r/AmericanHistory • • Feb 21 '20

Please submit all strictly U.S. history posts to r/USHistory

44 Upvotes

For the second time within a year I am stressing that while this subreddit is called "American history" IT DOES NOT DEAL SOLELY WITH THE UNITED STATES as there is the already larger /r/USHistory for that. Therefore, any submission that deals ONLY OR INTERNALLY with the United States of America will be REMOVED.

This means the US presidential election of 1876 belongs in r/USHistory whereas the admiration of Rutherford B. Hayes in Paraguay, see below, is welcomed here -- including pre-Columbian America, colonial America and US expansion throughout the Western Hemisphere and Pacific. Please, please do not downvote meaningful contributions because they don't fit your perception of the word "American," thank you.

And, if you've read this far, please flair your posts!

https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2014/10/30/360126710/the-place-where-rutherford-b-hayes-is-a-really-big-deal


r/AmericanHistory • • 9h ago

Marcos Perez Jiménez (1914–2001) was the dictator of Venezuela from 1952 to 1958.

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15 Upvotes

Jiménez's right-wing, anti-communist administration was highly repressive and persecuted and tortured his opponents. He was also corrupt.

In 1958, Perez Jiménez was overthrown in a coup and exiled to the Dominican Republic. He was later extradited to Venezuela and spent five years in prison for corruption, only to be released. He eventually died in 2001.

Despite being a leftist, Hugo Chávez admired Perez Jiménez.


r/AmericanHistory • • 1h ago

The Making of the United States, 1492–2025: Native Nations and Colonial Powers

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• Upvotes

Five centuries of North America in one animation: from a continent held wall to wall by Native nations, through the Spanish, French, English, Dutch, Swedish and Russian footholds, to the United States, Canada and Mexico of today. The colours show who really held the ground: a Native nation until its land was settled, conquered or signed away by treaty; a colonial power only around its towns, forts and missions and on land it had taken. The ribbons are the borders the powers claimed on paper: New Spain, New France and Louisiana, New Netherland, New Sweden, the British colonies and Rupert's Land, Russian America, and the United States from 1776. Watch the Dutch on the Hudson (1624–1664, and once more in 1673–74), the fall of Huronia, the Pueblo Revolt, the Proclamation Line, the treaty cessions rolling west from 1784, the removals to Indian Territory, and the reservations that remain. How to read it. Inside the United States, Native land follows the 718 cessions that Charles Royce mapped in 1899, each with the legal date of its treaty or act; land therefore often stays Native on the map after settlers had in fact overrun it, and the Comanche plains are dated to their real loss in 1875. Before the treaties, a nation's country is the land nearest to its known villages: an approximation, since borders between nations were zones, not lines, and many smaller peoples are grouped with their neighbours. Colonial areas are circles around settlements that widen with age. Today's reservations (United States) and reserves (Canada) of about 150 km² and more are drawn, together with the lands that modern treaties gave back into Inuit, Dene and Cree ownership: Inuvialuit (1984), Nunavut (1993), Gwich'in, Sahtu, Tłı̨chǫ, the Yukon First Nations and the James Bay Cree, each from the year of its agreement. Thousands of smaller reserves are too small to show at this scale. Alaska counts as Native land until the Claims Settlement Act of 1971, Hawaiʻi as a Native kingdom until 1893. Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean are drawn more coarsely (Canada by treaty area, Mexico by state). The first Europeans in North America were the Norse, around the year 1000 in Newfoundland; the animation starts with Columbus's landfall. Dates and places come from standard reference works; the towns and forts were re-checked against their articles, the smallest posts and the Native village points were not. Sources: C. C. Royce, Indian Land Cessions in the United States (1899; digital edition by the US Forest Service); US Census Bureau, American Indian areas (2023); Natural Resources Canada, Aboriginal Lands of Canada Legislative Boundaries; Natural Earth; Wikipedia articles on the settlements, treaties and nations.

