History 323: Colonial and Revolutionary America

Goshen College

Spring 2006; MWF, 1:00 p.m.

Wyse Hall, Room 319

Prof. Steve Nolt

office: Wyse Hall 312

telephone: (office) 535-7460; (home) 534-6438

e-mail: stevemn@goshen.edu

course web site: http://blackboard.goshen.edu

Course overview:

This course of study focuses on the portions of North American that in 1783 became the United States. On a comparative basis we will look at other Spanish, French, and British North American and Caribbean colonial projects. Course readings and class time will give special attention to the genre of cultural history, and to the topics of family and gender, slavery, and revolution. Three themes will be especially important to our study:

(1) Cultural encounters are, in many ways, what the story of North America during this time is all about. We will look at contact between Native Americans and Europeans, between Europeans and Africans, between different European colonial projects and ideals, and finally between Anglo-American colonists and Britain. All of these encounters involved significant and sometimes sharp cultural conflict.

(2) Colonialism and empire are a second and related theme. Colonialism begs the cultural question: How is culture transported, transmitted, and transformed across time and space. With special attention to the English colonies, we will examine how different and similar they were from the ‘mother country,’ and the degree to which they replaced, replicated, and reformulated their ‘Old World’ traditions.

(3) Finally, we will examine nationalism and national identity as we look at the American Revolution and its aftermath. Rejecting conventional European understandings of nationalism and discarding the one thing they had in common (British rule), the thirteen ‘American colonies’ needed to construct a new understanding of what nationhood meant. The results set the stage for the promises and perennial problems of subsequent United States history.

Course goals:

(1) To gain knowledge of the events, people and issues of this period, especially related to the three themes, above.

(2) To identify various perspectives on a given event or topic and consider what historical sources tell us about the past and how we can interpret them in context.

(3) To think historically, evaluate sources, consider contexts, construct arguments, and raise and answer counter-arguments.

(4) To improve written and oral communication skills.

Grading and other requirements:

Evaluation will be based on 475 possible points:

Map quiz 25 points

Journal article review 50 points

Equiano/slavery essay 75 points

Slavery database project 75 points

Primary source report 50 points

Short quizzes/reading responses 50 points (10 @ 5 points each)

Midterm and Final examinations 75 points each

Final letter grades are figured at 90%=A; 80%=B; 70%=C; 60%=D.

Attendance policy: Attendance is expected. Notice of excused absences for athletic or school-related functions should be presented in advance. Quizzes given on days of unexcused absences cannot be made up. Extensions on written assignments are granted only in unusual circumstances, but do consult with me if you think you will be facing such a situation. The grade for any late written work, other than for medical reasons or otherwise cleared with the instructor in advance, will be reduced ten percent per day for each day that it is late. Assignments due on days when a student has a school-related activity must be handed in by the due date.

Academic integrity: Plagiarism (the undocumented use of words or ideas from the work of others) is not acceptable. Plagiarized assignments receive no credit. All cases of plagiarism are reported to the Office of the Associate Academic Dean for processing.

Academic support: Goshen College wants to help all students be as academically successful as possible. If you have a disability and require accommodations, please contact the instructor or the Director of the Academic Support Center, Lois Martin, early in the semester so that your learning needs may be appropriately met. In order to receive accommodations, documentation concerning your disability must be on file with the Academic Support Center, KU 004, x-7576, lmartin@goshen.edu. All information will be held in the strictest confidence. The Academic Support Center offers tutoring and writing assistance for all students. For further information please see www.goshen.edu/studentlife/asc.php.

Assignments:

(1) The map quiz will be given at the beginning of class on Monday, January 23. Along with this syllabus is a list of geographic features or locations and a blank outline map for study/practice. For the quiz, you will be given another blank outline map and asked to mark accurately twenty-five of the features or locations I will choose from the longer list.

(2) A 2-3 page review of a journal article of the student’s choice is due Friday, February 3. Details are on the course Blackboard page under “Assignments.”

(3) A 5-6 page thesis-driven essay relating the Equiano primary source to the Countryman secondary sources is due Friday, February 24. Details are on Blackboard under “Assignments.”

(4) A 4-5 page paper based on work with the “Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade” CD-Rom database is due Friday, March 10. Details are on Blackboard under “Assignments.”

(5) Each student will complete a 3-page report on a primary source related to our time period (see suggested list on Blackboard under “Assignments”). Due dates vary depending on the source.

(6) As a means of building accountability for the reading assignments, there will be five short quizzes on the reading given at the beginning of class on five random days. Each quiz will consist of five questions about the day’s reading. On five other days a one-page (maximum) reading response will be due, based on a question given by the instructor ahead of time.

(7) A midterm exam and a final exam are scheduled for Monday, February 13, and Tuesday, April 18. Each will include short-answer identification questions and two essay questions.

Textbooks:

Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native History of Early America (Harvard, 2001).

David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (Oxford, 1989).

Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Rev. ed. (Bedford, 2006).

Edward Countryman, ed., How Did American Slavery Begin? (Bedford, 1999)

Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Knopf, 1991).

Readings marked (*) are e-reserves; items marked (+) are on reserve at library circulation desk.

Date Preparation for Class Class

W Jan 4

Course introduction, themes, assignments, assumptions.

