Welcome to History 117: America to 1848

Here's my first stab at teaching a survey class. I'm not using a textbook, although I've made one available as a security blanket for students who want one. I've formatted it so that I lecture at least twice a week, there are seven classes dedicated exclusively to discussion, and in my own planning I've built in some flexible time for discussion of relevant primary sources. Wish me luck!

HIST 117 America to 1848
E Pluribus Unum? In Uno Plures?

E Pluribus Unum (out of many, one) is the motto of the United States, but in some ways In Uno Plures (many in one) is a subtly different yet perhaps more accurate rendering of American history and of the American people. Students will consider the appropriateness of each phrase while learning how historians think about important questions and major themes in American history. This course examines the America’s colonial beginnings, the founding of the nation we now call the United States, and the early years of the Republic, as the United States sought to expand and cover the entire continent. The course will conclude at the end of the war between the United States and Mexico, and consider what it meant to be an American in 1848.

Grading:

1st Short Paper…………………..10%
2nd Short Paper………………….10%
3rd Short Paper…………………..20%
Occasional quizzes……………...20%
Midterm………………………...15%
Final Exam……………………..25%

The first short paper will deal with the first two primary sources we read for the class (Cabeza de Vaca and William Bradford). The second paper will be a book review of either The Unredeemed Captive or Pox Americana. The third paper will involve your analysis of a portion of the online documents collection America’s Historical Newspapers. You will receive more detailed assignments for each paper later.

You’ll see in the syllabus that seven times in the semester we have a class period especially dedicated to “discussion.” In these sessions, you will be asked to participate in an in-depth analysis of our readings. Please come prepared: this means you must not only finish the reading but also spend some time thinking about it. Come to class ready to ask questions and make arguments!

The occasional quizzes will be unscheduled. They will cover your reading. Thus it is a good idea to make sure you stay on top of each week’s readings, even if we don’t have a discussion scheduled for that week.

Required Readings:
∑ Alvar Nuñez Cabeva de Vaca, Castaways (California, 1993)
∑ William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation (McGraw-Hill, 1981)
∑ John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive (Vintage, 1995)
∑ Elizabeth Fenn, Pox Americana (Hill and Wang, 2001)
∑ Adam Rothman, Slave Country (Harvard, 2005)
∑ Elliott West, The Contested Plains (Kansas, 1998)

A copy of each of these books is available on reserve, or you may purchase them in our bookstore (or online if you prefer—be sure you get the right editions). I will also be handing out various primary sources in class. Make sure you keep these—I suspect some might turn up on exams. J You’ve probably noticed that I don’t use a textbook. I generally think textbooks are a huge waste of students’ money, so I don’t assign them. However, I have put a standard American history textbook on reserve at the library. If you feel like you need a refresher course on names, dates, places, facts, and figures, feel free to check it out. Nothing from the textbook will be discussed in class or on exams.

Expectations:

You will note that there is no percentage for participation. This does not mean, however, that your presence in class and active involvement in our discussions is not expected. Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick, or if you have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments or on the final paper.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Week 1: Reading, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, xv-xxx, 1-45
Monday August 27: Introduction
Wednesday August 29: Native North America
Friday August 31: The Columbian Exchange

Week 2: Reading, Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, 47-127.
Monday September 3: Labor Day (No Class)
Wednesday September 5: Settling North America
Friday September 7: Discussion: Castaways

Week 3: Reading, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, chapters 9-15, 27-32.
Monday September 10: English North America
Wednesday September 12: Tobacco and Furs
Friday September 14: Discussion: Of Plymouth Plantation

Week 4: Reading, John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 1-166.
Monday September 17: From Servitude to Slavery, part I
First short essay due by the beginning of class, Monday 17 September
Wednesday September 19: From Servitude to Slavery, part II
Friday September 21: Essay discussion

Week 5: Reading, John Demos, The Unredeemed Captive, 167-252.
Monday September 24: Imperial Clashes
Wednesday September 26: The Seven Years’ War (1754-1763)
Friday September 28: Discussion: The Unredeemed Captive

Week 6: Reading, Fenn, Pox Americana, ix-166.
Monday October 1: Frustrated Empire
Wednesday October 3: Independence and War
Friday October 5: What Independence Meant

Week 7: Reading, Fenn, Pox Americana, 167-277.
Monday October 8: Republic
Wednesday October 10: Discussion: Pox Americana
Friday October 12: MIDTERM EXAM (Dr. Goetz in Nova Scotia)

Week 8: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, ix-70.
Monday, October 15: Midterm Recess (no class)
Wednesday October 17: Of Factions
Friday October 19: Another Revolution? The United States in 1800

Week 9: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, 71-163.
Monday October 22: Jefferson’s America
Wednesday October 24: The War of 1812
Friday October 26: The Cotton Frontier and the Old South

Week 10: Reading, Rothman, Slave Country, 164-224.
Monday October 28: Discussion: Slave Country
Wednesday October 30: No Class (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
Friday November 1: No Class (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
Second Short Essay due to the History Office by 4pm, Friday, November 1

