Slavery and Empire in the United States

Between the American Revolution and the Civil War, the United States grew into the largest slaveholding society in the modern world. This course focuses upon this history to examine the centrality of slavery and empire in the making of the United States. Crucial to the formation of racial capitalism, U.S. slavery’s growth was driven forward by unprecedented economic transformation and territorial conquest. This slavery-based expansion was defined by settler warfare that remade the United States into a vast, continental empire. Yet, in the face of unprecedented violence, enslaved people themselves brought about the end of slavery. Through an examination of this history and its legacies, the course will also introduce a range of sources documenting histories of resistance and subversion.