ROSIE THE RIVETER: WHEN HISTORY BECOMES CLEARER
History and culture of the English speaking countries
Paula Benlloch Peña ( paulab.informatica2@gmail.com)
Cécile Mayeres (cecile1998@live.fr)
Laura Sabah (sabahlaura06@gmail.com).
History and culture of the English speaking countries. Group B.
English Studies
Universitat de València.
Lecturer: Dr. Miguel Ángel Jordán.
For this work on USA, we chose a few topics that we wanted to talk about such as :
–Thanksgiving and explain this very famous tradition in American culture and also see how controversial It can be too.
–right to bear arms according to the second amendment of the constiution
–cultural influence over the rest of the world from the end of the Second World War to nowadays
However, this party which means to “say thank you” to the Indians and to what they showed to the settlers when they arrive to survive is quite controversial when we know what the settlers did to the Native Americans once they became more powerful and they did not need anymore. They starved the Native Americans until they died and killed all the buffalos, their only way to get food.
–Right to bear arms : this right has always been defended by lots of American people since it is in the Constitution but The Unites States are one of the rare country in the world allowing people to bear arms under no condition because there is no mental-health test done for someone who wants to buy a weapon. This issue is becoming more and more controversial nowadays and some associations and lots of people even American people want a strict regulation of the right to bear arms but nothing has been done yet since the majority of the population and also the politicians are in favor of this right to bear arms in a free way. Every day, there are mass shootings, in schools but also in the streets or it also increases domestic violence and the death rate is very high in the United States. The country is for sure a way more violent country than the European country for example. Some famous school shootings led to an amount of protestation and emotion and some people are trying to regulate this right.
–Cultural influence over the rest of the world : Since the end of the Second World War and the win of the United States alongside Great Britain and France, the United States was the only country which did not know any fight on its territory. They had more than half of the gold stock in the whole world and helping European countries financially, it grew richer and richer. Little by little, they culture started to invade all of the European countries they were helping to finally being present almost in the entire world.
This culture is very large and diverse : it comes from food, with chocolate and then other American specialities such as burgers (and the famous McDonalds implanted in many countries all over the world) and then goes with cinema and music but also fashion. American movies and American music are still known as the most popular ones today and we even call this situation the “Americanization” of the world. No one can clearly escape from it even by choice.
Here are some examples of that process :
Abraham Lincoln was born in1809 and died in 1865; he was murdered in Washington DC. He was the first Republican president and the 16th president of the United States. He was president during the most conflictive period of the United States, the Civil War.
During this Civil War, he writes the 13th Amendment of the Constitution which abolishes Slavery. This provokes a huge wave of protest from the Southern states which lived from cotton and tabaco business and that’s why the Union and the Confederates fight against each other. The ones are following the feeling that America is a country of liberty and that slavery is against this ambition and the others want to keep it because their economy would be destroyed if slaves can not work for free anymore.
The president was murdered five days after the end of the Civil war by a group of Confederates. He is considered by both historians and people as one of the major President of the United States of America.
The Gettysburg address
The Gettysburg address was a speech pronounced by Abraham Lincoln in November 1863 during the American Civil War, after the battle of Gettysburg. This speech gave a new moral dimension to the Nothern Force and gave the soldiers a new desire to fight. This speech follows the doctrina of the Manifest destiny of the US and had for consequences the victory of the North.
She was a british stateswoman, and the Prime minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990. She began politics when she was elected as Member of the Parliament in 1959.
She was well-known as Prime minister because she put hard laws in the economic sphere to fight against unemployment. She emphasised deregulation in the financial sector, flexible labour markets, the privatisation of state-owned companies and she reduced the power and influence of trade union. She was re-elected 2 times, so she had 3 terms.
Some of her laws, such as the “poll-tax” were very unpopular and she looked to be a harsh woman, so that’s why she had the nickname of “the iron lady”. She decided to resign as Prime Minister in November 1990 and she died from a stroke in 2013. Her legacy in politics has a name: the Thatcherism.
It was a movement for the women’s right of vote which occurred right after World War One.
Everything began with a law passed in 1918: the Representation of the People Act 1918. It let all men (over 21 years old) and women (over the age of 30 years old) to vote, if they had a minimum property qualifications.
This first law encouraged the creation of a whole national movement to let women voting at the same age as men. Women formed political pressure groups such as the Primrose League and the Women’s Liberal Associations. They were called the “suffragettes”.
In 1903, the Women Social and Political Union was one of the most active group of women. The leaders of this famous group were famous: Emmeline Pankhurst and her daughters Christabel and Silvia Pankhurst. They used to organise large parades to attract more suffragettes and be heard by the Parliament. But some of the suffragettes were captured by the police and sent to prison where they starved to show their determination.