Week 11: Reading, Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, pages TBA.
Monday November 4: Jackson’s America
Wedneday November 6: From Awakening to Reform
Friday November 8: Discussion: Democracy in America

Week 12: Reading, West. The Contested Plains, xv-xxiv, 1-62.
Monday November 11: Jackson and Removal
Wednesday November 13: Urban America
Friday November 15: Immigrant America

Week 13: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, 63-170.
Monday November 18: Industrializing America
Wednesday November 20: Slavery and Freedom
Friday November 22: No Class (Thanksgiving)

Week 14: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, 171-271.
Monday November 26: A Texas Revolution, and Statehood
Wednesday November 28: War with Mexico
Friday November 30: The Great Plains, Gold, and Indians

Week 15: Reading, West, The Contested Plains, finish.
Monday December 3: Discussion, The Contested Plains
Wednesday December 5: America in 1848: E Pluribus Unum? In Uno Plures?
Friday December 7: Conclusions, and final exam information.
Third Short Essay due at the beginning of class, Friday, December 7

Welcome to History 465!

I'm really excited about this syllabus. I think Jamestown and all the historical issues surrounding it are fascinating, and I'm looking forward to exploring them with students.

History 465: From Roanoke to Jamestown: English Colonization of North America, 1550-1650

The first English settlements in North America—at Roanoke in the 1580s and in Jamestown starting in 1607—are the stuff of myth. Who hasn’t heard of the Lost Colonists of Roanoke, the triumphal settling of Jamestown, and Pocahontas saving John Smith from a grisly execution? The trouble with myths, though, is that they usually ignore or distort historical evidence, and they obscure the actual experiences of the people involved in iconic events. In this course, we’ll read many original sources as well as historians’ interpretations of them in order 1) to rethink those myths, and 2) to answer important questions about English ideologies of colonization. We’ll also think about how we should understand Indian responses to the English invasion, and how Jamestown should be commemorated. Overall, this course will be governed by two overriding questions: what happened at Jamestown? And, why does Jamestown matter?

Required Readings:
∑ Karen Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 2nd ed. (2006)
∑ Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Britannia (1590)
∑ James Horn, A Land as God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America (2005)
∑ Rountree, Powhatan, Pocahontas, Opechancanough: Three Lives Changed by Jamestown (2006)
∑ Edward Wright Haile, ed., Jamestown Narratives: Eyewitness Accounts of the Virginia Colony (1998)

Grading:
1st short writing assignment…………..10%
2nd short writing assignment………….20%
Proposal and presentation…………….10%
Final writing assignment……………...40%
Participation…………………………..20%

Please note the meaning of “participation” is not showing up to class and sitting like a lump on a log. Your presence in class requires active involvement in our discussions: asking questions of the readings, commenting on readings, and responding to your classmates’ ideas. Your participation grade also includes the class session in which you lead our discussion (we’ll talk more about that as soon as enrollment is stabilized).

A note on absences: Many aspects of your work rely on collaboration with your classmates, and so unexcused absences harm everyone in the class, not just yourself. I take attendance at each class; after three unexcused absences your final grade, based on the percentages listed above, will fall by one letter grade. Your grade will fall by another letter grade for each unexcused absence after the third. That means even the perfect A student will fail the course after six absences. So, the moral of the story is…come to class!

If you are sick or have a personal emergency that requires your absence from class, please provide the appropriate documentation and I will excuse you. You may come to office hours or make an appointment with me to discuss material you missed.

The two short writing assignments will be 3-5 pages in length, and will respond to visual materials we discuss in class. The final writing assignment, for which you will also write a short proposal and give a short presentation in class, will be on a topic of your choosing and will be 12-15 pages in length. We’ll discuss that in greater detail later in the semester.

I will NOT accept late papers. Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date (unless otherwise noted)…not halfway through the class, not at the end of class, not slipped under my office door sometime after the start of class. Only illness and personal emergency are suitable excuses for turning in a paper late with no penalty. Papers turned in late without verification of illness or personal emergency will receive a grade of ZERO.

If you are traveling on the day a paper is due for an athletic event or other college event, you must make arrangements with me to turn in your paper before you leave. I do not accept emailed papers (as we all know, attachments sometimes get lost—there is no substitute for a hard copy!).

All assignments in this course are covered by the honor code. You may NOT work together on writing assignments UNLESS OTHERWISE NOTED.

Any student with a documented disability needing academic adjustments or accommodations must speak with me during the first two weeks of class. All discussions will remain confidential. Students with disabilities should also contact Disabled Student Services in the Ley Student Center.

Tsenacommacah and its Environs, 1550
Tuesday August 28 Introduction and syllabus
Thursday August 31:
∑ Helen Tanner, “The Land and Water Communication Systems of the Southeastern Indians” in Waselkov, Wood, and Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle, 27-42 (on reserve).
∑ John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries, 17-35 (on reserve).

Ajacán, 1567-1571
Tuesday September 4:
∑ Lewis and Loomie, Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 3-64 (on reserve).
∑ Letters of Quirós, Segura, and Rogel in Lewis and Loomie, Spanish Jesuit Mission in Virginia, 85-122 (on reserve).