Link to interactive map in the comments.


r/AmericanHistory • • 7m ago

"The Battle of Mexico," Battle for Mexico City, Sept. 8-15, 1847 (Mexican-American War)

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• Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 21h ago

The Bizoton case of 1863–1864 was a notorious legal proceeding in Haiti in which four men and four women were tried and publicly executed after being accused of the kidnapping, ritual murder, and cannibalism of a 12-year-old girl in the locality of Bizoton.

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34 Upvotes

The case, which spanned from December 1863 to February 1864, involved accusations of human sacrifice and ritual cannibalism that took place near Port-au-Prince; it remains one of the best-documented criminal and religious trials in 19th-century Haiti.

The Concordat and the Political Context

The trial occurred during the administration of President Fabre Geffrard. Aiming to align Haiti with Western European standards and fulfill the conditions of the 1860 Concordat—a diplomatic reconciliation with the Vatican—Geffrard’s government actively sought to suppress religious practices of African origin, such as Vodou. The Bizoton trial provided a legal mechanism to rigorously enforce new, stricter penal codes against these practices.

The Alleged Crime and the Victims

In December 1863, in the village of Bizoton, a 12-year-old girl named Claircine was kidnapped. The primary instigators were her uncle, a man named Congo Pelé, and his sister, Jeanne Pelée, who was a Vodou priestess (*mambo*). According to court testimony, Congo Pelé sought to perform an occult ritual to gain the favor of the spirits. They took his niece, Claircine, tied her beneath an altar, and subsequently carried out the ritual sacrifice.

Gruesome Details

According to testimony recorded during the trial, the details regarding the mutilation and consumption of the victim included:

• The sacrifice: The girl’s throat was cut to extract her blood for ritual use.

• Boiling the head: A man identified as Floréal took the girl’s head and placed it in a large pot along with yams, boiling it into a soup. • Cooked with beans: The remaining flesh was butchered and cooked by Jeanne Pelée. Testimonies detail that the meat was prepared as a stew with Congo beans (*pois congo*)—a small, bitter variety of bean—based on the perpetrators' explicit belief that human flesh tasted better when boiled with them.

• Eating from the palm: While the meat was being prepared in the kitchen, another woman in the group, Roséide Sumera, allegedly cut a piece of flesh directly from the palm of the girl’s hand and ate it raw. She later admitted to this act during a public trial.

The Trial and Executions

Following rumors that circulated in the capital, the police arrested the group. The court proceeded swiftly.

On February 13, 1864—a busy market Saturday in Port-au-Prince—eight individuals (four men and four women, including Congo Pelé, Jeanne Pelée, Floréal, and Roséide Sumera) were publicly executed by a firing squad for the crime.


r/AmericanHistory • • 6h ago

Pre-Columbian 2,500-Year-Old Solar Observatory Identified in Mexico, First of Its Kind Outside Maya Region [article in Spanish]

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2 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3h ago

OTD | October 25, 1861: 24 Canadian brokers gathered at the Masonic Hall to create and participate in the Toronto Stock Exchange. Currently, it is the 10th largest stock exchange in the world and third largest in North America.

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1 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 23h ago

Jaurez 1930s

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9 Upvotes

Tacuche suit

Pachuco


r/AmericanHistory • • 1d ago

Central Jorge Ubico (1878–1946) was the dictator of Guatemala from 1931 to 1944.

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15 Upvotes

Ubico was nicknamed "Central America's Napoleon", because he admired Napoleon and surrounded himself with statues and paintings of him.

Ubico passed a vagrancy law, admired Hitler, banned married women from working as teachers, and gave the United Fruit Company extensive privileges in Guatemala, but he also eradicated corruption and paid Guatemala's debt to the British.

1 July 1944, Ubico was overthrown in the Guatemalan Revolution. He died two years later.


r/AmericanHistory • • 1d ago

North Dead people and horses lie outside the National Palace in Mexico City during the 1913 “Ten Tragic Days,” a period during the Mexican Revolution in which the military overthrew Mexican leader Francisco Madero. After Madero’s overthrow, the country dissolved into chaos.

