived in the “New World” and thought that he was in India, he called the native people as Indians. When Columbus discovered the New World there seemed to be approximately from 1 to 10 million different Indian tribes who lived within the present limits of the United States and spoke about 450 distinct dialects. It is well known now that the American Indians who demand now to be called Native Americans or by their tribal names like Navajo or Lakota developed great civilizations in Pre-Columbian America( the Incas and the Aztecs and others), and contributed much to world culture and the welfare of the human race. They domesticated corn, potatoes, tobacco and many vegetables and fruits which we like so much now. They made discoveries of very many drugs that are used today in chemistry and medical science.

At the time of European settlement in the 17P^thP century the New England coastal area was densely populated with Indian tribes who mostly hunted buffalo for food, shelter, clothing, and articles of warfare. At that time Indian – white contacts in the New World favored the white settlers. It was the Indians who taught European newcomers how to adjust to the new nature and climate, how to hunt in the wilderness and fish. Christopher Columbus described the American Indians as “a loving, unobvious people, so docile in all things that there are no better people or better country… They loved their neighbors as themselves and they had the sweetest and gentlest way of speaking in the world, and always with a smile”. It was the Indians who kept the Virginia colony originally alive by trading corn and other foodstuffs to the settlers.

 But in return for their friendship the Europeans took their lands, destroyed their way of life, and turned them into refugees and beggars in their own country. The story of the American Indians is one of the most brutal stories of violence and cruelty in human history. The settlers needed land, Indians occupied it. Only when the white men began pushing the Indians off their land did they started viewing them as enemies and tried to strike back. The year of 1622 marked the beginning of 200 long conflicts between the Native Americans and the white settlers. The Indians were doomed to be defeated. The colonists had guns, the Indians fought with bows and arrows.

Overall, the treatment of North American Indians by Europeans stands as the most bloody acts of genocide. In books and later in Westerns the Indians were always portrayed as “the hair-raising baddies” (villains). The phrase “the only good Indian is a dead Indian” was generally used. The means of violence were varied and included not only outright mass extermination, but also bounty-hunting (scalping for profit), massacre of women and children, the assassination of Indian kings and leaders, the forced relocation of peoples. By the end of the 18-th century some Indian tribes had been exterminated. The others had been forced to accept “the peace terms” according to which they ceded a substantial part of their territory to the whites and moved to reservations, not suitable for farming and that’s why not needed by white settlers.

                                Afro-Americans.

         To work the new lands, to produce large-scale products of tobacco, rice, cotton and indigo black slaves were captured in Africa and brought to America. In August 1619 the first cargo of twenty blacks was brought by a Dutch ship to Virginia. In 1661 the Virginia legislature enacted the law that assumed African Negroes as “inferior” and “servants for life”. After that slaves were brought into other colonies. Although while crossing the Atlantic many African slaves died from terrible conditions on the ships but their number had grown to six thousand by the end of the 17P^thP century. The difference in skin and culture of Africans was viewed by most white settlers as their inferiority, creating the basis for a system of racial slavery

Black slaves were considered to be the property of their masters and were bought and sold like farm animals. In 1800, there were almost 900,000 black slaves, most of them in the southern states of the New World. America proved for many of them a hideous prison, and death provided the only escape from life-long sufferings and degradation. They often came from different tribes and did not even speak the same languages. Enslaved into a hostile and strange culture, they had to fully obey their masters or else they would be beaten, tortured, or killed. Most of them worked in the fields on tobacco or cotton plantations, others worked as domestic servants, cooking, cleaning, and caring for the master’s family. It was illegal to teach a slave reading and writing. If slaves wanted to marry, they had to ask their master’s permission. The children of the slaves automatically became the property of the master. Sometimes family members were sold to different owners and never saw each other again.

Scattered references to attempted suicides and occasional slave mutinies indicate that Africans did not accept their fate passively, and the sadness of their songs - their most powerful legacy of expression - provides insight into their personal tragedies. Outright resistance was impossible, but. some slaves tried to escape. Although a few northern states, including New York, New Jersey, and Vermont, abolished slavery at that time, escaped slaves from the South could be legally recaptured there and returned to their masters. Many slaves tried to escape to Canada, the only place that slaves could become free legally. The escape route, called the Underground Railroad, was a network of hiding places and people called “conductors” who led slaves north to freedom. The journey was long and extremely difficult. During the day, slaves hid in caves or in barns belonging to anti-slavery white farmers. At night, they were taken to the next hiding place. The “conductors” risked their lives, because people could be executed for helping slaves to escape. Only a few fugitive slaves ever reached the promised land of Canada.

Answer the questions.

