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THE UNITED STATES AND CANADA

Chapter 11

Objectives

This chapter will enable you to:

Appreciate the wide range of indigenous adaptations and ways of life in this region’s diverse environments

Recognize Canada and the United States as countries shaped mainly by British influences but also by a wide range of foreign immigrant cultures, creating a complex ethnic geography.

Understand how the United States and Canada acquired their vast land empires

Objectives (cont’d.)

View the prosperity of the United States and Canada in part as products of their great natural resource wealth

Trace the rise of the United States to a position of global economic and political supremacy and to recent rivalries from other powers

Objectives (cont’d.)

Follow the decline of traditional heavy industries in the process of deindustrialization and their replacement by high-technology and service industries

Evaluate the changing settlement patterns of the United States, including the depopulation of the Great Plains, the decline of small towns, and the movement of people back into cities

Area and Population

Population

United States – 320 million

Canada – 35 million

Together, the countries have 5% of the world’s population on 13% of its land surface

Megalopolis

Long, narrow urban belt from Virginia to Maine

Includes 5 of the 20 largest cities

Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and Boston

Migration into North America

U.S. is the only MDC in the world that is experiencing significant population growth

Immigration rates varied through history

1845 – 1860 Britain, Ireland, Germany

1880s – 1930 Germans, Italians, Poles, Jews, Irish

1924 quota system gave preference to immigrants from northwestern European countries

1965 quota system lifted; nature of immigration changed greatly

What to Do About Illegal Immigration?

Fear of immigrants taking jobs and bleeding social services

5% U.S. workforce classified as illegal

Number of successful illegal entries to U.S. dropping steadily

Sanctuary cities

Secure Fence Act of 2006

Birth tourism

Wealthy Chinese, Taiwanese, South Korean

Physical Geography of North America

Major landforms

Canadian Shield

Great Lakes

Fall line

Great Plains

Rocky Mountains

Columbia Plateau

Great Basin

Pacific Mountain Ranges

Arctic Coastal Plain

Climates and Land Uses

All 11 climate types, plus undifferentiated highland

Megadrought – in Mediterranean climate

“Corn Belt”

Tobacco – south U.S.

Tropical climates

Southern Florida and Hawaii

Climates and Biomes

Figure 11.15 (a) Climates and (b) biomes of the United States, Canada, and Greenland.

Cultural and Historical Geographies

Origins

Began their migrations as Asians

Started crossing what was then a land bridge between Alaska and Siberia 23,000 years ago

Paleo-Indians

Heavily modified the landscape for their own benefit

Native American Civilizations

No extensive urban civilizations

Ancestral Pueblo

Known as the Anasazi

Began around 550 CE

Mound Builders

A thousand miles to the east

Hopewell culture established an enormous trade network

European Impacts on Native Cultures

North America after 1492

Native cultures devastated

Hernando de Soto led a 500-man expedition wrecking everything its path from 1539 to 1542

Brought pigs that spread disease, famine, and conflict

Native American Culture Areas

Figure 11.21 Native American culture areas and selected tribes of Canada, the United States, and Greenland.

Centuries of Conflict

“Trail of Tears” – Indian Removal Act 1830

Indian wars

Sioux tribes of the northern plains

Tribes resettled to reservations

Reservations still among poorest communities in the U.S.

Gaming industry revenues

Canada – First Nations also placed on reservations

Nunavut

European Settlers and Settlements

Early exploration – “Northwest Passage”

Spanish

First to establish permanent presence

French

Acadia 1605

Dutch

England

Jamestown 1607

European Colonization

Figure 11.26 European colonization of North America

Territorial Development of the United States

Louisiana Purchase

From France, 1803

Manifest Destiny

U.S. fated to expand across the continent

Homestead Acts 1862

Allowed pioneer family to claim up to 160 acres of land for $10

Acquisition of Alaska 1867

Territorial Development of Canada

British colonies

War of 1812 – invasion from U.S.

Unified identity in northern colonies

1846 – boundary with U.S. identified as 49° parallel

Purchase of Rupert’s Land 1870

British Columbia became a Canadian province in 1871

Ethnic Minorities

1988 Multiculturalism Act in Canada

Mainstream European American culture

Urban ethnic enclaves dominated by non-European peoples

Québec

Conservative French Catholocism

Amish in U.S.

Mennonites of Swiss-German origin

African Americans

Civil War 1860 – 1865

Emancipation Proclamation freed slaves

Jim Crow laws

Racial segregation

Invalidated by 1954 Supreme Court decision

Civil Rights Act 1964

Voting Rights Act 1965

Movement of six million blacks from south to north changed American demographics and settlement patterns

Asian Americans

Chinese immigrants – West Coast

Japanese Americans placed in internment camps during WWII

Hapas

Asian minorities intermarried with other ethnic groups producing mixed offspring

Hispanic Americans

Hispanic – ethnolinguistic term

Spanish-derived cultures

17% of the population in the U.S.

Bracero Program

WWII – Mexicans filled labor shortages

Not evenly spread through U.S.

Cubans

Political refugees

Mariel Boatlift

Visible Minorities in Canada

Largest group is Asian

Race riots in Vancouver in early 1900s

Black Canadians 3% of population

Black immigration banned from late 19th to early 20th century

Linguistic and Religious Patterns

Language

Canada – English and French

U.S. does not have an official language

Laws guarantee religious freedoms

Both countries predominantly Christian

Largest single denomination is Roman Catholicism

Other monotheistic faiths in the U.S.

6 million Jews, and 2.8 million Muslim Americans

Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the U.S.

