May 22, 2019 Wednesday
Bedtime Story
How the New and Small United States Grew Westwards
The states whose substantial portions got
incorporated through this Louisiana purchase were North Dakota, South Dakota,
Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, Minnesota, New Mexico, Texas, New Orleans and of
course the state of Louisiana itself.
By sheer accident and historical chance
Jefferson had purchased the most fertile tract of land of its size on this
planet making the newly formed nation completely self-sufficient in food and
other resources.
The sale had the secondary unexpected
effect of significantly curtailing both the British and French colonial
ambitions in North America.
The third effect that it had was that it
cleared the path for the Westwards expansion of the young nation.
You must always keep in the back of your
mind that the Americas or the New World was a subject of immense materialistic
interest and competition for the three dominant Empires of those times: the
Spanish Empire, the French Empire and of course the British Empire.
After the arrival of Columbus in the
Caribbean in 1492 the Crown of Castile in the Iberian Peninsula went for a
comprehensive overseas expansion unleashing the Spanish Conquistadors (Spanish
for “conqueror”) all over the world.
You might not be aware that the Spanish Empire
by eighteenth century was the third largest Empire in the word after the
British and Russian occupying 12 to 13% of the world.
From three centuries onwards after 1492 the
Spanish Empire gradually extended all over the Americans starting from the Caribbean
Islands and then sweeping all over until it came to occupy most of Central
America, half of South America and much of the North America including the
present day Mexico, Florida, Southwestern and Pacific Coastal regions of the
United States.
So when the United States under the
Presidency of Jefferson purchased the territory of Louisiana from the French Empire
under Napoleon they had to contend with the Spanish Empire right at their
border who were contesting the western boundary of the purchase.
Thanks to the Latin American Wars of Independence
in the 18th and 19th centuries (they were all inspired
from the American and the French Revolution) and smart American diplomacy
United States finally managed to get what it had originally claimed through the
Adams-Onis Treaty of 1812.
Even though United States obtained the
large territory through the purchase governing it proved to be far more challenging
than acquiring it.
It would take a while (only after the end
of the War of 1812 with the signing of the Treaty of Ghent that brokered peace
with the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland) before the United States
government would be able to assert its authority on the new territory that it
had purchased.
For a man that was born with so much land
and so many slaves at his disposal (he inherited 11,000 acres of land and 135
slaves further through his wife when his father-in-law passed away), who went
on to become at third President of the United States and who enriched his
country to such an unimaginable extent had the tragedy of dying deeply in a
massive debt of $100,000.
Stay tuned to the voice of an
average story storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.com
Good night Mon Ami and my fellow cousin ape.
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Another great educator and a teacher that I am aware of is
Professor Subhashish Chattopadhyay in Bangalore, India.
While I narrate stories, Professor Subhashish an electronic
engineer and a former professor at BARC, does and teaches real mathematics and
physics.
He started the participation of Indian students at the
International Physics Olympiad.
Do visit him here:
All his books can be downloaded for free through this link:
For edutainment and English education of your children, I
recommend this large collection of Halloween Songs for Kids:
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