 1. Why did the English settlers of the Virginia Company call their first permanent location as  New England?

2. Who were the very first colonists in North America?

3. What were the major events of the first period of the English colonization of North America?

4. Why were some immigrants indentured for a term of service?

5. How did New Amsterdam turn into New York?

6. What was the colonists’ policy towards the Indians?

7. How did Africans get into America?

8. Why did the colonists need Black slaves?

9. What happened to the Black slaves, if they escaped but later were recaptured?

10. Who were so-called “conductors”?

2. Render the texts in English:

А). Виргиния.

      В мае 1607 г. поселенцы Лондонской компании основали на восточном побережье Америки форт Джеймстаун. Положение жителей было трудным. Освоение девственной страны шло медленно. Многие поселенцы не выдерживали и умирали.

     Шло время. В колонии постепенно складывалась определенная общественная структура. Высший слой общества составляли члены администрации и губернатор. Cсредний слой – поселенцы, которые сами оплатили свой проезд. Низший слой включал людей, посланных в Америку за счет Лондонской компании. Они обязывались в течение контракта выполнять любую порученную им работу. После окончания контракта каждый из них мог получить свою землю. Их называли сервентами.

     Постепенно “сервенты” Виргинии становились батраками у землевладельцев и резервом работников будущих капиталистических мануфактур. Таким образом, постепенно в Виргинии создавалось капиталистическое производство. Однако количество сервентов, прибывавших из Европы, не удовлетворяло потребности колониального хозяйства. Делались попытки превратить индейцев в рабов, но они были безуспешны. Нужны были новые рабочие руки, которыми стали. черные рабы из Африки..

Б) Первые поселения.

Загруппой пуританских пилигримов в 1620 г. в последующие годы потянулись представители других протестантских верований, намеревающихся на новом континенте устроить жизнь в соответствии со своими религиозными убеждениями. Численность населения росла быстрыми темпами. За первой английской волной эмиграции последовали другие; в Северную Америку стали приезжать немцы, голландцы, швейцарцы и французы, превращая колонии в огромный «Этнический котел». Английские короли пытались насадить за океаном феодальные отношения: раздавали своим приближенным земли, жаловали хартии, согласно которым землевладелец мог отдавать землю зависимым держателям. Однако развитие колоний пошло по иному, гораздо более прогрессивному пути.

Идеология «здорового эгоизма», стимулирующая конкурентную борьбу, культ супермена-одиночки, преодолевающего все препятствия на пути к успеху, и девиз «время-деньги», подхлестывающий деловую активность, привели к быстрому развитию производства. Уже в первой половине 17 в. начали появляться города – будущие центры промышленности и торговли. В 1640-х гг. возникли первые мануфактуры; развивалось судостроение. В Нью-Йорке и Пенсильвании появились железоплавильные печи, и вскоре производство железа увеличилось настолько, что это стало беспокоить англичан.

На севере распространилось фермерство, т.е. утверждался капиталистический путь развития сельского хозяйства. Этому способствовали огромные неосвоенные пространства земли. Уход на Запад был способом решения споров между арендаторами и землевладельцами: беднейшие колонисты захватывали свободные земли, причем, как правило, делали это самовольно и становились независимыми собственниками земли.

В богатых, работающих на внешний рынок южных колониях, долго сохранялось плантационное хозяйство, основанное на рабском труде.

                                     Part III.

        War for Independence. American Revolution

Read and translate the following words and word combinations:                                                                             

                    legislative assemblies                offensive

              to put/ levy a duty on                 disguised as

                    to dump the cargo                       to furnish shelter

                    punitive measures                       grievances

                    to be aligned with                        to bring the insurgent colonists into line       

              to pledge support                         not be subdued

              uproar                                           to lay down arms

              to repeal the duties                       skirmish

              to pledge support                          rag-tag groups of irregulars

              to adopt amendments                    to subdue

 By the middle of the 18P^thP century North America was no longer a serious of isolated imperial outposts inhabited by Englishmen. By 1750 there were thirteen British colonies, competing with the French ones. In 1749 the French sent an expedition down the Ohio River to claim the land in the Mississippi basin for Luis XV. The British government responded by organizing an elaborate offensive against the French. The Seven Years’ War ended in the expulsion of France from North America and stirred a wave of patriotism among the English population in America. Colonials cheered when the Treaty of Paris (1763) gave England control over all of North America east of the Mississippi.

 After the French war Great Britain rose to the heights of national power and prestige. At the same time the costly seven-year struggle severely strained Britain’s treasury and pointed up glaring differences of interests between England and Americans who felt much less dependent on the mother country. The colonies had become quite different and no longer wanted to be seen as extensions of England. The controversy between England and the colonies after 1763 revolved around the laws affecting the settlement of the West, colonial trade, currency, taxes, courts of justice and legislative assemblie.