So, the Cat and Mouse Act was passed in order to prevent suffragettes from becoming martyrs when they were in jail. So the staff of the prison was allowed to force-feed them. But actually, this act added just again some publicity for the movement.
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During WW1, women were required in many industries as workforce to reemplace men, who were fighting at the time. The society understood that women could be able to have more civil responsabilities, so they passed a law in 1918 to let them vote if they were more than 30/ more than 8 million women gained the right of vote. In 1928, the Representation of the People Act extended this right allowing women over 21 to vote.
It appeared mostly during the Industrial Revolution, because the more the indutries grew, the more people they needed to work. The poorest families of the working class used to stop going to school at an early age to go to work instead to escape from dire straight.
In 1840 perhaps only 20% of the children of London went to school. This number had risen by 1860, when perhaps half of the children between 5 and 15 were in some sort of school, or had an access to a Sunday school while the others were working. They used to work 16 hours a day, in very hard conditions and at the time, there wasn’t a lot of regulation concerning the maximum work hours.
But in what fields did the children work? Well, in fact, the used to work in iron or coal mines, in textile industry, construction, gas works, in the business of chimney sweeping. These jobs were not easy: it was more interesting for the chimney sweeping businesses to hire a toddler than an adult, because the children’s height was littlest and it was easy for them to clean the chimney pots.
Charles Dickens wrote a lot about the hard conditions the children had to endure to earn a bit of money to help their families. The most well-known novel dealing with the subject is Oliver Twist, a young orphan who is sent by force in a workhouse at 9 where he is starving. After many twists, he finally escape from the hard world of the street and the thieves and stay with Mr Brownlow in a comfortable house.
This Congress took place on May 10th, 1775 after the First Continental Congress which took place in 1774.
It was composed of a convention of delegates from the 13 colonies (at that time) right after the American revolutionary war began. This Congress took place in Philadelphia.
This Congress took place because during the first days of the American revolutionary war, things were not really controlled and in an ad-hoc manner. The Congress chose to take control over this rebellion against British Crown. From that date, they assumed leadership of this war and on the side of the Patriots.
They later created the Continental Army from Boston and George Washington was asked to become the general of the army.
The Continental Congress had no special authority to govern but assumed all of the tasks of a government : they were appointing ambassadors, appointing generals, signing treaties, obtaining loans from Europe, etc …
Later, the Continental Congress had to move to York because the British troops were occupying Philadelphia.
The declaration of independence was signed on July 4th 1776
First of all we shall explain what is a stereotype in order to understand better the following post.
A stereotype is the exaggerated and simplified perception of a person or group of people who share certain characteristics, qualities and abilities, who seeks to “justify or rationalize a certain behavior in relation to a certain social category”
The stereotypes of the English people have been very represented in a lot of types of media such TV series, movies, songs and even in cartoons. And there’s a cartoon in special, specifically an anime(japanese cartoons), that we’ll put as a example of the representation of the English stereotypes.
To start we must know that this anime is about the countries of the world represented as persons, and they are represented basically with some of the stereotypes of each country.
And in this anime we have UK represented as the following: The country is represented as a young man very polite and serious who always presume of being very well-mannered ,very wise and very strict and appeased. He’s also represented many times with a cup of tea in his hands.
He claims to be a gentleman. However and once we see more, he is represented as a very angrily person who is always arguing with France and losing the calm very easily, losing his impression of a “gentleman”, the one that we wants to show, and showing one more sharp and impolite,he is also cynical, sharp-tongued, prone to rough speech, and yearns for the golden years. And when he gets drunk is the worst of them all.
Also we can see many times England being a very bad cooker, burning all the meals that he does, we can see him many times how he burns scones.
Also,he can be described as “spacey” because of his strong belief in magic and he has the ability to perform magic, such as spells and curses and in the anime is shown that he is related with some magical stuff, he sometimes talks with a magic flying bunny and since he is the only person who can see it the others think that he is crazy. He also seems to be very stubborn and strong-willed and does not easily succumb to stress or pressure. He is shown to be startlingly mature at times and he also has a quite strong sense of responsibility.
And also he dresses smart casual most of the time, and as a punk when he’s out for fun.
There are quite stereotypes all reunited together here, right?
Here’s a funny scene from the anime where United States and United Kingdom are fighting against Germany and because of UK and his obsession with the tea they are caught.
Then, we have a list with some of the most famous stereotypes of the English people:
-They are very polite.
-They are actually snobs and are constantly judging you.
-They love the tea, all UK stops whatever they are doing just to take the tea at 5 o’clock.
-They have a seriously problem with the alcohol.
-Their food is not actually very good….We can say that they are not the very well cookers.
