資料（年表）を基にして答える問題です。数年前から図表や報告書の一部など資料そのものを使った問題が出題されるようになりました。考えてみれば、記事も資料の一つであり、その情報を用いて推論や判断を行うという点では同じで、大学入学後の学習で行う作業です。与えられた材料と自分の知っている事実を総合して現状認識や未来を予測する力を示すことのできる問題です。今回の問題の問３（２００年前のリストのどの出来事が現代社会に最も大きな影響を与えていると思いますか？）を解くにあたってはEric Hofferというアメリカの哲学者の「歴史を学びたければ現在を見ればよい」という言葉が参考になるのではないかと思います。現代社会は歴史の積み重ねの結果として存在します。ですから現代社会の特徴の原因は過去の出来事にあります。問3は現代社会の特徴を問う問題と捉え直し、その元となるものに関連した事象を資料の中で探すと見えてくるものがある問題だとも言えるのではないかと思います。ちなみに参考資料の著者Howard Zinnは名もない人々や権力の不正に異議を唱えた人々の視点からアメリカの歴史を捉えなおした学者で、現代言語学を確立し哲学・社会学の分野でも大きな功績のあるNoam Chomskyの親友だった人です。
解答のポイント
主題 ２００年前のヨーロッパと新大陸の状況及びアメリカのカナダ侵略２００周年
問題文訳 以下のヨーロッパとアメリカ大陸における１８１２年（出題された2012年の丁度200年前）の出来事のリストを見て、下の問いに答えてください。
リストをみて分かること
先ずリストの年が１８１２年すなわち１９世紀初頭であることから、リストアップされた出来事は世界史では帝国主義の時代の出来事であることが分かる。ざっと大きな出来事を拾ってみると、戦争と大災害に関する記述が多い。更によく見ると、学校で習った世界史の基礎知識に照らして違和感のある記述があることが分かる。７月１１日のアメリカのカナダ侵略の記録である。通常の世界史の知識では、帝国主義はヨーロッパの大国（このリストではイギリスとフランス）の歴史であって、アメリカは自由と民主主義の擁護者として帝国主義反対の立場をとり、第１次・第２次世界大戦、冷戦時代を経て現在までこの主義を貫いていることになっているので、“US
invades Canada”の記述はこの通念に合わない。平たく言えば、「アメリカがカナダを侵略したなんて歴史の教科書に載っていなかった気がする。」ということだ。この記述は、アメリカが当時、イギリスやフランス同様、自国を攻撃していない他国を侵略するという帝国主義行動をとっていたことを示している。
問１ リストによれば以下の各記述は正しいでしょうか、間違っているでしょうか？
別紙参照
問２ アメリカ合衆国が国力と科学技術の点において当時成長発展しつつあったということを示すのはどの出来事でしょうか？少なくとも二つの出来事を選び、それらについて解答欄に提供された箇所に英語で述べてください。
別紙参照
問３ あなたの意見では、２００年前のリストのどの出来事が現代社会に最も大きな影響を与えていると思いますか？理由は何ですか？解答欄に提供された箇所に英語で答えてください。
考え方
１)「現代社会に最も大きな影響を与えている出来事」なので、現代社会の特徴につながりのある事項を探してみる。例 現代社会の特徴のひとつに、「アメリカの戦争と拡大」がある。現代のアメリカは、他国を併合することはないが、アメリカを攻撃していない国を攻撃したり内戦を支援したりしてアメリカの政治・経済活動に有利な状況を確保するということを世界各地で繰り返し、継続している。(例：ベトナム戦争、イラク戦争、最近ではボリビアのクーデター工作等) この起源になるような動きがリストにないか探してみる。
２)
歴史的背景と他の問いも参考にしてみる。例 このリストは帝国主義時代の欧米の出来事であり、その中に、「アメリカのカナダ侵略」という歴史的事実が含まれている。さらに、問１の選択肢e
「１８１２年の戦いはカナダを巻き込んだ。」は、アメリカがイギリスに宣戦布告した６月１８日から３週間後の７月１１日にはイギリス統治下のカナダに侵略戦争を仕掛けたことを指しており、問２はアメリカの国力拡大を示唆する出来事が少なくとも２件以上リストにあることを示している。
３） １）と２）から、当時発展しつつあったアメリカの帝国主義的傾向に着目して”Jul
11th US invades Canada”（7月11日 アメリカ、カナダを侵略）を取り上げ、カナダ侵略失敗後のアメリカのメキシコ・太平洋方面への進出、さらに第1次世界大戦後、世界最強の国となってから現代まで、自由民主主義の導入と抱き合わせに自由貿易とアメリカ優位の経済圏拡大を武力によって推し進めてきた歴史を中心に解答してみる。
Ideas and
Expressions
I
think the US invasion into Canada on July 11 has had the greatest influence on
the modern society. This event, though failed, can be called the first step
toward the imperialistic behavior of today’s America.
