Cultural And Social Essential Aspects Of The American Experience
Americans are more likely than any other democracy in the world to believe that people succeed because of actual individual talents, efforts and accomplishments in an environment of liberty and respect for the individual rights rather than any other reasons.
This combination of opportunity and freedom for all citizens to achieve their goals and become wealthy as a result of hard work is known as “the American Dream”. This concept goes back to the seventeenth century, when some English merchants, envisioning the possibility of earning great profits and opening new trade routes, established two joint-stock companies to plant colonies in America: the Virginia Company and the Massachusetts Bay Company. To attract Englishmen to move to the colonies, those men called the new continent “the land of plenty, the land of opportunity, the land of destiny”.
At that time, lots of landless laborers and those with very small amounts of land fell into poverty as a consequence of a dramatic social and economic change caused by the doubling of the English population. Furthermore, a profound religious transformation pushed large numbers of English Puritans to leave their homeland and seek a new land where they would be able to practise their religion freely. All these people were persuaded with the promise of a place where they could find opportunities and liberty. Therefore, they came to America intending to stay. They arrived in family groups and recreated European society and family life. Even though they had to face many difficulties at the beginning, they worked hard to succeed in their new land. Both the merchants that founded the joint-stock companies based on a private initiative and the people they persuaded to move to America shared the conviction that the new land was suitable for improving their conditions.
American colonies were successful and the colonists gradually lost their strong attachment to England. They...
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