Week 1 – Prologue

Question 1

What’s the Louisiana Purchase?

Answer 1

Acquisition of the territory of Louisiana by the United States from the French First Republic in 1803 for 15 mil dollars. This consisted of most of the land in the Mississippi River’s drainage basin west of the river.

Question 2

What’s happens during Go West!?

Answer 2

• 1849, gold is discovered in California
• 80,000 prospectors leave for California
• Mexico sells Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah and portions of Colorado to USA for 15 mil

Question 3

When was the first transcontinental telegraph line is completed?

Answer 3

1861

Question 4

What’s the Homestead Act?

Answer 4

Enacted during the Civil War in 1862, provided that any adult citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. government could claim 160 acres of surveyed government land. Claimants were required to live on and “improve” their plot by cultivating the land.

Question 5

What happened on May 10, 1869?

Answer 5

Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways meet in Utah, thus connecting the East and the West coast

Question 6

When was the Civil War?

Answer 6

1861–1865

Question 7

When was the Reconstruction ear?

Answer 7

1865–1877

Question 8

When was the Gilded Age?

Answer 8

1877–1890

Question 9

How were the years 1880–1920 shaped?

Answer 9

Fueled by a massive influx of immigrants between 1880-1920 (25 million) – mainly from South-Eastern and Central Europe – the industrialization of the main cities (New York, Chicago, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia) is fed with cheap labor.

Question 10

Gilded Age

Answer 10

During the Gilded Age, a new class of entrepreneurs thrives on the expanding economy. Andrew Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, J.D. Rockefeller and Cornelius Vanderbildt and their steel, bank and railroad empires have changed the face of the US economy, and acquired an unprecedented influence on American politics.

Question 11

What are Tenement Houses?

Answer 11

A tenement is a type of building shared by multiple dwellings, typically with flats or apartments on each floor and with shared entrance stairway access.

Question 12

Pivotal Year: 1893

Answer 12

The year 1893 illustrates in many ways the stunning development that the USA has taken. The Chicago World Fair of 1893 showcases a new, highly industrialized and booming America, in which the urbanized centers have become the motors for economic expansion.

Question 13

Who was Jackson Turner?

Answer 13

On the occasion of the Chicago World Fair, the young Wisconsin historiographer Frederick Jackson Turner (1861–1932) gives the outlines of what has become known as the “Turner Thesis” or the “Frontier Thesis.” He promoted interdisciplinary and quantitative methods, often with an emphasis on the Midwestern United States.

Question 14

What is the “Frontier Thesis” / “Turner Thesis”?

Answer 14

Turner claims that the experience on the frontier was formative in forging the American character, as well as cultural and political characteristics such as a pragmatic turn of mind, individualism, and democracy.

Question 15

The Panic of 1893

Answer 15

1893 also witnesses the largest economic crisis in the US so far. As more and more people tried to redeem their silver notes for gold, the minimum of federal gold reserves is reached. In the ensuing panic, a number of railway corporations, heavily dependent on bonds, fail, among them Northern Pacific Railway, Union Pacific Railroad, and the Atchinson, Topeka & Santa Fé Railroad. As a consequence, many other companies go bankrupt; in total, over 15,000 companies and 500 banks fail, and at the panic’s peak about 20-25% of the entire American workforce is unemployed.

Question 16

When was the “Great Strike”?

Answer 16

1877

Question 17

Labor Unions and Socialist Ideas

Answer 17

Untenable working and living conditions give rise to new labor unions and social unrest. In 1904 alone, 27.000 people loose their lives on the job. More than 4.000 strikes takes place this year. Entrepreneurs counter strikes with the utmost brutality, calling in the army and the Pinkerton Agency, whose members become notorious for their aggressive behavior toward the strike forces. Tens of thousands of workers are killed during social unrest and strikes between 1870 and 1900.

Question 18

What’s the I.W.W. (International Workers of the World) and when was it formed?

Answer 18

In 1905, the largest labor union – the I.W.W. (International Workers of the World) – is formed, allowing for the first time also unskilled workers and blacks to join.

Question 19

When was the Spanish-American War?

Answer 19

Starting with a Cuban uprising against Spanish colonial rule, the Spanish-American War 1898–1902 begins.

Question 20

The Spanish–American War

Answer 20

The US supports the Cuban nationalist movement; as a response, Spanish forces attack the American battleship USS Maine – the war begins.
This war, however, not only affects the Southern coast of the US; the Pacific becomes another theatre of action, as the US also supports the revolt of indigenous peoples against the Spanish on the Philippines.

Question 21

What did the US do in 1898?

Answer 21

In order to ensure logistic support for the Pacific fleet – and to “keep open the way to China” – in 1898 the US annexes the Islands of Hawaii, as well as some small oceanic islands and atolls.
Also in 1898, the Spanish forces are beaten in the Philippines as well, and surrender.

Question 22

What territories does the US hold after the end of the Spanish-American war?

Answer 22

After the official end of the Spanish-American war, the US sphere of influence extends to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, the Wake Islands, Guam, and the Philippines, thus opening up the Pacific frontier.

Question 23

When opens Coney Island’s “Dreamland”

Answer 23

1904

Question 24

When was the Daguerrotype invented?

Answer 24

1845

Question 25

What two things are invented in 1878?

Answer 25

In 1878, George Eastman manufactures photographic dry plates; the same year Thomas Edison invents the first electric incandescent light bulb, which becomes known as ‘laterna magica’ or ‘magic lantern’.

Question 26

The First Newsreel

Answer 26

In 1895, the first film projector is invented.
In 1897, President McKinley’s inauguration ceremony is filmed, the first US newsreel.
One year later, Thomas Edison captures various scenes of the Spanish-American War (1898-1902), which include training and marching troops, unloading ships, as well as some battle scenes. Thus, this war becomes the first war to be documented on film and mediatized.

Question 27

What’s The Nickelodeon?

Answer 27

The precursor of the movie theater is the so-called “Nickelodeon” where – for a nickel (5 Cents, hence the name) – people could watch the first filmic productions.

Question 28

What are the two early Hollywood movies most known?

Answer 28

Among the most remarkable early movie productions are W.D. Griffith’s ‘The Birth of a Nation’ (1915)
as well as the movie ‘The Jazz Singer’ (1927), starring, in the tradition of minstrelsy, the white actor and singer Al Jolson who plays a blackface figure that wants to leave his traditional Jewish roots for a career in Jazz Music

Question 29

The Question of Race in Hollywood

Answer 29

Strikingly, both films deal with a urgent topic of the times: While ‘Birth of a Nation’ hails the Ku Klux Klan as the savior of the white, Anglo-Saxon Race, ‘The Jazz Singer’ combines the problematic of two ethnic minorities – Jews and African-Americans.

Question 30

The End of Romance

Answer 30

At the turn of the century, at becomes clear that the American experience cannot be expressed by the most prominent genre of the 19th century – the romance.
The cruelties of the Civil War, the urbanization of the US, its rising economic inequalities and the rise of new media call for a break with older aesthetic paradigms.
The end of the century sees the rise of Naturalism, Realism and, in the first decades of the 20th century, Modernism. Make it new!