London, 1584
Thursday September 6
∑ Richard Hakluyt, Discourse on Western Planting (1584) (on reserve).
Everyone will read the introduction (xv-xxxi); we will divvy up the other 21 chapters for discussion.

Virginia, 1585-1589
Tuesday September 11
∑ Hakluyt, Discourse of Western Planting, conclude.
∑ Kupperman, Roanoke: The Abandoned Colony, 1-85.
Thursday September 13:
∑ Thomas Hariot, A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia Britannia (1590), read the English version and examine the engravings.
∑ Kupperman, Roanoke, 87-178.
Tuesday September 18:
∑ Hariot, A Briefe and True Report, conclude.
∑ Kim Sloan, A New World, 51-64. Look carefully at the watercolors, 93-147 (on reserve).
Thursday September 20: Why did Roanoke matter?
First Short Writing Assignment due

Jamestown, 1607
Tuesday September 25
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 1-72.
∑ Gabriel Archer, “A Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 101-123.
∑ George Percy, “Observations Gathered out of a Discourse,” in Jamestown Narratives, 85-100.
Evening movie: Nightmare at Jamestown
Thursday September 27
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 73-130.
Tuesday October 2
∑ John Smith, “A True Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 142-182.
∑ Carville Earle, “Environment, Disease, and Mortality in Early Virginia,” in Tate and Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the Seventeenth Century, 96-125 (on reserve).

A Kindler, Gentler Colonialism? Jamestown, 1608-1609
Thursday October 4
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 131-156.
∑ William Strachey, A Historie of Travail into Verginia Britannia (1610), in Jamestown Narratives, 563-689. (We’ll divide this one by chapter.)

The First Anglo-Powhatan War, 1609-1614
Tuesday October 9:
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 157-224.
∑ J. Frederick Fausz, “ ‘An Abundance of Blood Shed on Both Sides:’ Virginia’s First Indian War, 1609-1614” VMHB 98 (1990), 3-56. (on reserve)
∑ George Percy, “A True Relation,” in Jamestown Narratives, 497-519.
∑ Thomas Dale, “Lawes Divine, Morall, and Martiall, in Jamestown Narratives, 27-37.

Tsenacommacah, 1607-1614
Thursday October 11: (Dr. Goetz in Nova Scotia)
∑ Watch Pocahontas Revealed.
∑ Horn, A Land as God Made It, 225-290.
∑ John Rolfe, “The Pocahontas Letter,” in Jamestown Narratives, 850-856.
Tuesday October 16: No Class, Fall Recess
Thursday October 18:
∑ Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough: Three Lives Changed by Jamestown, xi-175.
Second short writing assignment due

Détente, 1614-1618
Tuesday October 23:
∑ Rountree, Pocahontas, Powhatan, Opechancanough, 175-238.
∑ Karen Robertson, “Pocahontas at the Masque” in Signs (Spring 1996), 551-583 (JSTOR).

The Tobacco Revolution: Englishmen at Jamestown, 1614-1622
Thursday October 25:
∑ The Letters of Richard Frethorne (handout in class)
∑ Emily Rose, “The Politics of Pathos: Richard Frethorne’s Letters Home” in Appelbaum and Sweet, eds., Envisioning an English Empire, 92-108 (on reserve).
∑ Peter C. Mancall, “Tales Tobacco Told in Sixteenth-Century Europe” Environmental History vol. 9, no. 4 (via History Cooperative).
Tuesday October 30
∑ Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 108-195 (on reserve).
∑ Engel Sluiter, “New Light on the ‘20.Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia, August 1619” WMQ vol. 54, no. 2 (1997), 395-398 (JSTOR).
∑ John Thornton, “The African Experience of the ’20. And Odd Negroes’ Arriving in Virginia in 1619” WMQ vol. 55, no. 3 (1998), 421-434 (JSTOR).

The Second Anglo-Powhatan War, 1622-1644
Thursday November 1 (Dr. Goetz in Richmond, VA)
∑ Watch documentary on Martin’s Hundred
∑ Edward Waterhouse, “A Declaration of the State of the Colony…” (London, 1622) (EEBO).
∑ “Chauco,” in the Dictionary of Virginia Biography (handout).
Tuesday November 6
∑ Ian K. Steele, Warpaths, pages TBA (on reserve).
∑ Letter of William C. Capp, Records of the Virginia Company of London (handout).

Life in Tobacco Virginia, 1625-1660
Thursday November 8—Professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich!
Tuesday November 13
∑ Selections from Hening’s Statutes (handout).
∑ The Case of Alice Boyse (handout).

Towards an English Tidewater, 1644-1660
Thursday November 15
∑ McCartney, “Cockacoeske, Queen of Pamunkey: Diplomat and Suzeraine” in Waselkov, Wood, and Hatley, eds., Powhatan’s Mantle, 243-266 (on reserve).
Tuesday November 21: final project presentations
Thursday November 23—No Class THANKSGIVING RECESS

What Happened at Jamestown? Why does Jamestown Matter?
Tuesday November 27
∑ John Smith, The Generall Historie, in Jamestown Narratives, pages TBA.
∑ Robert Beverley, A History and Present State of Virginia (handout).
Thursday November 29
∑ Rasmussen and Tilton, Pocahontas: Her Life and Legend, entire (on reserve).
∑ Pocahontas plate
∑ Custalow Linwood, The True Story of Pocahontas, pages TBA (on reserve).
∑ Fahrenthold, “A Dead Indian Language is Brought Back to Life” (handout).
Tuesday December 4
∑ Explore the Jamestown 2007 website: http://www.jamestown2007.org/
∑ Watch the ad (URL tba).

