Chapter 1: 

- The first discovery of America 

The first Europeans to reach North America were Icelandic Vikings, led by Leif Ericson, about the year 1000. But the Vikings failed to establish a permanent settlement and soon lost contact with the new continent. 

Five centuries later, the demand for Asian spices, textiles, and dyes spurred European navigators to dream of shorter routes between East and West. In 1492 the Italian navigator Christopher Columbus sailed west from Europe and landed on one of the Bahama Islands in the Caribbean Sea, Within 40 years, Spanish adventurers had carved out a huge empire in Central and South America. 

- The purchase of Lousiana 

The Louisiana Purchase was the acquisition by the United States of America in 1803 of 828,000 square miles (2,140,000 km2) of France's claim to the territory of Louisiana. The U.S. paid 60 million francs ($11,250,000) plus cancellation of debts worth 18 million francs ($3,750,000), for a total sum of 15 million dollars for the Louisiana territory. 

Thomas Jefferson was the third president. He purchased the vast Lousiana Territory from France, almost doubling the size of the US. 

- The Western expansion 

In the span of five years, the United States increased its size by a third. It annexed Texas in 1845; negotiated with Britain for half of the Oregon country; and acquired California, Nevada, Utah, and parts of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming as a result of a war with Mexico. 

America's dramatic territorial expansion intensified the sectional conflict between North and South and raised the fateful and ultimately divisive issue of whether slavery would be allowed in the western territories. 

It took American colonists a century and a half to expand as far west as the Appalachian Mounts, a few hundred miles from the Atlantic coast. It took another fifty years to push the frontier to the Mississippi River. Seeking cheap land and inspired by the notion that Americans had a "manifest destiny" to stretch across the continent, pioneers by 1850 pushed the edge of settlement to Texas, the Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest. 

- English beginnings in America: the time, the number of states. 

The English hoped to build a "city upon a hill" in America, which means that it would be an ideal world, a guiding light, an example for the whole world. 

The first successful English colony was founded at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607.  

In 1620, the Puritans founded Plymouth Colony in what later became Massachusetts. Plymouth was the second permanent British settlement in North America and the first in New England. 

In 1636, Roger Williams left Massachusetts and founded the colony of Rhode Island. 

Colonist arrived from other European countries but the English were far better established in America. By 1733 English settlers had founded 13 colonies along the Atlantic Coast, from New Hampshire in the North to Georgia in the South. 

- The American Revolution: reasons, actions of both sides, main battles, the Declaration of 

Independence. 

After the war versus French, Britain grew intervention in American by imposing new taxes (the Sugar Act, the Stamp Act, the Tea Act...) 

The colonists resented the new taxes imposed by the mother country and resisted the quartering of English soldiers => all the taxes, except for tea, were removed. 

In 1773, the Boston Tea Party was staged, a group of patriots boarded British merchant ships and dumped 342 crates of tea into Boston harbor. 

The Tea Act passed by Parliament on May 10, 1773, would launch the final spark to the revolutionary movement in Boston. The act was not intended to raise revenue in the American colonies, and in fact imposed no new taxes. It was designed to prop up the East India Company which floundering financially and burdened with eighteen million pounds of unsold tea. This tea was to be shipped directly to the colonies, and sold at a bargain price. The Townshend Duties were still in place, however radical leaders in America found reason to believe this act was a maneuver to buy popular support for the taxes already in force. The direct sale of tea, via British agents, would also have undercut the business of local merchants 

In 1774, the First Continental Congress was convened to discuss the colonies; opposition to British rule. On April 19, 1775, war broke out. 

The Continental Congress adopted a Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. 

At first, with few provisions and little training, American troops were outnumbered and overpowered by the British. But in 1777, with help of France, Americans defeated British Army at Saratoga, New York. 

In 1781, the last major battle took place at Yorktown, Virginia. 

In the Treaty of Paris in 1783, England recognized American independence. 

- The time when the first slaves were brought to America 

The first American blacks were brought to English North Amerca on a Dutch ship and sold at Jamestown in 1619. 

-The conflicts caused by slavery in the US 

In 1828 Andre Jackson was the first "outsider" to be elected as the US president, During his era, there were a big conflicts between the abolitionists and the slave holders, between the North and the South of America. 

In 1820 southern and northern politicians debated the question of slavery. Congress reached a compromise in which slavery was permitted in the new state of Missouri and the Arkansas Territory. 

In 1850, another compromise admitted California as a free state, with citizens of Utah and New Mexico being allowed to decided whether they wanted slavery within their borders or not, in essence they did not. 

- Abraham Lincoln (16th president) and slavery issues 

Abraham Lincoln's position on slavery was one of the central issues in American history. 

Initially, Lincoln expected to bring about the eventual extinction of slavery by stopping its further expansion into any U.S. territory, and by proposing compensated emancipation (an offer Congress applied to Washington, D.C) in his early presidency. Lincoln stood by the Republican Party platform in 1860, which stated that slavery should not be allowed to expand into any more territories. Lincoln believed that the extension of slavery in the South, Mid-west, and Western lands would inhibit "free labor on free soil". 

During the American Civil War, Lincoln used the war powers of the presidency to issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared "all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free" but exempted border states and those areas of slave states already under Union control. As a practical matter, at first the Proclamation could only be enforced to free those slaves that had already escaped to the Union side. However, millions more were freed as more areas of the South came under Union control. 

- The civil wars: opinions of both sides, the result. 

After the slavery's foe Abraham Lincoln was elected president in 1860, 11 states left the Union and proclaim themselves the Confederate States. The Civil War between the Union Army and the Confederate Army began. 

After a long campaign involving forces commanded by the Confederate General Lee and the Union General Grant, the Confederates surrendered. The Civil War ended in 1865, the North won, putting an end to slavery in the country. 

