Mercantilism is an economic theory where a nation's strength comes from building up gold supplies and expanding its trade. Britain formed the American colonies so that they could increase their gold stores. They wanted raw supplies to make into products to sell and make money. They wanted America to pay taxes so that Britain could make money. America used the theory in that they thought they ought to, in order to be strong expand their trade beyond Britain. Countries like Belgium, and France wanted to also increase their trade, and expand it to trading with America. They also wanted to increase their gold stores by trading with America. Britain however did not want America to trade with France and Belgium and the Netherlands because they wanted to increase their gold stores, so they needed a monopoly over American trade. So there was tension between Britain and its American colonies. One of the first efforts made by Britain to control the American colonies was the Acts of Trade and Navigation. What these acts did was limited American trade to basically just Britain. These Acts were in place between 1650-1660 and they were there to ensure that the mercantile system that existed stayed. It was mainly to prevent the Frenchmen and Dutch from receiving American goods. The acts limited American shipping to be via Britain. The British had to receive all American goods and them their merchants would sell the goods to other countries, but America could not. Any goods that were to be imported to the colonies had to be passed through British middlemen, where a tax was added so that Britain would profit. America was also forbidden to produce goods or grow crops for profit. If they were to do that then they would be competing with British industries. The colonies were supposed to also buy more than they sold, so that their currency was drained, but all to Britain. Before 1663, when the Acts of Trade and Navigation were not enforced the colonists benefited from Britain. The colonists of the north smuggled goods and manufactured items for profit. They avoided the British laws. The southern colonists had a guaranteed market from the British because they had a monopoly. The colonies also benefited because they had the British army troops to guard them, and they have low taxes, and the British navy shielded them. The colonists were generally more prosperous than the English...
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...000 troops. The colonists by this time were no the happiest of campers and when the Quebec Act was passed the colonists had had almost enough. What this act did was to close off the Western lands, the British gave religious freedom to the Catholics, and the Massachusetts Protestants were anti-Catholic. The act also allowed the French to retain systems where there were no representative assemblies, and where there were no jury trials, as a result of this fear was installed into the colonists. Through all of this we knew that in mercantilism our strength was being depleted by Britain, so there was an action, leading to a reaction, later leading to synthesis, or another action. This continued on and on, getting more and more violent until the American Revolution broke out. America was becoming increasingly patriotic, a nationalist "country". This American Revolution that was to result was one of "national self-determination" being that we can. We think we can, and in ourselves as a nation we can stand alone, free of Britain. We determined this by a series of occurrences that all resulted, through our mercantilist ideas and thoughts, eventually in us being America.
On the typical day, over 90 people will die at the hand of opioid abuse in America alone (National). In fact, as of 2014, nearly 2 million Americans were dependent and abusing opioids. The Opioid Crisis has affected America and its citizens in various ways, including health policy, health care, and the life in populous areas. Due to the mass dependence and mortality, the crisis has become an issue that must be resolved in all aspects.
Leading up to the time of the Revolutionary War, seven policies were passed by Britain in hopes of controlling the colonies. These acts culminated in the Quebec Act which persuaded many Americans into supporting the revolutionary effort. The Proclamation of 1763 was the first policy passed by the British. This forbid any settlement west of Appalachia because the British feared conflicts over territory in this region. The proclamation, however, infuriated the colonists who planned on expanding westward. The Sugar Act was passed shortly after in 1764. This act sought harsher punishment for smugglers. The next act to be passed was possibly the most controversial act passed by Britain. The Stamp Act passed in 1765 affected every colonist because it required all printed documents to have a stamp purchased from the British authority. The colonist boycotted British goods until the Stamp Act was repealed but quickly replaced by the Declaratory Act in 1766. The British still held onto the conviction that they had the right to tax the Americans in any way they deemed necessary. The Declaratory Act was followed by the Townshend Acts of 1767. This imposed taxes on all imported goods from Britain, which caused the colonies to refuse trading with Britain. Six years passed before another upsetting act was passed. In 1773, the Tea Act placed taxes on tea, threatening the power of the colonies. The colonies, however, fought back by pouring expensive tea into the Boston harbor in an event now known as the Boston Tea Party. The enraged Parliament quickly passed the Intolerable Acts, shutting down the port of Boston and taking control over the colonies.