The New World, The Movie
Thursday December 6: food, movie, discussion.

The Unanimous Declaration of the Thirteen United States of America

Read it here.

Pay special attention to the list of the King's many tyrannies. Anything sound familiar?

Also, for your Independence Day reading pleasure: Bill Fowler's Boston Globe column "Lives Lost for Freedom." It contains a description of the suffering of Revolutionary War soldiers, and a lovely quote from Washington's Newburgh Address (which prevented the onset of a military coup against Congress in 1783).

Help from the War Historian

Last fall, I taught a course on the American Revolution. Now I know aspects of the Revolution very well; I've read extensively in issues leading up to the Revolution, in great debates regarding the intellectual origins of the Revolution, in social issues and outcomes of the Revolution, in constitutional issues before, during, and after the Revolution, in the role of slavery, slaves, and free blacks in the Revolution, the participation of Indians on both sides of the conflict, the role of women, the Revolution's Atlantic aspects, and its effects on France, Haiti, and Spanish America. So, I know a lot about the Revolution.

But of course the Revolution was also a war. You'll note that my areas of expertise on the Revolution don't include the war. So, I found myself reading up. I ended up assigning the memoirs of Joseph Plumb Martin as well as the relevant chapters in Middlekauf's The Glorious Cause--the former I intended as a look at the experiences of an ordinary soldier and the latter as a detailed discussion of various campaigns and battles. It was difficult, to say the least, and I had some students who styled themselves experts on military history (these guys knew things like thesizes of guns and the types of uniforms). So I finally had to email the good Professor Grimsley and ask about some of the details.

This led to a dialogue on why professional historians seem to know so little military history. I suggested to Professor Grimsley that I wasn't 1) willfully ignorant, or 2) hostile towards military history. My own training is in social and cultural history, with a generous dab of intellectual and political history. Military history just never came up in my graduate training and now that I'm teaching, military history hangs around my neck like an albatross.

Professor Grimsley has now asked me some questions about how a trained historian who is largely unfamiliar with problems and issues in military history might learn:

1. In what courses would you use military history?

I can think of three courses in which I need to use military history.

The first, as Mark notes, is a gimmee: the U.S. history survey. I'm teaching America to 1848 this fall, and I'm planning a lecture on warfare in colonial North America (in all its Anglo-Indian, Anglo-French permutations, but also as an introduction to militia cultures in Anglo-America), a lecture on the Revolution (which necessarily must be only one lecture), and then two hypothetical lectures (one of which might have to be cut because of time constraints): one on warfare against Indians from 1800-c. 1850, to complement discussion on removal, and another on the Mexican War.

The second course is, of course, the American Revolution. I usually dedicate 9 class hours (about three weeks) to the war. I need to overhaul what I did last time and probably change out the readings. (I hate to lose Joseph Plumb Martin, but I might have to.)

The third is my graduate readings course called "Readings in North American History, 1500-1800." I would love to incorporate some readings on military history for that period. If I can get my students more comfortable with some of the themes in early American history, they might not be as at sea when they start teaching as I am now.


2. What is the optimum way to learn the material?

This is a little less clear to me. I think the best way is almost certainly seminar-style, with in-depth readings and discussions that leave the participant ready to continue teaching herself. This is how I learned to learn in graduate school, and I think a week or two would be a great way to introduce neophytes to military history. What if you started something like an NEH seminar in the summer, geared towards trained historians with little or no military history background? I would be happy to read extensively in American military history (not just for the early period but for the whole shebang)--and heck, anyone who can explain to me why the Jamestown settlers had caltrops would be most welcome. :) From this kind of intensive introduction I would be comfortable branching out on my own.


3. What would you like to take away from exposure to military history?

This is indeed unknown territory for me, but like most academics, I hate not knowing about something. I realize one can't possibly learn it all, but I would like to have enough expertise to teach comfortably. I'd like to be able to answer the questions students are most likely to ask about military history. I hope that makes sense--I'd like to be conversant though not an expert. I don't expect to do research in military history (I've got a complicated research agenda already!).

Over to you, Mark!

A good baptism story

I was paging though Bishop Meade's remarkable and remarkably annoying two-volume antiquarian account of the Church of England in Virginia this afternoon when I came across this story in a footnote. Bishop Meade sets the scene by briefly describing a raid on Indians in Maryland led by Captain Giles Brent in 1675 in retaliation for the gory murder of an English settler on the frontier. A young boy, possibly the son of a chief, was captured.