Native American worlds

F Jan 6	Read *Daniels, “The Indian Population,” William & Mary Q., 3^rd ser., 49 (April 1992), 298-320; *Crosby, “Ecological Imperialism,” in Germs, Seeds and Animals, 28-44.	Topic: The “New World” in the European mind; Discussion of Daniels and Crosby.
M Jan 9	Read Richter, 1-40.	Topic: The Spanish frontier in North America; Pueblo revolt.
W Jan 11	Read Richter, 41-109.	Discussion of Richter.
F Jan 13	Read Richter, 110-50.	Topic: Domesticated animals and European colonization.
M Jan 16	Martin Luther King, Jr. Study Day
W Jan 18	Read, Richter, 151-88.	Topic: Domesticated animals and European colonization, cont.
F Jan 20	Read, Richter, 189-254.	Discussion of Richter.

Comparative colonization and cultures

M Jan 23	Read Fischer, vii-xi, 3-11, 13-62.	Map quiz; Topic: The Puritans in the American imagination.
W Jan 25	Read Fischer, 68-93, 97-111, 117-30, 158-66, 174-205.	Discussion of the New England reading.
F Jan 27	Read *Davidson/Lytle, “Visible and Invisible Worlds,” After the Fact, 23-47; or *Harley, “Explaining Salem: Calvinist Psychology . . .” AHR 101 (April 1996), 307-30.	Discussion: Interpretation case study—How might we understand the Salem witch trials?
M Jan 30	Read Fischer, 207-64.	Topic: The Chesapeake experiment
W Feb 1	Read Fischer, 274-306, 311-26, 332-44, 368-73, 382-418.	Discussion of the Chesapeake reading.
F Feb 3	Read Fischer, 419-75.	Topic: The Glorious Revolution in America Journal Article Review Due
M Feb 6	Read Fischer, 481-502, 507-17, 522-30, 560-66, 573-603.	Discussion of the Pennsylvania reading.
W Feb 8	Read Fischer, 605-55.	Topic: New York—Melting Pot or Cultural Hegemony?
F Feb 10	Read Fischer, 662-83, 687-96, 703-15, 743-47, 754-82.	Discussion of the Borderlands reading.
M Feb 13	Study for midterm exam.	Midterm Examination

Beginnings of slave societies and slave economies

W Feb 15	Begin reading Equiano and/or Countryman; work with slavery database.	Topic: Coerced labor in America—the big picture.
F Feb 17	Continue reading Equiano and/or Countryman; work with slavery database.	Topic: Slavery (I).
M Feb 20	Continue reading Equiano and/or Countryman; work with slavery database.	Topic: Slavery (II).

W Feb 22	Finish reading Equiano and Countryman; work with slavery database.	Discussion of Equiano and Countryman.
F Feb 24	Finish Equiano/slavery essay; work with slavery database.	Discussion of Equiano and Countryman, cont. Equiano/slavery Essay Due

Spring Break

M Mar 6	Work with slavery database.	Topic: A comparative look at the British Caribbean.
W Mar 8	Read *Anthony Benezet, “Observations on the inslaving . . . of Negroes” (1760), and “Notes on the Slave Trade” (1781), in Basker, ed., Early American Abolitionists, 1-29.	Topic: Emergence of antislavery voices.
F Mar 10	Finish Slavery database project.	Slavery Database Project Due

The first British Empire and the Anglo-American crisis

M Mar 13	Read Wood, ix and 3-42.	Topic: The Great Awakening and the shaping of American culture.
W Mar 15	Read *+Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, part II, chap. 6 and Part IV, chaps. 5-7; Fischer, 805-28.	Topics: English politics and Anglo-American relations; and “the marketplace of revolution.”
F Mar 17	Read Wood, 43-92.	Film: “The War that Made America.”
M Mar 20	Read *Anderson, “Why did Colonial New Englanders Make such Bad Soldiers?” in William & Mary Quarterly, 3^rd series 38 (July 1981), 395-417.	Discuss Anderson; more of film “The War that Made America.”
W Mar 22	Read Wood, 95-145	Discussion of Wood thus far.
F Mar 24	Read Wood, 145-89.	Topic: The course of conflict, 1765-1775.
M Mar 27	Read *Dror Wahrman, “The English Problem of Identity in the American Revolution,” AHR 106 (Oct. 2001), 1236-62.	Discussion of Wahrman.
W Mar 29	Read Wood, 189-212.	Topic: What role for religion in the Revolution?
F Mar 31	Read Wood, 213-25.	Discussion of Wood.

A revolutionary legacy

M Apr 3	Read Wood, 229-70.	Topic: The Confederation period—united states?
W Apr 5	Read *+Lipset, Continental Divide, 1-18, 42-56; skim for main points 19-41.	Discussion of Wood, Lipset, and emergent Canadian identity.
F Apr 7	Read *+Murrin, “A Roof without Walls,” in Beyond Confederation, Beeman, et al., eds., pp. 333-48.	Topic: U.S. Constitutional debate and the antifederalists.
M Apr 10	Read, Fischer, 828-34; begin reading Wood, 270-369.	Topic: Constitution—economic and ethno-cultural interpretations.
W Apr 12	Finish Wood, 270-369; Fischer, 897-98.	Discussion of day’s reading: What is the revolutionary legacy?

Friday, April 14: Good Friday; Monday, April 17: Reading Day

Final Exam: Tuesday, April 18, 1:00 pm.