Economic Geography

The U.S. and Canada are very wealthy nations

United States $52,800 GDP

Canada $43,100 GDP

United States:

Built economic structure of consumption

Economy still powerful

Dollar is world’s leading currency

Sources of the Region’s Affluence

Large population represents pool of labor and talent as well as a market

Peace and stability within and between these countries

Overall sense of internal unity and track record of continuity in political, economic, and cultural institutions

An Abundance of Resources

U.S. and Canada resemble European environments and their potential for production

Largest food-exporting region of the world

Waterways help make the U.S. the world’s most capital-rich country

Global economic system built by the U.S. in post-WWII system of monetary management

Oil and Other Minerals

Abundant fossil fuel resources

Coal

Tar sands

Uneconomical to produce

Keystone XL Pipeline

Canada to Gulf of Mexico

America’s Energy Revolution

Hydraulic fracturing (fracking)

Agriculture and Forestry in the US and Canada

U.S. agricultural trade surplus

Better land management practices and genetic modification of crops have boosted crop yields

Abundant forest resources

U.S. cuts more wood, produces more wood pulp, and produces more paper than any other country in the world

U.S.-Canadian Economic Relations

Vital Trading Partners

Canada is much more dependent on the U.S.

Exchange of Canadian raw and intermediate materials for American manufactured goods

Economic disputes

Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement 1988

North American Free Trade Agreement 1994

Manufacturing and the Great Recession

“American Dream”

Rust Belt

Factories closing – less need for American-made goods

Growth in service sector

Investment from China

Manufacturing

Cars

Services and Information Technology

Most Americans and Canadians employed in service sector

U.S. profits from a “knowledge economy”

Development of the Internet

Global leadership in Information Technology

Platform economy

Tech bubble burst in 2000

Services and Information Technology

Housing bubble burst in 2007

Great Recession 2007 – 2009

Credit crisis

Recovery slow

Productivity paradox

Inequalities

Gap between rich and poor

America’s top 1% holds 20% of wealth

Poor – 14% of the population in 2014

Spread across the country

Canada has more equitable distribution of wealth

Poverty

Figure 11.44 Poverty in America’s counties, as depicted by the 2010 national census. The poorest county of Ziebach, South Dakota, is home mainly to Sioux Indians on the Cheyenne River Indian Reservation. The wealthiest, Falls Church, Virginia, is an affluent bedroom community of Washington DC. Note how wealth is clustered in the northeastern megalopolis. Poverty is also clustered; note, in addition to the Indian reservations of the upper Midwest and those of New Mexico and Arizona; mainly white, rural Appalachia; the mainly black “Mississippi Delta” region; and the mainly Hispanic Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

Transportation Infrastructure

Interstate highway system – late 1950s

Primary network for the trucking of cargo across the U.S.

Reflects American love affair with the automobile

Public transportation is popular only in cities

Gridlock makes it an attractive alternative to driving

Relations between the United States and Canada

Friction following the American Revolution

Northern colonies failed to join the Revolution

War of 1812 fought largely as U.S. effort to conquer Canada

Canada’s emergence as a unified nation came partly as a result of U.S. pressure

British North America Act 1867

Today these countries are strong allies

The United States’ Place in the World

American exceptionalism

Isolationism

Geographic advantage of being far away from world’s hot spots

Entered both world wars late

Attacks of September 11, 2001

Policy of preemptive engagement

U.S. no longer world’s sole superpower

Perpetual war footing

Canada: The Québec Separatist Movement

French heritage

Dissatisfaction led to the formation of the separatist political party Parti Québécois

Twice the separatists forced the country to hold referenda on Québec’s independence both failed

Canada has officially recognized Québec as a “distinct society” within Canada

Canada: Overfished Waters

Maritime provinces

New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island

200-mile offshore jurisdiction prohibiting foreign competition in the fishing of the Grand Banks began 1977

Moratorium on commercial fishing remains in effect

Cod populations have not recovered

Canada: The Race for the Arctic

Canada has a vast Arctic territory

Aims to exploit it to maximum advantage

Arctic Bridge

Canada and Russia

Shipping route from Churchill, Canada to the Russian port of Murmansk

Considerations:

Warming Arctic Ocean waters will mean new fishing grounds will open

Estimated 1/4 of world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves lie in the Arctic

Greenland: A White Land

Greenland is geologically part of North America

Danish province

There are estimates that Greenland may have oil reserves as great as Libya’s

About 80% of the island is covered by an icecap up to 10,000 feet thick

Between 2003 and 2011, an average of about 50 cubic miles of icecap melted due to global warming

The United States: The Changing Geography of American Settlement

Four major patterns

Agricultural heartland depopulated

People moving south and west

Cities revitalized and attract more people

Socioeconomic divides widened in cities

“Sun Belt”

Adaptive reuse of structures

Gentrification

United States: The Big Apple

New York City, NY

Largest city in the U.S. (8.5 million)

Metropolitan area 20 million

Diverse

9/11 attacks on World Trade Center

Memorial

San Francisco, The City by the Bay

San Francisco, California

Population 7 million

Roughly 20% Asian Americans

Gold Rush of 1849

Silicon Valley

United States: The Thirsty West

Environmental challenges:

Dry climates

Rough topography

Lack of inland water transportation

Colorado River Compact

Several dams

Central Arizona Project

Canal network

Wasteful practices

United States: The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

Alaska’s Permanent Fund

From oil revenues

Arctic National Wildlife Refuge

12,500 square mile refuge set aside as wilderness in 1980

Fate of oil beneath tundra ecosystem left for Congress to decide at later time

Oil interests vs. environmentalists