Study Guide for Midterm Exam
Required Reading
Key Concepts
Study Questions
Required Reading
1. Steven Mintz, ed., AFRICAN AMERICAN VOICES: THE LIFE CYCLE OF SLAVERY
2. Steven Mintz, ed., NATIVE AMERICAN VOICES, 1-31, 47-129
- Americanization
- Ethnicity
- Ethnocentrism
- The Melting Pot
- Minority
- Pluralism
- Prejudice
- Race
1. What myths and misconceptions do many Americans hold about Native American history?
2. What contributions have Native Americans made to diet, medicine, art, architecture, and ecology?
3. When did Native Americans arrive in the New World? Where did they come from? Did they arrive all at once?
4. Identify the major cultures of prehistoric America.
5. Describe the role of kinship in Native American societies.
6. How did Native American religions differ from European religions?
7. Describe the consequences of contact between Europeans and Native Americanson eating habits, trade, the natural environment.
8. Why were Native Americans so susceptible to European diseases?
9. How and why did relations between Native Americans and colonists from Spain, France, and England differ?
10. Describe the strategies that Native Americans adapted to respond to declining populations and a loss of land.
11. Identify the "removal" policy and explain why it was adopted.
1. Describe how "modern" slavery in the New World differed from slavery in the ancient a and non-western world.
2. Describe the role Africans played in the settlement and development of the New World.
3. Describe how European slave traders acquired slaves.
4. Identify the "Middle Passage."
5. What was the impact of the slave trade on European economies?
6. Explain why Europeans introduced slavery into their New World colonies. Was it inevitable that Europeans would rely on a slave labor force?
7. How clearly defined was the status of slaves in the 17th century?
8. Describe the material conditions of life under slavery.
9. What was the impact of slavery on the slave family?
10. Compare and contrast slavery in Latin America and the United States.
11. How did slaves resist slavery?
12. Was slavery profitable? Was it a waning institution?
13. Describe the impact of the slave trade on West African society.
Colonial America as a Multicultural Society
1. Cite specific examples to show that colonial America was a multicultural society.
2. How did colonial America's multicultural character contribute to the coming of the American Revolution?
3. Why, if colonial America contained a multiplicity of ethnic groups, did English culture dominate?
1. Why did Irish women and men migrate to the United States?
2. What were the distinctive characteristics of Irish immigrants?
3. Where did Irish immigrants settle and what kinds of occupations did they take?
4. Why did Irish immigrants face particularly bitter hostility?
5. Why did Irish Catholic immigrants and their descendants take a particularly active role in American politics?
1. What were the primary reasons why Germans migrated to the United States?
2. Where did they settle? Why?
3. What occupations were German immigrants and their descants particularly likely to take? Why?
4. Identify distinctive German contributions to American culture.
1. Why did Spain's empire north of Mexico fail to develop economically?
2. How did Mexicans in the Southwest respond to the Mexican War?
3. Why did the economic status of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the Southwest decline after the Mexican War?
4. What is a "social bandit" and how is this figure relevant to Mexican American history?