The Romish Empire? British and Irish Catholic Imperialists in the Early Modern Atlantic

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course uses artefacts and English translations of multilingual archives to introduce students to recusant British and Irish Catholic imperialism in the early modern Americas c. 1500-1776. Though the course focuses on Catholic imperialists from the British Isles students will explore the lives of these imperialists within the context of the concurrent phenomena of the European Reformation, transatlantic conquest and the Atlantic Slave Trade. Students will be challenged to assess how these phenomena led to the development of divergent constructions of race and ethnicity and ideas of "legitimate" enslavement as Catholic and Protestant European nations competed to control the Atlantic. Students will be asked to consider whether British and Irish Catholics developed a unique form of imperialism as a result of their crossing of religious and political boundaries in Europe. Importantly, students will also learn about the myriad ways that free and enslaved indigenous Americans, African-Americans/Afro-Caribbean and Black British and Irish people resisted this oppression whether or not they adopted Catholicism. Students will better understand that this resistance was at times individual and at others collective and that the resistance was levied both within and outside of colonial structures imposed on Black British and Irish people, African-Americans/Afro-Caribbean people and indigenous Americans. This is a "culturally-relevant" course, which is outward-facing, partnering with the Catholic Association for Racial Justice (CARJ) and students will be asked to translate the content of the course into a digital teaching tool for UK primary or secondary school children.