Questions tagged [north-america]
For questions related to northern part of America, ie. pre-Columbian era, age of Spanish, English and French colonization, to modern day countries of Canada, the United States and Mexico.
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How Japan could avoid losing ww2 [closed]
If Japan had not attack Pearl Harbor (and the Philippines &c), the US might have been persuaded to remain neutral, allowing them to control much of Southeast Asia. (The colonial powers being ...
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Is there any documented evidence that these three North American cities were named due to the locations of their namesakes?
Two years ago, I was studying an online atlas of the world and I happened to notice that there are three cities located in North America which have a geographical similarity with three cities located ...
user50539
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Where are the Cheyenne prophesies of Sweet Medicine recorded?
The American Buffalo, a recent documentary film series by Ken Burns, includes several quotations that it attributes to a Cheyenne prophet called Sweet Medicine.
Regarding European settlers:
There is ...
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Where in America did James Macpherson travel?
I'm looking into James Macpherson, the 18th century Scottish writer, and I can't find much. I know that in 1764 he took a job as secretary to the colonial governor, George Johnstone, also a Scott, in ...
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Who said "Don't believe history less than 50 years old"?
I remember reading a quote a little while that went something like "Don't trust history written less than fifty years after the event."
Who said this, and what was the exact quote, and the ...
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Did the teaching of evolution in the US suffer greatly from the Scopes Monkey trial?
After reading the story of the Scopes Monkey Trial, I learned that the teaching of evolution in the US suffers greatly from it. To quote some words from the wiki item, at the section Anti-evolution ...
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Examples of failed leftist movements without support today [closed]
By support I mean popular support, whether in polls or any means of trying to gauge the views of the average citizen.
It seems like almost every major historical movement spearheaded by the left ...
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Does anybody know the name to this British tune?
Does anybody know the name to this British tune? The march is from the show called George Washington (1984 mini-series).
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Is there a British equivalent in architectural history to American cabins?
I've been watching a lot of American horror movies, and a big trope is the characters staying in old, abandoned cabins in the woods. Or if not cabins then lodges, or in Westerns or haberdasheries etc. ...
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What is the meaning behind this Panama joke published in a 1914 newspaper?
The following was published in a column of jokes in The Washington Herald on May 10, 1914:
But as a matter of fact the real Panama hats are not nearly as pretty as the imitation ones.
I assume the ...
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When did Canada get the rights reserved by the 1867 British North America Act? [duplicate]
After becoming a country in 1867, Canada was not entirely independent. Britain retained 3 important powers: control of Canada’s defense, control of Canada’s foreign relations, and the requirement to ...
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Who were the 'Water People of North America' and what do we know about them?
I stumbled upon a website showing fascinating water structures in North America. Unfortunately it does not say much about the culture which built these and only speculates about the potential usages ...
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What's the difference between Country Born and Mulatto people in the 18th century New England?
I have a history assignment and it's asking me to provide context of the table already provided that contains "background characteristics of New England Runaways."
To be specific, it states ...
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What systems of opression did colonial South America utilized to acculturate indigenous peoples, compared to the ones used in North America? [closed]
After reading and writing about boarding schools (and prisons) of acculturation here in North America, where Indigenous peoples were forced into Western ways, I am left wondering:
Did these systems ...
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When did “Duck, Duck, Goose“ migrate from Sweden to America?
I am curious as to when the game “Duck, Duck, Goose” moved from Sweden to America. Many of my friends whose parents are 65-80 years old never played the game and only heard of it because their ...
Jessie Simms
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How was religious diversity represented in the Thirteen Colonies?
I understand that many settlers of the original thirteen English colonies in America were Protestants (or Puritans, specifically) who left Europe in search for better religious freedom.
However, since ...
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Where are the Native American primary source documents?
I am currently looking into Crow Mythology and every website I've seen says essentially "The Native Americans thought of the crow as X". But "NATIVE AMERICANS" is too broad a category! Where are they ...
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Are there any hypotheses on how the Dorset people disappeared?
I read an article about how anthropologists have discovered artifacts from an ancient Arctic culture known as the Dorset that disappeared centuries ago and were the precursors to the Inuit in the ...
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What percentage of slaves originally brought from Africa were purchased from slave traders as opposed to having been captured by Europeans?
I was engaged in a debate over slavery in America yesterday and the following proposition I put forward was being contested: a majority of slaves brought to America from Africa were sold to Europeans ...
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Could homo erectus have migrated to North America? [closed]
I was reading about Virginia McIntyre's claim of finding 200,000 year old artifacts at Hueyatlaco. There's also the Calico early man site with artifacts around 250,000 years old. Is it possible that H....
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What are the occurences of total war in the Native Americans?
In this article from Wikipedia, a war between the Pawnees on one side, and the Sioux and Cheyennes on the other side, is represented.
It is claimed this war was a total war because the "non fighters" ...
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Why did Native Americans never unify into a single country? [closed]
At a time when Europe and Asia had already united into several powerful military nations, the American Indian still lived in a tribal society which numbered over 2000 tribes. Why, in over 10,000 years ...
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When was bicycle ridership highest in North America?
Bike commuting share in the United States is currently less than 1%; but in some cities (college towns, really) it is 10% or higher (source).
Is there a time in US history when bicycle ridership was ...
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What did indigenous North Americans trade amongst themselves before Europeans arrived?
Once the colonial era began around 1500 or 1600, Europeans and Native Americans started trading. As far as I'm aware, the principal trade was beaver pelts in exchange for iron axes.
But I'm ...