"Of him a circumstance is related, showing that there was not only religion in those days, but superstition also. The boy lying in bed for ten days, as one dead, his eyes and mouth shut but his body warm, Captain Brent, who was a Papist, said that he was bewitched, and that he had heaerd baptism was a remedy for it, and proposed the trial. Colonel Mason answered that there was not minister in many miles. Captain Brent replied, 'Your clerk, Mr. Dobson, may do that office;' which was accordingly done by the Church of England Liturgy. Colonel Mason and Captain Brent stood godfathers, and Mrs. Mason godmother. The end of the story is, that the child, being eight years old, soon recovered."*

Now I've collected all sorts of documents about Maryland's Catholics, England's Protestants, and the Indians (with a few Quakers mixed in) in the years between the Restoration and the Glorious Revolution. It was a dangerous time for Protestants, who were besieged by heretics and heathens on all sides (or so they thought) and the end result was often forays into Maryland by rogue militia captains from Virginia to attack Catholics, Quakers, Indians, or anyone suspected of being Catholic, Quaker, or Indian. Maryland protested, and Virginia sometimes apologized. But this episode is one I've never run into: it's remarkably detailed, especially in terms of the liturgy used and the presence of godparents, and it seems to affirm a continuing belief among English Catholics and Anglicans on the efficacy of baptism as an exorcism. I would love to know more, and to read the actual source without Bishop Meade's commentary attached, but alas, like most nineteenth-century antiquarians, he does not indicate his source. How frustrating! I can affirm that it appeared in no county court records, and it isn't in the Calendar of State Papers. There are some official Virginia records that might contain this anecdote, but my real fear is that it is in Maryland's records, in which case finding it will become more difficult.

Incidentally, Captain Giles Brent was the son of Mary Kittomaquund, the daughter of the "Tayac of Maryland" (probably a Piscataway chief), who was baptized a Catholic in the 1630s and married off to the senior Giles Brent at the age of eleven or twelve, after the death of her parents. The Brent clan probably hoped to gain title to Piscataway-held lands by virtue of the marriage. She had at least two children before her death. I've written about her before, here.

* William Meade, Old Churches, Ministers, and Families of Virginia, 2 vols (Richmond, 1857; reprint 1992), I, 93.

Jamestown: a "positive" contribution from the South?

While munching on pumpkin bread and apple pie and reading the Houston Chronicle over breakfast on Saturday, a Letter to the Editor caught my eye. I enjoy reading Letters to the Editor; sometimes people write the darndest things. On this bright post-Thanksgiving, a letter writer wrote one of the more puzzling screeds about the "first" Thanksgiving, the founding of Jamestown, and the place of "the South" in history I've ever read. It begins as a lament that so few Americans today know the country's history (a lament I happen to share), and then ends in a lament for the lost positive contributions of the South to that history (a lament I, ah, do not happen to share).

Here's the letter:

The Chronicle's Nov. 23 article "Think you know what happened at first Thanksgiving? Well, think again" was correct to state that most Americans think they know the "story of Thanksgiving ... and most would be wrong."

How many people today even remember or know about the Jamestown Colony, which was here in 1607, 13 years before the Pilgrims?

This is just another example of the rewriting of American history to downplay or to eliminate anything positive from the South.

(The original article is a fairly innocuous fluff piece about what the Pilgrims and their Indian neighbors actually ate at the "first Thanksgiving" and also points out that there is no historical continuity between that event and today's Thanksgiving holiday.)

I'm not sure, though, that there's a connection between our collective lack of knowledge about the Plymouth colony and a lack of knowledge about the founding of Jamestown in 1607. Most American schoolchildren could probably tell you that there were English people at Jamestown in 1607. Most would probably also tell you something garbled and mythological about John Smith and Pocahontas. So I think there's a general awareness there of Jamestown, but probably not the kind of awareness professional historians would welcome.

It's that third paragraph that gets me: in it the letter writer implies that there has been an intentional rewriting (by persons unknown) of the historical record to supplant Jamestown with Plymouth, and in so doing, to discredit the "South."

Nothing could be further from the truth. There's a great deal of interest right now in Jamestown; the four hundredth anniversary of English settlement at Jamestown is next year and so a number of scholars are interested in reevaluating the event. We now know far more about tidewater Virginia's native people before and after settlement, more about the English who formed that little settlement, and more about the development of a slave-driven tobacco plantation culture in the Chesapeake than we did fifty years ago, the last time Jamestown celebrated an anniversary.

Now this issue of discrediting positive contributions from the "South:" the south as we understand it today did not exist in 1607. All of North America, was, in English eyes, "Virginia." In fact, Virginia-the-continent was the "North": that is, it was north of Spain's American possessions. The "south" as a geographical and cultural construct did not yet exist and would not for at least another 150 years.

Now, to the final claim: was Jamestown indeed a "positive" contribution to American history? I generally tend to stay away from blatant value judgments in historical thinking. Permanent English settlement in North America is a fact of life as we now know it; assigning a value to that is diificult and ahistorical. But I can say that the experience of permanent English settlement was not a positive one for the vast majority of people who participated in it--Indians, English, and Africans alike.