The
US expansion into Mexico and the Pacific area occurred a few decades after this
event. The United States won half of
Mexico in 1848 after a bloody war triggered by itself., forced Japan to agree
to unequal treaties by threatening them with warships in 1853, and annexed
Hawaii in 1898, after the pineapple plantation company Dole had established
itself there. In the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), thousands of Filipinos
died, which was severely condemned by Mark Twain. During WWI, the United States
showed a neutral stance till the last minute, taking the stand against the
imperialism, but actually it kept supporting the British Empire secretly from
the beginning.
After
replacing Britain to become the most powerful country in the world, the United
States has acted as an empire by waging wars against countries that did not
attack it but that are located in the area of geopolitical importance or have a
lot of resources crucial to its economic development. For example, the Pentagon
Paper revealed that the United States intentionally expanded Vietnam War by
bombing unrelated areas in Vietnam and its neighboring countries close to China
and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Also, it is now clear with enough
evidence that the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 for oil, fabricating a lie
that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. These wars left Vietnam and Iraq
with not only huge death tolls but also deformed newborns supposedly as a
result of the US use of defoliant and depleted uranium in bombs respectively.
Louisiana
purchase could be significant in terms of doubling the US territory and the United
States staring to border Mexico, which gave chances for the United States to
provoke the neighbor. However, the size and position does not have to do with aggressiveness
of a country. A large country bordering another country like Canada has been relatively
pacific in diplomacy, and small island countries like England and Japan were
very aggressive in the past. Attacking with force a country which has not
attacked it shows the country’s militaristic tendency.
The invasion of Canada by the United States shows
that it was no less imperialistic than European powers in those days, and this
characteristic as a state remains unchanged. By invading Canada in 1812, the US
government officially crossed the line between the nation of “freedom and
democracy” and a system to increase and keep its hegemony often by force at the
expense of life and the environment, and marched toward the southwest and the
Pacific area to make today’s geopolitical map.
For
Reference:
Excerpts
from A People’s History of the United
States
Chapter
8
We Take Nothing by conquest, Thank God
…
Jefferson’s Louisiana Purchase had doubled the territory of the United States,
extending it to the Rocky Mountains. To the south west was Mexico, which had
won its independence in a revolutionary war against Spain in 1821. Mexico was then
an even larger country than it is now, since it included what are now Texas,
New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, California, and part of Colorado. After
agitation, and aid from the United States, Texas broke off from Mexico in 1836
and declared itself the “Lone Star Republic.” In 1845, the U.S. Congress
brought it into the Union as a state.
In the White House now was James Polk, a
Democrat, an expansionist, who, on the night of his inauguration, confided to
his secretary of the navy that one of his main objectives was the acquisition
of California….
…..
Ordering troops to the Rio Grande, into
territory inhabited by Mexicans, was clearly a provocation. … Taylor set up
camp, began construction of a fort, and implanted his cannons facing the white
houses of Matamoros, whose inhabitants stared curiously at the sight of an army
on the banks of a quiet river.
…..
The Mexicans had fired the first
shot, But they had done what the American government wanted, according to
Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even before those first incidents:
I have said from the first that the United
States are the aggressors…. We have not one particle of right to be here….. It
looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on a war, so
as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it
chooses…. My heart is not in this business… but, as a military man, I am bound
to execute orders.
On May 9, before news of any battles, Polk
was suggesting to his cabinet a declaration of war. ….
……
Accompanying all this aggressiveness was the
idea that the United States would be giving the blessings of liberty and
democracy to more people. This was intermingled with ideas of racial
superiority, longings for the beautiful lands of New Mexico and California, and
thoughts of commercial enterprise across the Pacific. The New York Herald said, in 1847: The universal Yankee nation can regenerate
and disenthrall the people of Mexico in a few years; and we believe it is a
part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country.”
….
The American Anti-Slavery Society,
on the other hand, said the war was “waged solely for the detestable and
horrible purpose of extending and perpetuating American slavery throughout the
vast territory of Mexico.” …..
