Lehrman American Studies Center

Introduction

A history of the Americas in the colonial period must wrestle with a wide-ranging, varied, and ultimately fascinating story. Although beginning with the Native Americans, the story must soon deal with colonists and colonizers from several European nations. Colonists then brought enslaved Africans to work their new holdings. These multicultural colonial settlements were also cross-cut by gendered dynamics. With such conditions in place, what did each group experience? What motivated them? What kind of world did they make together? Was this hybrid culture stable or unstable? What did it produce, either economically or culturally? How did it function within the larger world of the Atlantic basin? This class will seek to address these questions.

Earlier studies of colonial America presented it in several ways: as whiggishly preceding the American revolution and United States, as an exercise in intellectual history (searching, for instance, for the New England Mind), or as one of the roots of American exceptionalism. This class seeks to transcend those earlier oversights by drawing on the best of contemporary scholarship which places the colonies which later became the United States in the larger contexts of the European colonial endeavor and the Atlantic world. It will present students with a narrative of the colonial period that is multicultural, diverse, and dynamic. It describes the possibilities presented in the colonial period and the directions chosen by (or forced upon) colonial figures. In so doing, it will attempt to comprehend the evolutionary course of several centuries of colonial endeavors in the "New" World.

Course Objectives

• To provide students with a narrative of colonial America.
• To describe the colonial experience as a multicultural story, an on-going cultural contact and exchange between Native Americans, Europeans, and enslaved Africans.
• To understand the creole/hybrid cultures which resulted from such exchanges.
• To introduce students to several of the historiographic debates and trends relating to the colonial period.
• To educate students in the value and use of primary source documents.
• To develop students' analytic, communication, and writing skills through several writing assignments.

Required and optional texts

Students should purchase these texts for the class:

Francis Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, 2nd Edition (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995).

Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, Louis Masur, ed. (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's Press, 2003).

Karen Kupperman, ed. Major Problems in American Colonial History, 2nd edition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000).

Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (NY: W.W. Norton, 2003).

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

Alan Taylor, American Colonies (NY: Penguin, 2001).

Assignments

Paper #1, Book Review: At the beginning of the semester, students will sign up for a book on which they will write a book review of approximately 3-4 pages (1000 words). Each book is connected to a course topic. Students will make a 5-minute presentation on the day for which the book is appropriate. The review is due in class on the day it is discussed.

Paper #2: Students will use the class readings to answer one of several questions posed by the instructor in a 4-6 page paper. Due at the beginning of the 5th week of class.

Paper #3: Over the course of the semester, students will identify a source base, develop a research topic in cooperation with the professor, and write an 8-10 page paper involving primary research. A paper topic and 1-page description will be due in the 8th week of class. The final paper will be due the final week of class. Within reason, I will read rough drafts of this paper.

Exams: Students will sit for both a midterm and a final exam. Exams will evaluate both the student's grasp of factual material and ability to use the readings to craft an interpretation.

Quizzes: The professor reserves the right to give either announced or unannounced quizzes over the readings for any given class. Quiz grades will factor into the class participation grade.

Class Participation: Discussion will be encouraged throughout the class. Students should be ready both to ask, and to answer, questions, as well as engage with their fellow students.

Course Schedule

Week 1

1. Course Introduction

2. Native Americans before Contact

• Taylor, 3-22
• Richter, 1-10
• Kupperman, 28-39

Week 2

3. Europe on the Eve of Contact

• Taylor, 24-49
• Alfred Crosby, "Ecological Imperialism: The Overseas Migration of Western Europeans as a Biological Phenomenon." The Texas Quarterly 21 (1978): 103-107.

Additional Primary Source: Richard Hakluyt (selections)

4. New Spain

• Taylor, 50-66
• Richter, 11-40

Additional Primary Sources: Columbus, de La Casas

Week 3

5. The Spanish Frontier

• Taylor, 67-90
• Kupperman, 153-165

Book Review, Ramon Gutierrez, When Jesus Came the Corn Mothers Went Away (1991)

6. Canada and Iroquoia

• Taylor, 91-113
• Peter Moogk, "Reluctant Exiles: The Problem of Colonization in French North America," William and Mary Quarterly 46 (1989): 463-505.
• Richter, 41-68, 79-90

Additional Primary Source: The Jesuit Relations (selections)

Book Review: Richard White, The Middle Ground (1991)

Week 4

7. Virginia

• Richter, 69-79
• Morgan, 1-130
• Optional: Taylor, 117-137

8. Chesapeake Colonies

• Morgan, 131-292
• Taylor, 138-157
• Kupperman, 58-86

Additional Primary Source: The Lords Baltimore (selections)

Book Review: James Horn, Adapting to a New World (1994)