 The British Prime Minister George Granville was determined to make the American colonies realize their obligations to the Empire. He introduced a series of new administrative and financial programs for America: the Quartering Act (1765) demanded colonials to furnish shelter and provisions for the English troops.; the Currency Act of 1764 extended an earlier edict against making colonial money legal. A New Sugar and Molasses Act in 1764 put a duty on the goods shipped to the colonies. Besides sugar taxes were put upon silk and wine. In 1765 Stamp Act laid taxes on all printed items such as paper, licenses, newspapers, playing cards and even college diplomas. To show that the tax had been paid, a stamp seller put a stamp on the paper.

The answer in colonies was boycott against the importation of British goods. The first political action - the Congress toward Stamp Act took place in New York. After more than two weeks of debate at the Congress the representatives of nine colonies issued a declaration of rights and grievances that stated that colonies could be taxed constitutionally only by their own legislatures. In 1766 an Organization “Sons of Liberty” was created in New York, and together with other organizations it broadened the base of the resistance movement. They urged citizens not to buy imported goods. Even American women, who had traditionally remained outside of politics, joined the resistance movement. In towns throughout America young women calling themselves Daughters of Liberation sat publicly at their spinning wheels all day boycotting English cloth, eating only American food and drinking American herbal tea.

In March 1770 British redcoats who had been sent to enforce certain British Acts clashed with colonial civilians. Five men were killed and six wounded. The incident was later known as “The Boston massacre When the uproar in America reached Britain, the British Parliament repealed all the duties except the tea tax, but most basic sources of discontent remained.. The Americans felt angry upon the presence of unnecessary troops, the English courts and customs officers.

            The East India Company, finding itself in critical financial state, appealed to the British government and was given a monopoly on all tea exported to North America. When three ships loaded with tea came into the port of Boston in December 16, 1773 American colonists refused to pay the tax and unload the tea. Instead at night a group of 60 men disguised as Indians boarded the ships and dumped the cargo of three hundred forty two chests into the water of the harbor This event came into American history under the name “The Boston Tea Party”. British King George and Parliament condemned the “Tea Party” as an act of vandalism and advocated legal measures to bring the insurgent colonists into line. Punitive measures were taken. The newly adopted British laws-called by the colonists “Coercive Acts’- closed the port of Boston until the cost of the lost tea was paid for. New British officials were appointed in American colonies, and many more British troops were stationed there.

      But the resistance of the colonists continued to grow. In 1774 Americans established so-called Committees of Correspondence, which sent delegates to the First Continental Congress in Philadelphia. Delegates from 12 colonies except Georgia wrote to King George asking to reopen Boston Harbor. American lawyers Thomas Jefferson and James Wilson worked out the rights of Americans and their own legislation. King George did not answer the letter and sent more warships to America. American patriots called on Americans to take up arms to defend their rights. In April, 1775 the British regulars at Lexington and Concord (near Boston) were met by armed American volunteers (so-called militia). Their first skirmished proclaimed the beginning of American War for Independence.   

   The Second Continental Congress, which also convened in Philadelphia, authorized an American army and appointed a young Virginian planter George Washington as its .commander-in-chief. On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence from the British rule. This famous document drafted by Thomas Jefferson maintained that all men were created equal and proclaimed their rights for life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. The Declaration of Independence was signed in so-called Independence on the wall of which there is still the famous Liberty Bell, which told the people outside about the historical decisions. Independence was inevitable. Many Americans were ready to die for colonial rights, singing the words from John Dickinson’s “Liberty Song”: “Come, join hand in hand, brave Americans, all, and rouse your hearts”.

The war for Independence lasted for six years and was hard to win. In Great Britain at that time there lived 9 million people, in the American colonies – less than 3 million, 20 percent of which were slaves. Britain had the world’s greatest navy and a strong army. The rag-tag groups of irregulars seemed no match for England’s military might. Americans had only an ill trained militia and no navy. Yet they had one great advantage – they were fighting at home and for freedom. The colonial militia’s successes around Boston in the spring 1775 had contributed to the American myth that British regulars were less effective than the colonials’ volunteers. At the same time the British government and its generals made the fatal mistake of underestimating Washington’ ragged army seriously. As the war progressed, discipline and experience appeared and though the colonists lost many battles, they learned that they could be beaten but they could not be subdued .The overwhelming triumph of the Americans at Saratoga in October 1777 decided the Revolution. Besides France seeking the revenge to Britain had secretly provided assistance to the rebellious colonies, dispensing goods and finances through a trading company headed by French author Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais.

