Early America to 1783

4.0 credits

This course examines European expansion into the Americas from Columbuss first voyage through the end of the American Revolution. Throughout, we will consider the making of a multi-national and multi-ethnic Atlantic world including Africa, Europe, and America as a broader context for situating the development of colonial British America and the infant United States. The course surveys the expansion of different European empires into the Americas, comparatively profiles Anglo-Indian contact, slavery and the emergence of African-American culture, gender, science, religion, and daily life within British America, and conclude by examining the political and ideological crises of the American Revolution and struggles within the new United States to forge a politically and culturally cohesive republic in the 1780s.