Becoming Instruments of Production

Abstract

In establishing a New World, the settlers of the original colonies maintain constant battles with several opponents, leaving them financially frustrated. Though initial contact is promising, they will find themselves embroiled in centuries of struggle over fertile lands the settlers wish to control. Though many other significant skirmishes certainly occur, three major conflicts characterize the struggle of the early colonies that lay the foundation for the superpower status the United States has maintained into the new millennium. First, the American-Indian Wars—a series of efforts to defeat the indigenous Indian populations— would persist for centuries.¹ On the heels of the French and Indian War, fought to protect the interests of the British Empire, the colonists enter into their next major conflict-the American Revolution.² Upon excessive taxation and other tyrannical policies imposed by the English monarchical rulers, the colonists begin fighting for independence from overseas sovereignty.³ This hard-fought freedom from the British Empire is only briefly enjoyed before the turn of the nineteenth century sees the onset of the third major conflict, that with Mexico over the expansion of the United States.⁴