- The late 19th century 

Within a few years after the end of the Civil War the US became a leading industrial power: 

In 1869, the first transcontinental railroad was completed. 

The petroleum industry prospered, John D. Rockefeller of the Standard Oil Company became one of the richest men in America. 

Andrew Carnegie built a vast empire of steel mills in the US. 

Textile mills multiplied in the south, and meat-packing plants sprang up in Chicago, Illinois. 

With a series of inventions: telephone, the light bulb, the phonograph, the motion pictures,... an electrical industry flourished. 

The steel-frame construction was used to build up the skyscrapers. 

Problem: the mergence of corporations - known as "trusts" - created monopoly. To counteract them, the federal government passed Sherman Antitrust Act in 1890 which banned trusts, mergers, and business agreements "in restraint of trade". 

In 1867, American purchased Alaska from Russia. 

After the war versus Spain in 1898, the US gained a number of possessions from Spain such as Cuba, the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and Guam. 

In an unrelated action, the US also acquired the Hawaiian Islands. 

In 1959, Hawaiian and Alaska became the US states. 

- The progressive movement 

Despite the signs of prosperity, up to half of all industrial workers still lived in poverty. 

The prevailing economic dogma was laissez faire: let the government interfere with commerce as little as possible. 

About 1900 the Progressive Movement arose to reform society and individuals through government action. 

The Socialist Party, led by Eugene V. Debs, but socialism never found a solid footing in the US. 

- Roaring Twenties 

The Roaring Twenties is a moniker sometimes used to refer to the 1920s, characterizing the era's distinctive cultural edge in most of the world's major cities for a period of sustained economic prosperity. 

- The age of Prohibition 

As it is most widely understood, Prohibition refers to the period of time in the United States when it was illegal to buy, sell, consume, manufacture, and transport alcoholic beverages. The age of Prohibition officially began on January 16, 1920, when the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act, took effect as the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution.  

Prohibition ended with the ratification of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed the Eighteenth Amendment, on December 5, 1933. 

- WW1 :  

Erupted in Europe in 1914, the World War I firstly did not affect the US so American stayed neutral. 

However, Germany's declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare against all ships bounds for Allied ports undermined that positions, US decided to get involved in the War. 

By the fall of 1918, Germany's position had become hopeless. In October Germenay asked for peace, and an armistice was declared on November 11. 

In 1919, US president Woodrow Wilson went to Versailles to help draft the peace treaty. His idea of a League of Nations was included in the Treaty of Versailles but the US Senate did not ratify the treaty, and the US did not participate in the league. 

- WW2  

1939: the outbreak of war in Europe. America is neutral. 

December 1941, America was in the war due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii by the Japanese. 

May 5th, 1949: German surrendered. 

August 1949: The war against Japan swiftly ended when President Harry Truman ordered the use of atomic bombs against the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

- The social problems of the US in Viet Nam war 

By 1968, 500,000 troops were fighting in Vietnam.  

Although politicians tended to view the war as part of a necessary effort to check communism on all fronts, a growing number of Americans saw no vital American interest in what happened to Vietnam. Demonstrations pretesting American involvement broke out on college campuses, and there were violent clashes between students and police. Antiwar sentiment spilled over into a wide range of protests against injustice and discrimination. 

- NATO 

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization): An organization formed by 12 nations including the US, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the UK. 

- The Watergate incident 

Referred to an array of illegal and secret activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration. The activities became known in the aftermath of five men being caught breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at Watergate office building in Washington, D.C on June 17, 1972. The White House made matters worse by trying to conceal its connection with the break-in. Eventually, tape recordings made by the President himself revealed the problem and pn August 9, 19974, Nixon resigned from office. 

- The Berlin wall (August 13, 1961- November 9, 1989): was the physical division between West Berlin and East Germany. However, it was also the symbolic boundary between democracy and Communism during the Cold War. The Berlin Wall was erected in the dead of night and for 28 years kept East Germans from fleering to the west. Its destruction, which was nearly as instantaneous as its creation, was celebrated around the war. After the Berlin Wall came down, East and West Germany reunified into a single German state on Oct 3, 1990. 

- Red Scare 

The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1921, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker (socialist) revolution and political radicalism. The Second Red Scare was focused on national and foreign communists influencing society, infiltrating the federal government, or both. 

- The Cold War 

A new international congress, the United Nations, came into being after the war, and this time the US joined. Soon tensions developed between the US and its wartime ally the Soviet Union. Germany became a divided country, with a western zone under joint British, French, and American occupation and an eastern zone under Soviet occupation. 

From 1945 until 1870, the US enjoyed a long period of economic growth, interrupted only by mild and brief recession. For the first time a majority of Americans enjoyed a comfortable standard of living. 

In 1960, John F. Kennedy was elected president. 

In July of 1969, astronaut Neil Amstrong stepped out of the Apollo 11 spacecaft and onto the moon's surface. 

Kennedy was assassinated in 1963. His successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, became preoccupied with the Vietnam war. 

Richard Nixon was elected president on 1968. Watergate scandal happened in 1974, Nixon resigned. 

During 1989 and 1990, the Berlin Wall came down. In late 1991 the Soviet Union itself dissolved into its component republics, the Cold War came to an end. 

- The great depression 

By 1932, thousands of American banks and over 100.000 businesses had failed. 

Industrial production was cut in half. 

Wages had decreased 60%, one out of every four workers was unemployed. 

Meanwhile, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president on the platform of "a New Deal for the American people". 

Roosevelt's New Deal did not end the Depression. Although the economy improved, full recovery had to await the defense buildup preceding America's entry into WWII.