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  • What I thought I would attempt to do

  • in this and the next few videos is just give

  • a scaffold of American history.

  • I'm clearly going to glaze over a lot of the details,

  • but hopefully it'll give you a sense

  • of how everything at least fits together,

  • at least the major events in American history.

  • So you can kind of, and when I say American history,

  • I'm talking about United States history.

  • And so the first real successful settlement

  • in what's now the United States was at Jamestown.

  • That's Jamestown, Virginia right over here.

  • And it was 1607.

  • It was set up as kind of a commercial settlement

  • and then shortly after that, and we always

  • learned this in school, you know the pilgrims on the Mayflower,

  • sailing the oceans blue and all the rest.

  • They were kind of the next major settlement in the New World.

  • Or I guess we should say the next major successful English

  • settlement.

  • There were obviously the Spanish and the Portuguese were already

  • settling the New World with a good bit of success

  • at this point, but we're talking about the English settlements.

  • And so the pilgrims settled what's

  • now Plymouth, Massachusetts in 1620.

  • And obviously from 1620 until the mid-1700s,

  • you just had a huge influx of people migrating and cities

  • developing.

  • But I'm going to fast forward all the way to the mid-1700s.

  • So this is actually a huge amount of time

  • that I'm just not providing any details over.

  • Because I'm really just quite focused on the major events

  • in American history.

  • And so this is a 130-year period where things were just

  • getting built out more, they were getting more developed.

  • And I'm going to fast forward to 1754, because

  • at this period you had essentially

  • the entire east coast of what's now the US.

  • These were the 13 colonies of the-- well,

  • they're not the United States yet,

  • they're the 13 British colonies.

  • But these are English settlements,

  • and then if you go a little bit to the northwest from there,

  • you have all the French settlements.

  • And obviously still in these parts of Quebec and Canada,

  • people speak French.

  • But you had the French settlements

  • up in this area over here.

  • I'm not going to go into the details.

  • Each of these can be a whole series of videos,

  • and hopefully in the future I will

  • make them whole series of videos.

  • But you fast forward to 1754, and you

  • start having the French and the British start

  • getting into squabbles over territory

  • where Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is right now.

  • In 1754.

  • And that starts the French and Indian War.

  • And I want to be very clear here because this is maybe

  • one of the biggest points of confusion

  • when people first learn American history.

  • Since it's called the French and Indian War,

  • they think it's between the French and the Indians.

  • But it's not.

  • It was the French and the Indians

  • against the British and the colonists.

  • So in this war, the British and the colonists

  • were on the same side against the French and the Indians.

  • And obviously there were some Indians

  • that were also on the side of the British,

  • but it's called the French and Indian War because these

  • were the people that the British were fighting against.

  • Now if anyone outside of the United States

  • talks about the French and Indian War,

  • they will not call it the French and Indian War.

  • They'll really just call that the American theater

  • of the Seven Years' War because it eventually

  • evolves into a much bigger conflict between Great Britain

  • and France that's going on in Europe,

  • and the French and Indian War was really

  • just the American theater of it.

  • So between-- the French and Indian

  • War starts in 1754 based on these disputes over Pittsburgh.

  • But that wasn't the only thing.

  • You had all of these other things, all

  • of these other tensions that were developing.

  • The thing that starts the war is never the only factor.

  • It's always just the tipping point.

  • But that leads to a bigger war in Europe.

  • And that's the Seven Years' War that starts in 1756.

  • And they both end because they're really the same war.

  • They both end in 1763 with the Treaty of Paris.

  • Treaty of Paris, 1763.

  • And the big takeaway of that is that really most of what France

  • had in the New World now becomes essentially

  • a part of the British Empire, now

  • becomes British colonies or British territories.

  • And even Louisiana goes over to Spain at this point.

  • And we'll see it goes back to France

  • for a little bit in 1800, and then

  • it goes back to the United States in 1803,

  • but we'll see that in a second.

  • So 1763, the British-- it was this huge costly war--

  • but they were able to win.

  • And at least from the point of view of the British,

  • they felt that the main beneficiaries of this war

  • were the Americans.

  • They were able to get all this new territory, all

  • this new area that they can now trade with,

  • or they could now potentially settle.

  • And so the British decide to start

  • taxing the Americans to recoup some portion

  • of the cost of the war.

  • So in 1765 they pass the Stamp Act.

  • And this wasn't a tax on stamps.

  • What this was is that they essentially

  • declared that a whole set of paper

  • that had to be used in the New World.

  • So the stuff for legal documents,

  • stuff that maybe even newspaper.

  • That that paper would have to be produced in Great Britain,

  • and it had to have a special stamp on it in order

  • for the contracts or whatever was on top of it,

  • in order for them to be legitimate.

  • So essentially it was a huge tax on paper and on documents.

  • And essentially, this is what societies ran on.

  • So it was just a way to extract money from the colonists

  • in order to, I guess, help pay back some of the costs

  • that the empire felt that they had incurred

  • on behalf of the colonists.

  • You could debate whether who was the main beneficiary, but

  • regardless you could imagine this didn't make--

  • this whole period over here-- the colonists weren't happy.

  • Especially because they didn't have

  • any representation in Parliament.

  • This was done without anybody from the colony

  • saying, hey, wait I don't think that's fair.

  • Or this is fair or whatever.

  • And so you fast forward.

  • 1773, you have the Boston Tea Party

  • where you have a bunch of people who, for whatever reason,

  • and there's multiple interests here.

  • But there was three ships in Boston Harbor full of tea

  • and the tea was owned by the East India Tea company.

  • And they decide, in protest, and there

  • was a whole series of acts and other taxes

  • that went back and forth, but once again, we're

  • not going to go into the details here.

  • But in revolt they dumped the tea.

  • They dressed up as Indians, as American Indians,

  • and they dumped the tea into Boston Harbor,

  • and then you could imagine well that was

  • kind of a very exciting act for the colonists,

  • but it didn't make the British very happy.

  • And then after that, they passed the Coercive Act.

  • They essentially did a blockade of Boston.

  • So things started to get really, really,

  • really tense in the early 1770s.

  • And then you fast forward to 1775,

  • you have essentially the first conflicts of the American

  • Revolutionary War, and we're going

  • to do a whole series of videos on really

  • the whole Revolutionary War.

  • 1776, you have the Declaration of Independence.

  • This is them right here drafting the Declaration

  • of Independence.

  • And that's really just saying, hey, we've

  • had enough of you Great Britain!

  • We are now declaring ourselves as an independent country.

  • No more of this colonies business.

  • And so all the way until 1783 you

  • have the American Revolutionary War.