I Chose Work, Exchange, And Technology

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I chose work, exchange, and technology as my topic because these combined are very influential in everyday life and in United States history. As children about to enter the adult world, learning about labor and labor systems in the past is really important and personally, would really interest me. Concepts like slavery are really interesting because being a minority, I always find oppression in labor and acts of nativism very shocking. I don’t like to express my religion, culture, and heritage very much and try not to distinguish myself from other because of my ethnicity. Learning about oppression in labor interests me and shows me how people rose up to protest people who distinguished them from others. Interactions between people and their influences on the economy can control the course of history and the events that play out. Some of the important interactions in our lives are the small ones that map out friendships and relationships. Technology controls every teenager’s life and seeing how technology shaped America’s past is really interesting. Similar to modern corporations like Apple, Samsung, and Windows, technological advances most likely affected society greatly and transformed some people’s lives. These three topics work together and outline our country’s history and can be made evident by multiple events in history. The invention of the cotton gin’s effect on society, the government’s role and policies on expansion, and the establishment of America’s early labor systems showcase the major theme in AP US History: work, exchange, and technology.
The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney while he was in Georgia working as a tutor for Catherine Greene. After looking at the slaves working tiresomely trying to remov...

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... cities. In the end, the government’s role and policies regarding the war allowed America to expand so much.
Slavery was one of the largest part of America’s history, but slavery obviously was not established overnight. The primary labor force in America started off by being captured Native Americans. Native American groups such as the Aztecs, Incans, and Tainos knew the surrounding area and were able to plant crops easily. When Europeans first arrived, their only priority was gold and slaves and the Indian people could help with both. Indians went out to search for gold, only to find none, as some natives were boarded on ships and taken back to Europe to be used as slave labor. After many years, the Native American population decreased and the migrant population increased. Prisoners of war would be sent to America to establish colonies and later major towns/cites.

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