The English arrival in 1607 heralded the beginning of fifty years of intermittent Anglo-Indian warfare peppered by mutual violence of the most horrendous sort. For example, in an act of revenge for the death of an English captain named Ratcliffe, George Percy led a raid against the Paspahegh in November 1609. After burning the village's houses and fields, the English captured the Paspahegh werowansqua and her children. The English, Percy wrote, decided not to keep the children alive, pitching them out of their canoes and "shoteing owtt their Braynes in the water." The werowansqua they kept alive for a time, eventually deciding to stab her repeatedly with a sword instead of burning her at the stake. Captain Ratcliffe, in whose name this slaughter was carried out, was killed by a group of Powhatans (possibly Nansemonds) who executed him in Algonkian ritual fashion by scraping his flesh "from his bones with mussell shelles and before his face throwne into the fyer."

Of course, the gory deaths of many Powhatans and Englishmen are vastly outnumbered by deaths from starvation and disease. Settlement was hardly positive. It was dirty, brutal, and deadly, and on this legacy our country was built.

Welcome to History 566

At long last, I have finished my syllabus for the graduate readings seminar in early American history. I've titled it Readings in North American History, 1500-1800. While the course focuses most heavily on British North America, every week's readings contain some comparative material about Spanish and/or French North America. The readings contain material about the Caribbean as a matter of course. I've tried to incorporate recent historiographical developments that emphasize borderlands and comparative colonization in the early modern era. I hope it will also expose graduate students to developments in the prehistory and history of native North Americans and to recent reinterpretations of the history of slavery.

Students will read 14 books in their entirety, including Richard White's The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815,, which many people mentioned as a must-read for grad students (an assessment with which I heartily agree), and J.H. Elliott's 2006 masterpiece of synthetic history, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. Students will also read numerous book chapters, book parts, and articles. I've also listed helpful reference material to help students lacking background in early American history catch up.

I am deeply indebted to the many graduate readings seminar syllabi I have accumulated over the years; I borrowed topics, assignment ideas, and readings from many of them. I'll also note the Word does not transpose well into Blogger. Please bear with the formatting snafus.

Lastly, I invite the Weekly (sub)Standard to sneer. :)

Readings in North American History, 1500-1800

This graduate readings seminar introduces recent problems and questions as well as enduring issues in early American history. It is arranged both thematically and chronologically. Students will be expected to explore three key elements of early American historiography: chronology (the basic timeline and narrative of historical development), major events and turning points (periodization), and they will be expected to engage in critical analysis of the major works and themes in the field. By the end of the course you should be familiar with broad themes and interpretations in early American history, in preparation for oral exams, research in early American history, and teaching the first half of the standard American history survey.

If you feel you need a refresher course on background and basic chronology, you should consult Alan Taylor’s American Colonies (Viking, 2001) or D.W. Meinig’s The Shaping of America, vol. I (Yale, 1986). For a historiographical overview, you should read the relevant articles in Daniel Vickers, ed., A Companion to Colonial America (Blackwell, 2003). For the English background, you should consult the first two volumes of The Oxford History of the British Empire or Keith Wrightson’s English Society, 1580-1680 (London, 1982). For the Spanish in North America, see especially David Weber, The Spanish Frontier in North America (Yale, 1992). For the French in North America, see especially W.J. Eccles, The French in North America, 1500-1765 (Michigan State, 1998). These books are all on reserve at Fondren Library for you to consult.

Each student in the course will participate in weekly discussions, review one week’s readings, and write a historiographical essay, due at the end of the semester (in lieu of a final exam). All reading is required. Students should take notes on individual readings as well as make synthetic notes on each week’s topic as a whole. For the week you select to write a review of the readings, you must also submit (by 8pm on Sunday the evening before class) a set of concise questions for the seminar, distributed via email to me and to the whole class. Your review of one week’s readings will be 8-10 pages in length, and your final paper, on a topic of your choosing, will be 12-15 pages. You are expected to do substantial additional reading for the final paper; you will consult with me to formulate a topic and I will make recommendations for additional readings. A prospectus and annotated bibliography for the final paper is due on our final class meeting, Monday, 23 April 2007. The final paper is due to my office by 12 noon on Monday, 7 May 2007. No late papers will be accepted and no extensions will be granted (except in the case of severe illness or other personal emergency—any excuses must be accompanied by appropriate documentation).

Your grade will be based on active participation in class discussion (30%), the 8-10 page review and pre-circulated questions (30%), and the final paper (40%).

Books that are assigned in full are available for purchase at the bookstore. All books are also on reserve at Fondren Library. All assigned articles are online and available via JSTOR, History Cooperative, or Synergy.

