This course provides an introduction to the study of early North American history, with emphasis on the history of the United States through the Civil War era. We will explore the economic, social, cultural, and political changes in North America from the pre-European contact period through American independence, the early national period, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. Our primary goal is to conduct a thoroughly comparative study as we examine the sequence of events that partly transformed Indigenous America into the United States, Mexico, and Canada. We will also explore the roles and experiences of multiple peoples–Indigenous, African, and European–who shaped those events and remade the continent into a world of complex cultural exchanges, interdependent sovereigns, new republics, and plural American identities.
Drawing on a mix of primary sources and secondary literature, we will discover new ways of understanding the logics of conquest, the growth of new societies, and the various forms of resistance and adaptation people adopted to oppose colonialism and imperialism and assert their own visions of the settlement and resettlement of the continent. Throughout the course, we will focus on the central themes of capitalism, labor, social identity, and law and how these historical forces carry on into the present.
Drawing on a mix of primary sources and secondary literature, we will discover new ways of understanding the logics of conquest, the growth of new societies, and the various forms of resistance and adaptation people adopted to oppose colonialism and imperialism and assert their own visions of the settlement and resettlement of the continent. Throughout the course, we will focus on the central themes of capitalism, labor, social identity, and law and how these historical forces carry on into the present.
- Teacher: Nancy Gallman