Connections

This week I was pleasantly surprised to find some of our AmCon musings surfacing in my French Class.   We have moved to discussions about colonisation in the Caribbean and said colonisation's effects on the native people.  I was reminded of our early discussions of Christopher Columbus as we discussed the destruction of the Arawak and Caribbean people in Haiti following the arrival of Europeans.  We have been discussing the effects of colonisation in terms of personal identity for different populations, and I feel that this discussion applys to the discussion of the American Revolution as well.  For those Carribean islands colonized by the French, colonisation causes a conflict of identity between the native culture and that which is being imposed.  While the situation was somewhat different in colonial America, I cannot help but feel that some of the tension here was partially due to the same division of culture.  Colonial Americans probably felt the pull between their lives in America, largely independant due to the great distance from Great Britain, as well as the wish to maintain a sense of feeling "English."   In this way, defining what it means to be in America was likely difficult from the beginning, in not only a governmental sense, but also one that is quite personal.