Week 5

9. Slavery I

• Paper #2 Due
• Morgan, 293-337
• Optional: Morgan, 338-388

Book Review: Anthony Parent, Foul Means (2002)

10. New England, 1600-1650 (Puritanism)

• Bremer, 1-120
• Kupperman, 88-98
• Optional: Taylor, 158-186

Additional Primary Sources: John Winthrop, "A Modell of Christian Charity," John Winthrop, "A Little Speech on Liberty," John Cotton, "Letter to Lords Say and Sele"

Book Reviews: Virginia D. Anderson, New England's Generation (1991) OR Harry Stout, The New England Soul (1986)

Week 6

11. New England, 1650-1700

• Bremer, 121-198
• Kupperman, 127-135

Book Review: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed (1974) OR Mary Beth Norton, In the Devil's Snare (2002)

12. Puritans and Indians

• Taylor, 187-203
• Bremer, 199-208
• Richter, 90-109, 110-129
• Kupperman, 120-124

Additional Primary Source: Mary Rowlandson (selections)

Book Review: Jill Lepore, The Name of War (1998)

Week 7

13. Mid-term Exam

14. The West Indies

• Taylor , 204-221
• Kupperman, 222-235

Week 8

15. The Carolinas

• Taylor, 222-244
• H. Roy Merrens and George D. Terry, "Dying in Paradise: Perception and Reality in Colonial South Carolina," Journal of Southern History 50 (1986): 533-550
• Kupperman, 256-267

Additional Primary Source: John Locke, Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina

Book Review: Peter Wood, Black Majority (1975)

16. Slavery II

• Paper #3 Topic Due

Book Review: Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone (1998)

Week 9

17. New Netherland and New York

• Taylor, 245-263
• Richter, 129-150
• Kupperman, 181-190

Book Review: Patricia Bonomi, A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York (1971)

18. Pennsylvania

• Taylor, 264-272
• Barry Levy, "Tender Plants: Quaker Farmers and Children in the Delaware Valley, 1681-1735," Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 116-135.
• Kupperman, 190-203

Additional Primary Source: William Penn, writings

Week 10

19. American Political Evolution

• Bernard Bailyn, The Origins of American Politics, selections

Book Review: Patricia Bonomi, The Lord Cornbury Scandal (1998)

20. The Atlantic World

• Taylor, 276-336
• Kupperman, 366-379

Book Review: Bernard Bailyn, Atlantic History: Concept and Contours (2005)

Week 11

21. Indians in the 18th century

• Richter, 151-188
• James Merrell, "The Indians' New World: The Catawba Experience," William and Mary Quarterly 41 (1984): 537-565.

Book Review: James Merrell, Into the American Woods (1999)

22. Gender in Colonization

• Kathleen Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, Anxious Patriarchs, 1-13, 42-104

Book Review: Laurel Ulrich, Good Wives (1982)

Week 12

23. Colonial Society and Culture I: Consumer Goods and Sites of Culture

• Kathleen Brown, 283-318
• T.H. Breen, "An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776," Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 467-499.
• Kupperman, 436-450

24. Colonial Society and Culture II: The Enlightenment in America

• Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, all

Book Review: David Shields, Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America (1997)

Week 13

25. Great Awakenings I: The Experience

• Bremer, 209-233
• Michael Crawford, ed., "The Spiritual Travels of Nathan Cole," William and Mary Quarterly 33 (1976): 89-126.
• Optional: Taylor, 338-362

Additional Primary Sources: George Whitefield, "Come, Poor, Lost Undone Sinner," Jonathan Edwards, "A Divine and Supernatural Light" and "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God"

Book Review: Harry Stout, The Divine Dramatist (1991)

26. Great Awakenings II: The Debate

• Jon Butler, "Enthusiasm Described and Decried: The Great Awakening as Interpretative Fiction," Journal of American History 69 (1982): 305-325.
• Frank Lambert, " The First Great Awakening: Whose Interpretive Fiction?" The New England Quarterly 68 (1995): 650-659.
• George Marsden, Jonathan Edwards: A Life (2003), selections

Book Review: Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith (1990) OR Thomas Kidd, The Great Awakening (2007)

Week 14

27. French America and the Great Plains

• Taylor, 364-419

28. Imperial Wars and Crisis

• Richter, 189-236
• Taylor, 420-443

Book Review: Gregory Dowd, War under Heaven (2002) OR Ian K. Steele, Betrayals (1990)

Week 15

29. Remembering Colonial America

• Paper #3 Due
• Clips from Disney's Pocahontas (1995), The New World (2005), Blackrobe (1991)
• Plimouth Plantation http://www.plimothplantation.com

30. Conclusions