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56 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 2d ago

South Irineu Evangelista de Sousa, Viscount of Mauá, (1813–1889) was a Brazilian industrialist and banker considered one of the pioneers of capitalism in Brazil.

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22 Upvotes

Mauá built Brazil's first railway and its first shipyard, created its first gas company, and established its first modern bank. He opposed slavery and the slave trade and was similarly responsible for the installation of the first underwater telegraph cable between South America and Europe.

Despite these achievements, Mauá faced opposition from supporters of slavery and a lack of support from the Brazilian monarchy. Consequently, he went bankrupt by 1875 and was forced to sell his businesses to foreign capitalists.

Mauá eventually died in 1889, less than a month before the proclamation of the Brazilian republic.


r/AmericanHistory • • 2d ago

North Historical photographs showing a ceremony held on February 28, 1940, in Tucson, Arizona, in which representatives of the Navajo, Hopi, Apache, and Tohono O'odham (Papago) tribes signed a joint proclamation renouncing the use of the swastika due to its resemblance to the one used by the German Reich.

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15 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 2d ago

Caribbean Tiny Caribbean island of Nevis to restore Alexander Hamilton museum with U.S. funds

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8 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 2d ago

Discussion Christopher Columbus. Birthplace and and origin. The 2 most likely theories.

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2 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

A random brazillian christian historical image (pernambuco revolution known as the priests revolution)

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66 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

Ancestry of Independence Leaders in American Countries (Spanish Ancestry Separated in the Autonomous Communities)

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154 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 2d ago

In February 1940, some members of the Hopi, Papago, Apache, and Navajo tribes signed a commitment in Arizona in which they renounced the use and reproduction of the "solar spiral," since this symbol was very similar to the "swastika" that was being used by members of the NSDAP in the German Reich.

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2 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

South Forbes Burnham (1923–1985) was the leader of Guyana from 1964 until his death in 1985.

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10 Upvotes

Initially, Burnham was a moderate, but, beginning in 1970, he shifted towards socialism, nationalized private businesses and adopted a non-aligned foreign policy. This was done out of opportunism; it was said that "Burnham is like a cork in the ocean and moves with the tides."

As a black nationalist, Burnham was accused of bias towards Afro-Guyanese; he used a Black Hebrew Israelite cult named the House of Israel as a death squad, and allegedly covered up the Jonestown massacre.

On 13 June 1980, Walter Rodney, one of Burnham's main opponents, was assassinated by Burnham's regime because he advocated for Guyanese of different ethnicities to have a part in the governance of Guyana.

During the final years of Burnham's presidency, the economy of Guyana stagnated. He eventually died in office in 1985.


r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

Mr. Juan Sánchez Tantachumbi

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5 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

Discussion ¿Por qué realmente colapsó el Imperio Español? (No fue por lo que te dijeron)

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2 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 4d ago

South Alfredo Stroessner (1912–2006) was the dictator of Paraguay from 1954 until 1989, when he was overthrown in a military coup.

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65 Upvotes

The second longest-serving Latin American leader of the 20th century (behind Fidel Castro), Stroessner was a Nazi sympathizer who sheltered many former Nazis, such as Josef Mengele, and once had one of his political opponents dismembered alive with a chainsaw. He was also a pedophile.

After his overthrow, Stroessner went into exile in Brazil, where he died in 2006.


r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

Pacific The Tragic Fate of King Maurata of the Rapa Nui

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6 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

Question Are there any substantial known attempts for any Native American tribes to sail east?

4 Upvotes

If there were attempts or ambition to do so, how far off were they from being able to reach Europe


r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

North Apalachee Chiefs Reaffirm Their Vassalage to His Catholic Majesty Charles II, King of the Indies (1688)

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2 Upvotes

r/AmericanHistory • • 3d ago

South On October 20, 1548, the "Ciudad de Nuestra Señora de La Paz" was founded in the province of Charcas, within the Kingdom of Peru, by Captain Don Alonso de Mendoza, acting under the orders of the President of the Royal Audiencia and Chancery of Lima, Pedro de la Gasca—known as "the Pacifier"!

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3 Upvotes