Last-Minute History Review

Ambiguity and Periodization in History

• History is not black-and-white; interpretation is ambiguous.
• Periodization chunks history into arbitrary blocks (e.g., end of Reconstruction $1877$).
• Pre-contact era = civilizations developing independently before $1492$.

Pre-Contact Civilizations to Know

• Pueblo (Desert Southwest): irrigated agriculture, cliff dwellings, ~400 miles of roads; complex, not primitive.
• Hopewell culture (Eastern Woodlands, Ohio River): mound builders, ceremonial centers, burial mounds.
• West Africa: Ghana, Mali; large empires with long-distance trade networks.

Europe & the Middle Ages; Crusades

• Feudalism: land-based power; rigid hierarchy.
• Crusades (Oct–Dec era): European rulers sought Holy Land; exchange of goods (silks, dyes, spices) from the East; contributed to the decline of feudalism and rise of larger empires and nation-states.

Contact and Early Colonization in the Americas

• $1492$ marks beginning of sustained European contact with the Americas.
• $1607$: first permanent English colony in North America.
• $1754-1763$: French and Indian War; colonists begin to think of themselves as Americans.
• $1775-1783$: American Revolutionary War; $1776$: Declaration of Independence; $1783$: war ends.
• $1812-1815$: War of 1812; independence realized in practice after this war.

Expansion, Destiny, and Nation-Building

• Manifest Destiny: coined in the $1840s$; belief in an obvious fate to occupy from ocean to ocean.
• $1848$: Mexican Cession; Westward expansion includes Oregon Territory.
• Market Revolution: 19th-century economic transformation.
• God/Gold/Glory motif in exploration; de facto religious and imperial motivations.