Download The Gaspee Affair A planed city state

The Gaspee
Affair
In the history of the American Revolution, the attack and capture of the
English Navy Ship Gaspee was the first deliberate strike against the English by American colonists. These colonists were termed as “Sons of Liberty”.
The Gaspee
Gaspee was a British yacht that patrolled the waters off Rhode Island. It
checked on the ships carrying smuggled goods considered illegal i.e. imported from anywhere other than England.
Burning of the Gaspee
On June 10, 1772, when Gaspee stuck up in the shallow waters
on Namquid Point in Rhode Island, John Brown and Joseph
Bucklin along with fellow men attacked the yacht. He fired at Lt.
Dudingston, the ship commander. The attackers took the entire
crew of the yacht as prisoners. The raiders rowed away with the
prisoners and set the Gaspee on fire.
John Brown
A pre-planned attack
The attack involved merchants, sea
captains, and lawyers apart from
members of General Assembly of
the Rhode Island colony. The attack
was planned as taking 100 men to
the Gaspee, armed with rifles which
meant that the Rhode Island attackers had given a pre thought on the issue.
Lt. Dudingston was saved, as killing anyone on the boat was not included
in the plan.
Reasoning the attack
The burning of Gaspee was a symbolic event by the Sons of Liberty to express their hatred towards taxation goals under the policy of the British Empire.
After-effects
The English government announced a £1000
reward in the American colonies for information leading to Joseph’s arrest for treason. Although about 100 men were involved, and the
attackers included many well-known men of
Rhode Island, the people of Rhode Island successfully kept the identity of the attackers a secret from the English until after the end of the
Revolutionary War.
Connection with the Boston
Tea Party
The Gaspee affair and Boston Tea Party,
both posed as major events that triggered
the American Revolution, separated by a
period of 18 months. Both the events attacked the English policies with mass violence without any legal effect.
greaT civilizaTions
Turning PoinT
Historical arcHive
A planed
city state
Rise of the
civilisation
The Sumerian civilisation
emerged upon the flood plain
of the Tigris and Euphrates
rivers about 4000 B.C. It is
thought to have arisen in
Mesopotamia, which is close
to modern Iraq.
Social structure
In this newly emerged
land of Sumeria, people
built huts, raised cattle,
and farmed for their
food. They built huge
temples (called ziggurats) and monuments in their
cities. They were the first to gather in large city-states.
Their beliefs
The Sumerian communities were city-states organised around a temple and ruled by priesthood.
The bulk of the people of the community were considered to be the servant-slaves of the god of the temple. When calamities occurred, they believed that it is
the result of other gods acting against their local deity.
Their innovations
The Sumerians were the first to develop a system of writing on clay tables
called as Cuneiform script. It consisted of
500 characters and helped in systematic
record keeping. They wrote books and
stored them in a central place, thus making way for the concept of a ‘library’. The
Sumerians primarily made the use of
wheel for making carts for farming and
trade. They built reservoirs to store water and canals
to transport water from these reservoirs. They supplied
water to their farmlands from rivers and lakes with a
technique now known as irrigation.
Influence
Trivia
The Sons of Liberty was a
loosely organised group of
influential men formed in
the New York and Boston
Areas. They were particularly noted for acts of violent threats towards tax
collectors.
The Sumerian civilisation influenced other civilisation, notably that of Babylon. Thus, the Sumerian civilisation appeared as a
fully developed society
with a technology and
organisation that was
different and superior
to the other societies of
the time.
Young ExplorEr n february 2009 n
9