Questions for Chapter 1:
1. Why was Dr. Takaki annoyed when he was asked by a taxi cab driver how long he had been in the United States?
2. When and where were the first African slaves imported into the colonies of the United States?
3. What is the AMaster Narrative of American History@ that Takaki refers to?
4. During the 1890s historian Frederick Jackson Turner coined the phrase Afrontier thesis.@ What was this thesis and why do you think it was so important in dominating the field of American history up to the middle of the 20th century?
5. Today, Takaki says the demography of the United States is challenging the Master Narrative of American history. What is that challenge?
6. Notice the quote by Dr. Donna Shalala made while she was the Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin on page 6. Who is Donna Shalala?
7. Notice that Takaki=s book does not attempt to cover all ethnic groups living in the United States. Instead, it concentrates on 7 racial or ethnic groups. Which are these 7?
8. The African population was small during the first half century of European settlement. Then, beginning in 1676, it suddenly spiked upward and slavery rapidly spread across the South. What was the cause of this sudden increase in the importation of African slaves?
9. What do the following two phrases refer to in American history?
A. Jim Crow Segregation
B. The Color Line
10. Originally, Chinese immigrants were wanted as sojourning laborers, not settlers. What does this mean and why was it important in the way the Chinese were treated in the United States?
11. During World War II, the U.S. government interned 120,000 Japanese Americans (two-thirds of them born in the United States) in camps throughout the Western United States. Why do you think this was done? We will discuss this more later in this class.
12. The Irish came to the U.S. during the early 17th Century primarily as captives of the English wars in Ireland and as indentured servants in the Irish Aslave trade.@ What were the English wars in Ireland and what was the concept of indentured servants?
13. During the 19th Century, more than 4 million Irish immigrated to the U.S. What were the two primary motivating factors for this massive movement?
14. Even though the Irish were badly discriminated against during the 19th Century, they did have an advantage over the Chinese in terms of their assimilation because of the Aethnic strategy@ of the U.S. government. This ethnic strategy was established by the Naturalization Law of 1790. What was this law and what was this strategy?
15. Many of the Jews who immigrated to the United States during the later 1800s and the early 1900s were fleeing the pogroms in Russia and eastern Europe? What were these pogroms?
16. The American Revolution had been a war not only for political freedom from England but also for market freedom. What was this concept of market freedom?
17. In 1863 the American Union forces fighting in the Civil War against the South were dangerously close to losing to the South because of severe manpower shortages. How did President Lincoln overcome this solve this manpower problem?
18. 1952 was a key year in American immigration policy for what reason?
19. In 1967, the United States passed a new law regarding marriages. What did this law do?
20. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed a bill that did what for Japanese Americans?
Questions for Chapter 2:
21. How did the early English settlers in America justify, or rationalize in their own minds, the taking of land and other resources from the American Indians? That is, how did they convince themselves that they were not doing anything wrong in conquering the Indians?
Questions for Chapter 3:
22. What was the significance of Bacon=s revolt in 1676.
23. What was the Aone drop of blood rule?@
24. What was Thomas Jefferson=s (3rd President of the U.S.) attitude and actions regarding slavery?
25. Who was Sally Hemings and what was her relationship with Thomas Jefferson?
26. The founding fathers, when writing the U.S. Constitution in 1787 (it was enacted in 1789) created a basic contradiction between what was said at the beginning (That it is a self- evident truth that all men are created equal) and the provisions it made later for slavery. What was this contradiction?
27. In 1793 Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. What was the significance of this invention?
28. What was the relationship between the emergence of cotton as the nation=s primary export and what happened to American Indians and blacks?
Questions for Chapter 4:
29. What was Andrew Jackson=s (7th President of the U.S., 1828-1836) role in affecting the locations of the American Indian populations in the United States and how did he justify his actions?
30. Why do you think Andrew Jackson felt that the Indian population could not survive living within the same areas (such as Georgia and Mississippi) as Awhite society?@ And what was the significance of this reasoning?
31. What was Andrew Jackson=s paternalistic perception of American Indians and how did he use this to justify their relocation to reservations west of the Mississippi River? (Note: the answers to questions 30 and 31 are key to understanding the justification for the way the U.S. government treated the American Indians during the period of transportation, when the Indians were forcibly removed from their lands in the South to the west.)
32. AInstituted by President Thomas Jefferson, the land-allotment program became the principal strategy for taking territory from the Creeks, Chickasawa, and Choctaws.@ Please explain this statement.
33. What happened with the Choctaw Indians in Mississippi in 1831 and the Cherokees in Georgia in 1838. Hint: Their movement to the west was called ATransportation.@ What was the ATrail of Tears@?
34. When was the transcontinental railroad completed across the United States? What was its effect on the Indian population of the American frontier?
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