Self-interest can be seen in many of the writings throughout American history. The mercantile system, as exhibited by the British on the colonies, was an extremely hedonistic approach to gaining wealth for themselves. Mercantilism, as set forth by the Navigation Acts, imposed strict and extremely descriptive laws that would limit and exploit trade in the colonies, allowing Britain to control the wealth and profit of materials and goods in America. These acts were used to keep America from trading with any other countries. As stated in the Navigation Act of 1660, "no goods or commodities whatsoever shall be imported into or exported out of any lands" to his Majesty belonging"in any other ship or ships...as do truly and without fraud belong only to the people of England or Ireland" (Restoration 98). Britain knew that by controlling the colonies in this manner they could take the raw materials out and sell the finished products back, and by doing so they would profit greatly. This mercantile system exemplifies the arrogant minds of the British while America was developing. This system would soon become a failure due to the people's demands to have representation along with taxation, and their desire to separate from England as a free and independent state. Likewise, it was due to self-interest of the greedy planters and the self righteous farmers in the south that slavery was highly used. At that time they needed all the labor they could get, and the cheapest way to obtain it was through the purchase of slaves. Some of the slavery was downplayed by calling it indentured servitude, where servants were essentially slaves for a limited number of years.
At first, America existed just as any of the other English colonies. England provided financial and military assistance, and in turn America shipped goods that were to be sold in England. This mercantilist system worked out at first, but soon, as the population increased people began to feel that many of England's trade policies and laws were unfair. They also expected to be represented in the English Parliament. Edmund Burke said, "Govern America? As you govern an English town which happens not to be represented in Parliament?" (Notes for Speech in Parliament). However, England declined the colonist's requests, and only made the situation worse by declaring harsher laws. Some laws prevented the colonists from trading with other countries, and others placed larger taxes on goods.
The Tuskegee syphilis experiment lasted for 30 years before the unethical practice was officially brought to a halt, during that time, the concept of bad blood was used to prolong the involvement of test subjects. Participants infected with syphilis where given fabricated stories that kept them uninformed, making cooperation easier. Lies stretched from being told their blood was bad, to nurses giving them placebo cures. Both were in efforts to either keep blacks uninformed, or to reassure those informed that they were safe. Treasure Island authorities seem to have duplicated the same tactics, and tailor them to radiation. Years after radiation test were complete and questions started to arise, officials started to deny radiation was discovered on the Island. In a Bay Area NBC interview, Treasure Island’s director said, “TIDA director Robert Beck denied that there is evidence of any radiological material being buried where people are currently living. He has continually defended the Navy’s position” (NBC Bay Area). Like Tuskegee, prominent officials denied the severity of the problem to lengthen the case. After given extensive evidence that death was an inevitable outcome, authoritative figures in both situations denied indisputable data. For those who were aware of illness, Eunice Rivers told them they had bad blood, and prescribed/injected a placebo solution. On Treasure Island, residents who were diagnosed with cancer were lied to, and given what can be seen as a
The British also implemented new taxes. The Sugar act of 1764 sought to reduce smuggling, which occurred partly as a result of the earlier Molasses Act. This gave British possessions in the Caribbean the upper hand in sugar trade, which in the British view helped the empire as a whole, but to Americans, and especially the merchants, this put limits on their opportunities. The Currency Act, passed about this time forbade the printing of colonial currency. British merchants benefited because they didn't have to deal with inflated American currencies. The Americans felt they were at an economic disadvantage as very little sterli...
A statement in an unsigned article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, gives the prejudicial idea: “‘Virtue in the Negro race is like angels’ visits—few and far between”’ (Brandt 21). Nearly seventy years after Lincoln abolished slavery in the United States, racism and prejudice still flowed through the veins of many Americans and their views corrupted medical research studies with bribery, prejudice, and flagrant disregard for ethics, such as the Tuskegee Syphilis case in 1932. This blatant disrespect for African-American life left only seventy-four men alive of the three hundred and ninety-nine men who participated in the study. These men were chosen as research subjects solely on the color of their skin and that they were a “notoriously syphilis soaked race” (Skloot 50).
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Untreated Male Negros made a distinct impact on the history of research. The study began in Mason County, Alabama in 1932 at the Tuskegee Institute. The goal was to learn about syphilis, and how the disease progressed with an emphasis on uneducated and illiterate African American males (Tuskegee University, n.d). There were 600 participants involved; 399 with documented cases of syphilis, and 201 control group members without syphilis (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013). Researchers informed the participants that they had “bad blood,” never informing them that they were infected with syphilis (Tuskegee University, n.d). To encourage the men to participate in the study they provided free medical care, transportation, meals on the days they were being examined, and burial insurance (Tuskegee University, n.d). When the study began no reliable treatments were available.