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Who kept official records in 19th century America? [closed]
I'm curious about records and archives in America during the 19th century. Was there any record keeping done? Who did it? Was there a place people could have gone to view public records?
For example ...
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Was there a Viking Exchange as well as a Columbian one?
In the Columbian Exchange, many tropical and temperate species crossed the Atlantic for the first time. Was there previously a Viking Exchange at higher latitudes?
According to Jesse Byock's Viking ...
user18968
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Why are Quebeckers different from Acadians?
These two French-speaking peoples of Canada are quite distinct, both in linguistic as well as historical terms. How did this difference arise? Did they arrive at different times to Canada? Do they ...
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Was there a European response to the trail of tears?
This question is pretty straightforward. While looking into Victorian British beliefs about Americans and American history I began to wonder about European attitudes toward American Indians; and more ...
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Why did stock brokers go bankrupt after the crash of 1929?
If the sole purpose of a broker is simply to buy and sell for others, why would they go bankrupt in the stock market crash? It's not like they have money invested in the cause, they just play with ...
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Why did Native Americans originally migrate to the Americas?
Native Americans migrated to America around 13000 or 15000 years ago just around the last ice age. I read that during the first wave of migration, they used the Beringia strait to travel across from ...
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Why don't the Americas use ISO paper sizes? [duplicate]
In the mid-sixties, most countries standardized on ISO paper sizes (A-series, B-series, etc.). The Americas didn't. Why not?
(Around the same time there was a failed push in the US to switch to ...
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Why did European people settle in America and later create another nation of their own? [closed]
Now, in North America, mostly white people live. They are not the real natives—it's the American Indians. They are mostly from England and other powerful European nations at that time who were ...
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What were the dominant Native American cultures in Eastern Canada and New England in the late 900s?
It's an oddly specific question, I know. Just to lay my cards on the table I'm writing a piece of short fiction about a small band of vikings that penetrates deeper into the American interior than any ...
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Why did North America economically prosper, and maintain stable government and South/Central America didn't?
Disclaimer: I understand this is a generalized statement and doesn't account for every scenario (for example: the US civil war).
In general, why, over the course of our whole history, have the United ...
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How was silver/gold mining done in colonial Americas?
I've heard a lot about the vast amounts of silver and gold that Spain brought back from the Americas. I imagine that they looted the Aztecs and other peoples at first, but silver/gold exports ...
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Around 1750, How many Native Americans (if any) spent the winter in the Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan?
This is the Keweenaw Peninsula in Michigan:
I've been reading about it's history during the colonial era. Apparently the Native Americans mined copper from this area because there were great copper ...
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What form of cookware did Inuits use in the old days?
I have read that Inuits used some lamps carved from soapstone for heating (driftwood was too precious to be burned). They got some oil for the lamp from blubber. They used a particular species of moss ...
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Why Mexico is not part of NATO? [closed]
Being a North American country and aligned, by and large with US??
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How did early America collect taxes?
How did the early United States (from about the time of their founding to about 1800) collect their taxes from their citizens? I read through this article and found no mention of how they actually, ...
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What was the ratio of French to English speakers in Upper Canada before and after the American Revolution?
Immediately before the American Revolution, the area that would become Upper Canada (modern-day Ontario) was largely French-speaking, having been a French colony until 1763 when the British took over. ...
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Historically, was the War of 1812 ever called by another name?
In the wildly popular Youtube chanel Crash Course, the narrator states that the War of 1812 bears that title only because of the historians' "great imagination" and mentions three humorous names that ...
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Why did Mexico encourage the settlement of Texas by Americans?
Beginning in the 1820's, Mexico encouraged Americans (such as Moses and Stephen Austin) to settle in their territory of Texas. It was this that led to Texas becoming independent of Mexico—something ...
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Why was the last battle of the War of 1812 fought fully half a year after the official end of the war?
As part of my research to answer this question, I came across a mention of the June 30, 1815 battle between the USS Peacock and the East India cruiser Nautilus (in the Indian Ocean) as being ...
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Was there anything in common between the War of 1812 between Britain and America and the War of 1812 between Napoleon and Russia?
Were the War of 1812 between Britain and America and the War of 1812 between Napoleon and Russia at all related? They were not only fought in the same year but also over the same general reason, trade ...
user22953
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Why did an American-Filipino war follow the Spanish-American War?
Immediately after the end of the Spanish-American War in 1899, a three-year guerrilla war between the United States and its new territory of the Philippines began. What caused this war? The United ...
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How did silk manufacturing become a major industry in medieval Europe?
In the beginning of the Middle Ages, silk in Europe was known only as the expensive fabric imported from Asia. But by the end of The Middle Ages, silk had become one of Europe's major industries. How ...
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Is there any documentation on the creation of Article 1 Section II of the US Constitution?
I'm doing some personal research on the electoral college as it has been becoming more and more relevant in modern US elections. I've seen tons of people talking about how it was designed to protect ...
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Why didn’t Japan attack the West Coast of the United States during World War II?
In the early months of World War II, the United Stated spent several millions of dollars to fortify the West Coast against possible Japanese attack, going as far as to stretch a gigantic submarine net ...
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Why was the Nihonmachi sector of Seattle selected for the Yesler Housing Project of the 1930s?
In the late 1930s the Seattle community of Japanese suffered a substantial loss when large parts of Nihonmachi (the city's Japanese district) were confiscated and torn down to make way for the Yesler ...
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Why was Washington State an attractive site for aluminum production during World War II?
Some months ago I read that many aluminum manufacturing plants were attracted to Washington State during the 1930's and 40's. What made Washington so different from other states that these companies ...
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