Monday 8 January: Introductions
For our first class, please read the following short articles, and prepare a 3-5 page essay answering the question “Why study early American history?” This essay won’t be graded, but I will read it and return it with comments. As you read and write, you should also consider three key questions: what should be the geographical boundaries of early America? When should “early America” begin? And, who were the early Americans?
? James A. Hijiya, “Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 2 (April 1994), 276-292. (JSTOR)
? Michael McGiffert, et al., “Forum: Why the West is Lost” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 51, no. 4 (October 1994), 717-754. (JSTOR)
? Gordon S. Wood, “A Century of Writing Early American History: Then and Now Compared; Or, How Henry Adams Got It Wrong” American Historical Review vol. 100, no. 3 (June 1995), 678-696. (JSTOR)
? Philip Morgan, “Rethinking Early American Slavery,” and Gary B. Nash, “The Concept of Inevitability in the History of European-Indian Relations,” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (Dartmouth, 1999), 239-291. (on reserve)
? Joyce E. Chaplin, “Expansion and Exceptionalism in Early American History Journal of American History vol. 89, no.4 (March 2003), 1431-1456. (available via History Cooperative)

Monday 15 January: Native North America (MLK, Jr. Day—we’ll meet Wed.)
? Inga Clendinnen, Aztecs: An Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 2001), entire.
? Neal Salisbury, “The Indians’ Old World: Native Americans and the Coming of Europeans” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 53, no. 3 (July 1996), 435-458. (JSTOR)
? John F. Scarry, “The Late Prehistoric Southeast” in Hudson and Tesser, eds., The Forgotten Centuries: Indians and Europeans in the American South, 1521-1704 (University of Georgia Press, 1994), 17-35. (on reserve)
? Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (University of North Carolina, 1992), 1-49. (on reserve)

Monday 22 January: Encounters
? Karen Kupperman, Indians and English: Facing Off in Early America (Cornell, 2000), entire.
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830 (Yale, 2006), xiii-xx, 3-28, 57-87.
? Nicholas P. Canny, “The Ideology of English Colonization: From Ireland to America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 50, no. 3 (July 1973), 575-598. (JSTOR)
? Alfred W. Crosby, “Virgin Soil Epidemics as a Factor in the Aboriginal Depopulation in America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 33, no. 2 (April 1976), 289-299. (JSTOR)
? Joyce E. Chaplin, Subject Matter: Technology, the Body, and Science on the Anglo-American Frontier, 1500-1676 (Harvard, 2001), 1-3, 157-198. (on reserve)

Monday 29 January: Migration
? Bernard Bailyn, The Peopling of British North America: An Introduction (Vintage, 1986), entire.
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 29-56.
? Allan Greer, The People of New France (Toronto, 1997), 3-26. (on reserve)
? Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (Cambridge, 1991), ix-xvi, 1-93.
? Virginia DeJohn Anderson, “Migrants and Motives: Religion and the Settlement of New England, 1630-1640” New England Quarterly vol 58, no. 3 (September 1985), 339-383. (JSTOR)

Monday 5 February: Profit
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 88-116.
? Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder, and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480-1630 (Cambridge University Press, 1984), 1-40, 256-355. (on reserve)
? Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern (Verso, 1997), 127-184, 217-276. (on reserve)
? Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (W.W. Norton, 1975), 3-212. (on reserve)
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.

Monday 12 February: Politics, Authority, and Power
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 117-183.
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness: The Social Development of the Early Modern British Empire and the Formation of American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 1-100.
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 142-268.
? Gary B. Nash, “The Transformation of Urban Politics, 1700-1764” Journal of American History vol. 60, no. 3 (December 1973), 605-632. (JSTOR)
? Adrian Howe, “The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatizing Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 47, no.1 (January 1990), 57-89. (JSTOR)

Monday 19 February: Religion and Belief
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 184-218.
? Perry Miller, “Errand into the Wilderness” and “The Marrow of Puritan Divinity” in Errand into the Wilderness (Harvard, 1956), 1-16, 48-98. (on reserve)
? David Hall, “On Common Ground: The Coherence of American Puritan Studies” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 44, no. 2 (April 1987), 193-229. (JSTOR)
? Jon E. Sensbach, Rebecca’s Revival: Creating Black Christianity in the Atlantic World (Harvard, 2005), entire.
? Rhys Isaac, “Evangelical Revolt: The Nature of the Baptists’ Challenge to the Traditional Order in Virginia, 1765-1775” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser. vol. 31, no. 3 (July 1973), 345-368. (JSTOR)
? Mary Maples Dunn, “Saints and Sisters: Congregational and Quaker Women in the Early Colonial Period” American Quarterly vol. 30, no. 5 (Winter 1978), 582-601. (JSTOR)
? Jon Butler, Becoming America: The Revolution before 1776 (Harvard, 2000), 185-224. (on reserve)

Monday 26 February: Gender and Culture
? Carol Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (Vintage Books, 1989), 1-116. (on reserve)
? Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, & Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 (University of North Carolina, 1995), entire.
? Billy G. Smith, “Black Women Who Stole Themselves in Eighteenth-Century America” in Pestana and Salinger, eds., Inequality in Early America (University Press of New England, 1999), 134-159. (on reserve)
? Sarah M.S. Pearsall, “Gender” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 113-132.
? Natalie Zemon Davis, “Iroquois Women, European Women” in Hendricks and Parker, eds., Women, Race, and Writing in the Early Modern Period (Routledge, 1994), 423-58.
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (Vintage Books, 1980), 13-86. (on reserve)
? Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis” in Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (Columbia, 1999), 28-50. (on reserve)