….
It is impossible to know the extent of
popular support of the war. But there is evidence that many organized working
men opposed the war. There were demonstrations of Irish workers in New York,
Boston, and Lowell against the annexation of Texas. In May, when the war
against Mexico began, New York workingmen called a meeting to oppose the war,
and many Irish workers came. The meeting called the war a plot by slave owners
and asked for the withdrawal of American troops from disputed territory.
….
Meanwhile, by land and by sea, Anglo-American
forces were moving into California. A young naval officer, after the long
voyage around the southern cape of South America, and up the coast to Monterey
in California, wrote in his diary:
Asia… will be brought to our very doors.
Population will flow into the fertile regions of California. The resources of
the entire country…will be developed….. The public lands lying along the route〔of railroads〕will be
changed from deserts into gardens, and a large population will be settled….
….
Mexico surrendered. There were calls among
Americans to take all of Mexico. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, signed
February 1848, just took half. The Texas boundary was set at the Rio Grande;
New Mexico and California were ceded. The United States paid Mexico $15 million,
which led the Whig Intelligencer to conclude that “we take nothing by conquest….
Thank God.”
Chapter
12
The Empire and the People
Theodore
Roosevelt wrote to a friend in the year 1897: “In strict confidence … I should
welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”
The year of the massacre at Wounded Knee,
1890, it was officially declared by the Bureau of the Census that the internal
frontier was closed. The profit system, with its natural tendency for
expansion, had already begun to look overseas. The severe depression that began
in 1893 strengthened an idea developing within the political and financial
elite of the country: that overseas markets for American foods might relieve the
problem of under consumption at home and prevent the economic crises that in
the 1800s brought class war.
….
Expansion overseas was not a new idea. Even
before the war against Mexico carried the United States to the Pacific, the
Monroe Doctrine looked south ward into and beyond the Caribbean. Issued in 1823
when the countries of Latin America were winning independence from Spanish
control, it made plain to European nations that the United States considered
Latin America is sphere of influence. Not long after, some American began
thinking into the Pacific: of Hawaii, Japan, and the great markets of China.
There was more than thinking. A State
Department list of 1962 (presented to a Senate committee to cite precedents for
the use of armed force against Cuba) shows 103 interventions in the affairs of
other countries between 1798 and 1895. A sampling from the listed, with the
exact description given by the State Departments:
1852-53・Argentina
Marines were landed and maintained in Buenos
Aires to protect American interests during a revolution.
1853・Nicaragua
To protect American lives and interests
during political disturbances.
1853-54・Japan
The “Opening of Japan” and the Perry
Expedition.〔The State Department does not give
details, but this involved the use of warships to force Japan to open its ports
to the United States.〕
1853-54・Ryukyu and Bonin Islands
Commodore Perry on three visits before going
to Japan and while waiting for a reply from Japan made a naval demonstration,
landing marines twice, and secured a coaling concession from the ruler of Naha
on Okinawa. He also demonstrated in the Bonin Islands. All to secure facilities
for commerce.
1854・Nicaragua
San Juan del Norte 〔Greytown was destroyed to avenge an insult to
the American Minister to Nicaragua.〕
1855・Uruguay
U.S. and European naval forces landed to
protect American interests during an attempted revolution in Montevideo.
1859・China
For the protection of American interests in
Shanghai.
1860・Angola,
Portuguese West Africa
To protect American lives and property at
Kissembo when the natives became troublesome.
1893・Hawaii
Ostensibly to protect American lives and
property; actually to promote a provisional government under Sanford B. Dole.
This action was disavowed by the United States.
1894・Nicaragua
To protect American interests at Blufields following
a revolution.
Thus,
by the 1890s, there had been much experience in overseas probes and
interventions. The ideology of expansion was widespread in the upper circles of
military men, politicians, businessmen－and even
among some of the leaders of farmers’ movements who thought foreign markets
would help them.
… Senator Henry Cabot Lodge of Massachusetts wrote in a magazine article:
For the sake of our commercial supremacy in the Pacific we should
control the Hawaiian islands…and when the Nicaraguan canal is built, the island
of Cuba…will become a necessity…. The great nations are rapidly absorbing for
their future expansion and their present defense all the waste places of the earth.
It is a movement which makes for civilization and the advancement of the race.
As one of the great nations of the world, the United States must not fall out of
the line of march.
Homework;
Summarize the reference material above in the space provided below.
Name
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