-They love the royal family, the monarchy is very important there.
-It is always raining, there is a horrible weather.
-They are very punctual.
And the list could be much more extensive, so we will leave it here even though there’s a lot more but these are the main stereotypes and we think that just to make an idea of the English people there are enough.
However, we all also must know that the stereotypes are just that, stereotypes, and the majority might be not true, so let’s not take them as seriously as we usually do. Just a friendly reminder.
Oliver Cromwell was an English politician and military who was the leader of the rebellion against Charles I and who proclaimed the Republic of England.
He and his followers were who decided what to do with the imprisoned King(executed him) at the end ,and the ones who didn’t agree with them were expelled from the Parliament, so at the end it was not a very democratical thing or decision.
The name of the republic was “The Commonwealth” and it lasted from 1649 to 1660. Among those years the Parliament was who ruled but after some years of the Parliament ruling, Cromwell decided that they were corrupted people looking only for their own so he declared himself as The Lord Protector. He, in that moment, had more power than any king.
But Cromwell became a Tyrant. He didn’t trust the Parliament and at the end he also dissolved the Parliament.
The people began to not be very happy with him because he controlled them and the country with the army. And also he was puritan and the puritans didn’t believe in images and different celebrations so he was like a harder protestant and he forbidden any religious images, burnt churches and killed a lot of people in Ireland, so at the end people really wanted the king back, but as he was death they decided to invite his son Charles II who was hidden in France.
After Cromwell’s death his son succeed him but he didn’t have the charisma of his father so the army was not united and at the end two years later of the death of Oliver Cromwell Charles II came to England to be the king, and then The Restoration began.
She is a famous English writer of the early 19th century. She was born in 1775 and she died young, when she was only 43 years old. Sh is one of the most loved English authors of all time. Her best known novels would be Pride and Prejudice (1813), Sense and Sensibility (1811), Emma (1816). She belongs to the Realism movement and she likes criticizing novels of sensibility of the 18th century often read by women. She uses a specific tone: bitter irony, humour, because she draws a satire of the society.
Walter Scott noted Austen’s “resistance to the trashy sensationalism of much of modern fiction — ‘the ephemeral productions which supply the regular demand of watering places and circulating libraries'” Even if her literature is considered as romantic novels, her characters are very deep, and she draws characters with a lot of details and nuance.
What is striking is that she signed her novels not by her name or by a nickname, but by these two words: by a lady.
Her novels have inspired many movies, such as:
The Monroe Doctrine basically is that Europe will not interfere in American affairs, America is not longer dependent to Europe.
On December 2, 1823, the president James Monroe used his annual message to Congress for a bold assertion: “The American continents … are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.” The Monroe Doctrine became a cornerstone of American foreign policy. The Secretary of State John Quincy Adams had played the most important role in developing the wording of the declaration, and he also influenced the doctrine’s overall shape.
Monroe declared that the Old World and New World had different systems and must remain distinct spheres, Monroe made four basic points:
1. The United States would not interfere in the internal affairs of or the wars between European powers.
2. The United States recognized and would not interfere with existing colonies and dependencies in the Western Hemisphere.
3. The Western Hemisphere was closed to future colonization.
4. Any attempt by a European power to oppress or control any nation in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the United States.
The doctrine was an outgrowth of concern in both Britain and the United States that the continental powers would attempt to restore Spain’s former colonies, in Latin America, many of which had become newly independent nations. The United States was also concerned about Russia’s territorial ambitions in the northwest coast of North America. As a consequence, George Canning, the British foreign minister, suggested a joint U.S.-British declaration forbidding future colonization in Latin America. Monroe was initially favourable to the idea, and former presidents Thomas Jefferson and James Madison concurred. But Secretary of State John Quincy Adams argued that the United States should issue a statement of American policy exclusively, and his view ultimately prevailed.
After 1870 interpretation of the Monroe Doctrine became increasingly broad. As the United States emerged as a world power, the Monroe Doctrine came to define a recognized sphere of influence. Pres. Theodore Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904, which stated that, in cases of flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American country, the United States could intervene in that country’s internal affairs. Roosevelt’s assertion of hemispheric police power was designed to preclude violation of the Monroe Doctrine by European countries seeking redress of grievances against unruly or mismanaged Latin American states.
From the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt to that of Franklin Roosevelt, the United States frequently intervened in Latin America, especially in the Caribbean. Since the 1930s the United States has attempted to formulate its Latin American foreign policy in consultation with the individual nations of the hemisphere and with the Organization of American States. Yet the United States continues to exercise a proprietary role at times of apparent threat to its national security, and the Western Hemisphere remains a predominantly U.S. sphere of influence.
ROSIE THE RIVETER: WHEN HISTORY BECOMES CLEARER 