A multitude of medical ethics were broken during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, including lack of informed consent, withholding treatment, and deception. “The study was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent” (CDC). “They were led to believe they were receiving free medical care, when its
A multitude of medical ethics were broken during the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, including lack of informed consent, withholding treatment, and deception. According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), “The study was conducted without the benefit of patients’ informed consent.” Also, Yoon shed insight
Retrospectively in 2011, the US government elucidated that mortalities correlated with prescription opioid overdoses had surpassed heroin and cocaine fatalities coalesced. Uniquely, "National data has stated that the volume of opioid pills prescribed in the US since 1999 has quadrupled, and so has the number of opioid overdoses" (America's opioid crisis). Correspondingly, this constitutes a calamity that's indicative of the ramifications associated with the prescription pain medication crisis and it institutes how egregious the issue at hand really is-mortality wise. "Shockingly, the daily death toll is 142 fatal overdoses, 91 of them from opioids, adding up to almost 52,000 drug overdose deaths in 2015" (America's opioid crisis). Candidly,
The Tuskegee Syphilis experiment (The official name was Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male) began in the 1930’s. It was an experiment on African Americans to study syphilis and how it affected the body and killed its victims done by Tuskegee Institute U.S. Public Health Service researchers. The initial purpose of the Syphilis study “was to record the natural history of syphilis in Blacks” (Tuskegee University, “About the USPHS Syphilis Study,” par. 2). The study was necessary because syphilis was a disease that didn’t yet have an official cure (when the study began in the 30’s). There were 600 men in all; 399 had syphilis and 201 served as a control group for the experiment. The subjects lacked money and education to understand what exactly was going on and couldn’t give informed consent ,but “the researchers offered incentives: free physical exams, hot meals, and rides into town on clinic days, plus fifty-dollar burial stipends for their families when the men died” (50). Therefore, they didn’t question the doctors about what they were doing. During the experiment on the hundreds of African Americans, the doctors found out that they could cure them with penicillin. However, the doctors choose not to cure them in order to study how syphilis killed people and many of the subjects had, indeed, died. Later, in the 1970’s, an article was released which sparked rumors about the southern doctors injecting the men with syphilis, rather them already having it. The government put an end to the study in the early 1970’s. The experiment affected medical history because it helped lead to the creation of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical an...
The book, Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, by James H. Jones, was one of the most influential books in today’s society. The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment study began in 1932 and was terminated in 1972. This book reflects the history of African Americans in the mistrust of the health care system. According to Colin A. Palmer, “James H. Jones disturbing, but enlightening Bad Blood details an appalling instance of scientific deception. This dispassionate book discusses the Tuskegee experiment, when a group of physicians used poor black men as the subjects in a study of the effects of untreated syphilis on the human body”(1982, p. 229). In addition, the author mentioned several indications of discrimination, prejudice,
The Tuskegee Syphilis Study originated in September 1932. Scientist and researchers traveled to Macon County to gather Blacks and underprivileged, indigent American citizens who were infected with latent syphilis to serve as participants, ‘guinea pigs’, for the study. They selected black men that were between the age 25-60 who were infected with syphilis. Many of the test subjects were easily persuaded due to the idea and the promise of a cure. ( Cite) From the study’s provenance, the scientist betrayed the trust and faith of the members of the experiment. After being tested for the disease, the members of the study weren’t given any specifics with regards to their health status. Instead, they were told that they had “bad blood”, but with
Economic concerns of the British caused the colonization of British North America. Such economic concerns included the opportunity to acquire gold, silver, a North American waterway that would lead directly to China and the Indies, and the prospect of countering Spain's dominance in North America (Boorstin et al. 34). In addition to these economic reasons for colonization, the English were also seeking to obtain the essential "raw materials" in America that they had been previously buying from other European countries for exorbitant amounts of money and gold (Boorstin et al. 34). Great Britain also sought to solve other economic problems through American colonization. For example, England needed to replenish some of its diminishing materials and assets, generate another "market" to export its cargo and merchandise, maintain its powerful navy and "merchant marine" through business with new American colonies, and to provide a new place for the unemployed to settle rather than escalating populace/crime and the economic burden in its own cities (Boorstin et al. 34).