After the decisive victory of the colonial army at Yorktown in 1781 the British finally laid down their arms. In 1783 the ultimate peace treaty was signed in Paris. Britain recognized American independence and agreed to withdraw all its troops from the American soil. An American flag was raised. The 13 states joined together into a confederation. The citizens of the new country began to call themselves “Americans” and a new nation was born Congress also worked out a system of adding new states to the original ones.

One of the first tasks facing Americans was the creation of new political institutions to exercise the governmental authority seized from Great Britain. In 1787 a nation-wide meeting (named Convention) in Philadelphia adopted a new Constitution. It established a legislature of two Houses, the House of Representatives in which the places were assigned according to the population and filled by popular vote, and the Senate where every state was to send two members appointed by state legislature. Centralized executive power was to be effected by Federal Government headed by a President with wide jurisdiction over home and foreign affairs. During January and February 1789 elections took place in the states and soon the new congressmen gathered in New York, the temporary capital. George Washington was unanimously elected the first President of the United States of America.

In 1791 ten amendments were added to the Constitution, known as the “Bill of Rights”, according to which the Federal government guarantees freedom of speech, press, or religion. Yet it is necessary to note that the American Constitution, the first in the world to recognize the rights of white citizens, at the same time confirmed the black people’s slavery. The brutality of the slavery obviously conflicted with the proclaimed ideals of American democracy.

Answer the questions.

 1. What was the main reason of British – French war?

 2. What consequences had the victory of Britain on the relations between American colonies and their mother country?

3. What series of British actions led to the American war for independence?  

4. What role did “The Boston Massacre” and the Boston “Tea Party” play in the revolutionary movement?

5. What was the main idea of the “Declaration of Independence” drafted by Thomas Jefferson?

6. How did the revolutionary events develop after the “Declaration of Independence” had been adopted?

7. Which great advantage did American militia have over British soldiers?

8. What were the very first steps of Philadelphia Convention after the decisive victory of the American colonial army?

9. When was the very first president of the USA elected?

2. Find English equivalent to the Russian ones:

Основные события; начало войны; одержать победу; подавить восстание; облагать налогами; приостановить деятельность законодательного органа; отменить пошлины; осуществить план; провести карательные меры; созвать конгресс; провести в жизнь закон; прекратить наступательные операции; предоставить безоговорочную независимость.

3. Render the texts in English:

А) Разрыв колоний с метрополией был предопределен с самого начала, так как ориентация на автономность возникла очень быстро…

Еще задолго до революции в Северной Америке сложилась особая духовная атмосфера, поражавшая прибывших за океан европейцев. Это ощущение свободы и больших возможностей для самореализации личности стало важнейшей основой для складывания американской нации. Американская революция, устранившая слабые ростки феодализма в колониях и порвавшая с диктатом метрополий, открыла в конце 18 в. путь для быстрого наращивания потенциала модернизации. Почему же произошло американское чудо? Некоторые исследователи склонны объяснять это тем, что первыми поселенцами были по преимуществу пуритане - носители капиталистического духа. Действительно, преследуемые на родине, английские кальвинисты переселялись в Америку целыми общинами и на первых порах сыграли роль своего рода стержня в экономической, политической и культурной жизни колоний. Но не менее важными были и другие факторы: колонисты принесли с собой демократические традиции, которые веками вырабатывала английская парламентская система.

                                             (Хачатурян В.М.”История мировых цивилизаций”)

 Б) К концу 18 в. в Американских колониях сложилась очень напряженная и противоречивая обстановка. К этому времени англичане попыталисьустановить более строгий режим в своих колониях. Это вызвало решительный протест американцев. Введение закона о Гербовом сборе вызвала к жизни новые формы демократического движения. В конце 1765-начале 1766 гг. возникла революционная организация «Сыновья свободы». Они организовали бойкот английских товаров, что привело к провалу закона о Гербовом сборе. Это был новый этап политической борьбы. В мае 1773 г. английский парламент принял так называемый «Чайный закон». Протест против Чайного закона вылился в инцидент, известный в истории страны как «Бостонское чаепитие».

 Между тем разрыв с Англией, вооруженное столкновение становились все более неотвратимыми. Первые вооруженные столкновения между английскими войсками и американскими силами произошли в Ленсингтоне и Конкорде. Три недели спустя после этих событий, 10 мая 1775 г. в Филадельфии открылся Континентальный конгресс. На нем было принято решение о создании регулярной армии. Главнокомандующим был назначен молодой плантатор Джордж Вашингтон.

Историческая наука рассматривает Американскую революцию как революцию, в которой борьба за освобождение от колониальной зависимости переплелась с борьбой за экономические и политические преобразования. Американская революция оказалась тесно связанной с процессом формирования новой нации.

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