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6. Years of Growth and American Empire
(lecture worksheet 2009/2010)
Important dates:
1867, 1869, 1876, 1890, 1898, 1903
Names and places: A. Carnegie, J. D. Rockefeller, J. P. Morgan,
the Messabi (iron deposits), The Lake Superior, The Union Pacific
Railroad Company, The Central Pacific Railroad Company, Carnegie
Steel Corporation, The Standard Oil Company, The United States Steel,
The Homestead Act, the Fort Laramie Treaty, the Sioux, the Cheyenne,
the Black Hills of South Dakota, the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Crazy
Horse, Sitting Bull, the Monroe Doctrine, Alaska, Cuba, The Philippines,
Puerto Rico, Guam (the island of), Hawaii, Columbia, Panama, The
Panama Canal, Roosevelt's Corollary, Guantanamo Bay
Vocabulary:
the closing of the frontier, to exploit a country's mineral resources, to
abandon the policy of isolation, deposits of iron and coal, to produce
rails, locomotives, freight wagons, passenger cars, the steam engine,
dynamo (generator), electric light, sewing machine, to be given an
industrial application, the assembly line, large-scale production, massproduced clothing, a mass production of cars, standardization, "captains
of industry", "robber barons", to reinvest dividends, no state
intervention, anti-trust laws, laws against unfair competition, to swallow
up small firms, to drive sb. out of business, to raise the price of products
voluntarily, corporations, trusts, to grant control of one's stock to a
board of trustees, the "Melting Pot" (of nations), to offer a free farm
(homestead), a shift from hand labor to machine farming, a move from
subsistence to commercial agriculture, ‘Custer’s Last Stand’, to secure
its position in the Caribbean and Pacific, to hand over a narrow strip of
land
Test questions:
1. Describe the effects of the Industrial Revolution, scientific and technological innovation on the
development of the U.S. economy in the second half of the 19th century (inventions, iron and
steel industries, corporations, revolution in agriculture)
2. Discuss the patterns of immigration to the United States, its particular effects as well as the
overall influence on the development of the country between 1865 and 1914.
3. Describe the plight of the Plains Indians and the gradual loss of their ancestral land in the
second half of the 19th century (the Dakota Gold Rush, the Battle of the Little Big Horn,
‘Custer’s Last Stand’, the Wounded Knee massacre, the Indian Citizenship Act).
4. Characterize and give illustrations of the expansionist foreign policy of the U.S. in the late 19th
and the first decade of the 20th centuries. (political sources, Alaska, the Spanish-American War,
Panama).
5. Illustrate the changes American cities underwent in the 19th century using the example of
Chicago (the White City, skyscrapers, the transit system, suburbs, slums, sweatshops).