he French and Indian War, a colonial manifestation of the same forces and tensions that erupted in the European Seven Years' War, was, quite simply, a war about imperialism. The French and the English were competing for land and trading rights in North America; these strivings resulted in a great deal of disputed land, particularly that of the rich Ohio Valley. Each nation saw this territory as vital in its effort to increase its own power and wealth while simultaneously limiting the strength of its rival. Although the war itself therefore stemmed from a fairly simple motivation, its consequences were far- reaching. The English victory in the war decided the colonial fate of North America, and yet at the same time sowed the seeds of the eventual colonial revolution. After the war, the British ended their century-long policy of salutary neglect, attempting to keep the colonials under a more watchful eye. The British also raised taxes in an effort to pay for the war. Both of these postwar policies resulted in massive colonial discontent and added to the budding nationalism that eventually exploded in the Revolutionary War.
On January 1, 1959 Fidel Castro and his band of guerillas took over the government of President General Fulgencio Batista. Although the United States supported Castro during his revolution against Batista's regime, it was uneasy over the communist leanings of Castro. In 1960, Castro seized private lands and took over all U.S. owned businesses in Cuba and imposed heavy taxes on American goods. As a result, the United States ended diplomatic ties with Cuba and imposed a trade embargo which made Cuba turn to the Soviet Union instead. The United States made several unsuccessful attempts to overthrow the Cuban government.
Democratic-Republican Societies were locally-organized political agrupations that arose in the US territory during 1793-94 aiming to promote and work towards democracy and republicanism and to extinguish aristocratic ideas.
The first society was established in 1793: the Germans of Philadelpia. More than 35 new ones flourished until 1975. Many of their leaders ended up becoming part of Jefferson's Democratic-Republican Party, that he founded at a national level.
The societies claimed for equal justice and knowledge diffusion. But the main and ultimate goal was to "<em>support and perpetuate the EQUAL RIGHTS OF MAN</em>" as, for instance, the society in NY explicitly stated. These rights included freedom of speech, opinion, press, assembly which in turn granted the right to express opinions regarding the job done by government representatives, to demand explanations about public policies and acts, the right to translate those opinion into written format and to spread them by using the press.
The encomienda system was a trusteeship system used during the Spanish colonization of the Americas, conquistadors were granted the towns of the indigenous people they conquered. The conquistadors, known as encomenderos, were able to tax these people and summon them for labor.
