Before reading the first chapter, I didn't really know the exact different between migration and immigration. I knew there was a difference but reading this text really put it in terms for me. With migration simply meaning moving and immigration meaning moving across national frontier, helps me understand and think in terms of how these words are applied to a specific migrating group, when reading.
It wasn't really shocked by the text when it states that the Europeans thought of themselves as superior to any/all cultures they encountered. It seemed that way to me ever since I first learned about the Europeans contact with the Native Americans when I was younger. With the Europeans forcing their language onto the Natives and suppressing their own cultures and beliefs showed me a sense of superiority at a young age. Its just that most of the texts you read don't blatantly say it.
In the second chapter, it describes the majority of Europeans were British-- meaning their language and culture would be English. Since Europeans were superior and felt their cultures, languages, traditions and beliefs were the "chosen one', this became apart of "American" cultures.
There were large numbers of people migrating and immigrating to "America". Many of these groups of people didn't know how to survive in these types of living conditions, like the natives had learned. From that, many of these English immigrants in Maryland, Virginia and New England had more deaths than living people. Eventually, the Europeans figured out how to take advantage or "use" the Natives for what they wanted. This helped more people survive from hunger and diseases, slowly resulting in their population to increase instead of decrease.
One of the most surprising things i read was about the Indian massacre. Although I have heard about it before, I had never read it how the text stated the details in number. From the large number of Natives that lost their land or were killed, shows a that more than half of their population was gone.
When reading the section about indentured immigrants made me think of the reason why racism and segregation started. As the text describes, indentured servants were both African and European and slowly transformed into only African- because of color. This lead to color segregation and racism of thinking these people of African decent are "different" or "less superior" from their skin color. African were the most "American" in the sense that they lost almost all of their culture, tradition and beliefs when being forced into labor. They were also stripped of their language and were not allowed to have the ability to read and write.
The third chapter continues with the African slave trade. There was almost no existence of letters, diaries or written evidence during this time period because of the lack of literacy. This division in literacy and color/race also helped create a division between social classes. Since the "white, upper class" people (Europeans, usually) were literate and owned businesses and houses while the "black, lower class" people (Africans) were not literate and couldn't own anything, not even their own freedom.
This form of "cheap labor" increased for business profit. The conditions for these people were horrible and it became apart of western ways and European imperialism. many industries became slave-based, mostly farming like cane sugar. This also helped develop "American capitalism"
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