Monday 5 March: No Class, Spring Break

Monday 12 March: Work
? Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in New World Slavery (Pennsylvania, 2004), entire.
? Richard White, The Middle Ground, 94-141.
? Robin Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery: From the Baroque to the Modern, 1492-1800 (Verso, 1997), 307-368, 457-508. (on reserve)
? Edmund Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom, 213-292. (on reserve)
? Stephen Innes, ed., Work and Labor in Early America, 3-47. (on reserve)
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “Martha Ballard and Her Girls: Women’s Work in Eighteenth-Century Maine,” in Ibid., 70-105.
? Philip D. Morgan, “Task and Gang Systems: The Organization of Labor on New World Plantations,” in Ibid., 189-220.
? Allan Greer, The People of New France, 27-42. (on reserve)
? Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, & Desire: Thomas Thistlewood and his Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (University of North Carolina, 2004), 37-68. (on reserve)

Friday 16 March: Attend Jennifer Morgan’s lecture. Time and place TBA.

Monday 19 March: Political Economy
? Albert O. Hirschman, The Passions and the Interests: Political Arguments for Capitalism before its Triumph (Princeton, 1997), entire.
? Eric Williams, Capitalism and Slavery (London, 1944), chapters 3-5. (on reserve)
? Blackburn, The Making of New World Slavery, 307-400. (on reserve)
? J.E. Crowley, This Sheba, Self: The Conceptualization of Economic Life in Eighteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins, 1974), prologue, chapters 1, 2, 4. (on reserve)
? Nuala Zahedieh, “Economy” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World 1500-1800 (Palgrave, 2002), 51-68. (on reserve)

Monday 26 March: Material Culture
? Richard L. Bushman, “American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures,” in Jack P. Greene and J.R. Pole, eds., Colonial British America: Essays in the New History of the Early Modern Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 345-383. (on reserve)
? James Deetz, In Small Things Forgotten: An Archaeology of Early American Life (Anchor Books, 1996), entire.
? Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (Knopf, 2001), 41-74 (“An Indian Basket”) and 108-141 (“Hannah Barnard’s Cupboard”). (on reserve)
? Rodris Roth, “Tea-Drinking in Eighteenth-Century America: Its Etiquette and Equipage,” in Robert Blair St. George, ed., Material Life in America, 1600-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1988), 439-462. (on reserve)
? Laurier Turgeon, “The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object” Ethnohistory vol. 44, no. 1 (Winter 1997), 1-29. (JSTOR)
? T.H. Breen, “An Empire of Goods: The Anglicization of Colonial America, 1690-1776” Journal of British Studies vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1986), 467-499. (JSTOR)

Monday 2 April: Atlantic Worlds
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 255-291.
? David Armitage, “Greater Britain: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis?” American Historical Review vol. 104, no. 2 (April 1999), 427-45. (JSTOR)
? John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1800, 2nd Edition (Cambridge, 1998), entire.
? Eric Hinderaker, “The ‘Four Indian Kings’ and the Imaginative Construction of the First British Empire” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 53, no. 2 (April 1996), 487-526. (JSTOR)
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, 101-169.
? Marcus Rediker and Peter Linebaugh, “The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, and the Atlantic Working Class in the Eighteenth Century” Journal of Historical Sociology vol. 3, no. 3 (September 1990), 225-253. (Synergy)
? Joyce Chaplin, “Race” in Armitage and Braddick, eds., British North America, 1500-1800, 154-172.

Monday 9 April: Revolution
? J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 292-368.
? Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (Harvard, 1967), entire.
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African-Americans in the Age of Revolution (Harvard, 2005), 1-68.
? Edmund S. Morgan, “The American Revolution: Revisions in Need of Revising” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 14, no. 1 (January 1957), 3-15. (JSTOR)
? T.H. Breen, “Ideology and Nationalism on the Eve of the American Revolution: Revisions Once More in Need of Revising” Journal of American History vol. 84, no. 1 (June 1997), 13-39. (JSTOR)
? Jesse Lemisch, “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America” William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Ser., vol. 25, no. 3 (July 1968), 371-407. (JSTOR)
? Charles Royster, “Founding a Nation in Blood: Military Conflict and American Nationality” in Hoffman and Albert, eds., Arms and Independence: The Military Character of the American Revolution (Virginia, 1984), 25-49. (on reserve)

Monday 16 April: Republican Politics
? J. H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, 369-411.
? Richard White, Middle Ground, 269-523.
? Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (University of North Carolina, 1969), 46-124, 393-564. (on reserve)
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 69-122.
? Daniel T. Rodger, “Republicanism: The Career of a Concept” Journal of American History vol. 79, no. 1 (June 1992), 11-38. (JSTOR)

Monday 23 April: Republican Culture
? Gordon Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (Vintage, 1991), entire.
? Drew McCoy, The Elusive Republic: Political Economy in Jeffersonian America (Chapel Hill, 1980), pages TBA. (on reserve)
? Linda K. Kerber, “The Paradox of Women’s Citizenship in the Early Republic: The Case of Martin vs. Massachusetts” American Historical Review vol. 97, no. 2 (April 1992), 349-378.
? Gary B. Nash, The Forgotten Fifth, 123-170.
? Jack P. Greene, Pursuits of Happiness, 170-210.