History 106-B: The Atlantic World, 1600-1850

Fall 2006

MWF, 10:00-10:50 a.m., Weidensall 302
Timothy Shannon

Office: Weidensall 215

Phone: 337-6567

E-mail: tshannon@gettysburg.edu

Office hours: Monday and Friday, 11:00am-12:00pm; Wednesday, 3:30-4:30pm; and by appointment.

Purpose of the Course

The purpose of this course is to study the rise and fall of an Atlantic World System that tied Europe, Africa, and the Americas into a web of economic and cultural interdependence. We will examine different models of New World colonization by European colonial powers, the ramifications of New World Slavery, encounters and conflicts between native and colonial peoples, and the development of nation states in the Western Hemisphere. Throughout the course, we will emphasize comparative analysis of historical events and trends, examining how different peoples in different regions experienced colonization, slavery, trade, nation-making, and emancipation in the Atlantic World.

Students who complete this course successfully will be able to describe the rise and fall of Atlantic World slavery, compare and contrast European encounters with Africans and Native Americans, describe similarities and differences between systems of racial order in various regions of the Atlantic World, and explain how colonial empires gave way to nation states in the Americas by the mid-nineteenth century.

The following titles are available at the college bookstore:

Timothy Shannon, Atlantic Lives: A Comparative Approach to Early America

Roger Schlesinger, In the Wake of Columbus: The Impact of the New World on Europe, 1492-1650

David Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850

Allan Greer, Mohawk Saint: Catherine Tekakwitha and the Jesuits

Marcus Rediker, Villains of All Nations: Atlantic Pirates in the Golden Age

Dray, Philip, Stealing God’s Fire: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America

Sara Salih, ed., The History of Mary Prince
Other reading assignments will either be distributed in class as handouts or placed on reserve.
E-Mail and CNAV

Students in this course should be familiar with the use of their college email and CNAV accounts. I will often use email to send students messages concerning the class, so be sure to check it regularly for messages related to this course.

Students will complete two exams and two papers (4-5pp. each). We will also have occasional quizzes and assignments, and students will be evaluated for the quality of their participation in group work and discussions. A student cannot pass the course without completing each of the major assignments (mid-term, final, both papers). Final grades will be determined according to the following distribution:

All exams will be in an essay format. Students must take the final exam during its scheduled time: Monday, December 11, 8:30-11:30am.

See the handout distributed with the syllabus for details on these assignments.

My expectation is that every student will arrive on time for every class. Students who arrive late disturb a class already in progress, so please make every effort to be on time. Likewise, I expect all students to remain in the class until it is over; kindly do not excuse yourself temporarily while we are in session and do not schedule appointments that will require you to leave early.

I will distribute a handout early in the semester about the Honor Code’s application to coursework in this class.

Aug 28 Introduction to the Course: Expectations and Requirements

Reading: Shannon, Atlantic Lives (hereinafter referred to as text), Introduction,

and Schlesinger, In the Wake of Columbus, begin.
Sep 1 Discussion: Europe’s Transition from Medieval to Modern

Reading: Schlesinger, In the Wake of Columbus, complete.

Sep 4 Atlantic Collisions

Reading: text, chapter 1.

Reading: text, chapter 2.

Reading: text, chapter 3.

Sep 11 Origins of Atlantic Slavery

Reading: Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, begin.

Reading: text, chapter 4, and Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850,

continue.
Sep 15 Discussion: Taking the Measure of Others across the Cultural Divide

Reading: Northrup, Africa's Discovery of Europe, 1450-1850, complete.

Sep 18 Race and New World Slavery

Reading: James H. Sweet, "Iberian Roots of American Racist Thought," William

and Mary Quarterly, third series, 54 (1997): 143-66 (JSTOR).

Writing Workshop
Sep 20 Atlantic Slavery and the Plantation Complex

Reading: text, chapter 5.

Sep 22 Maroons and Runaways

Reading: Kenneth Bilby, "Swearing by the Past, Swearing to the Future: Sacred

Oaths, Alliances, and Treaties among the Guianese and Jamaican Maroons,"

Ethnohistory 44 (1997): 655-89 (JSTOR).

Sep 25 Iberian Approaches to Colonization

Reading: María Elena Martínez, “The Black Blood of New Spain: Limpieza de

Sangre, Racial Violence, and Gendered Power in Early Colonial Mexico,”

William and Mary Quarterly, third series, 61 (2004): 479-520.
Sep 27 Racial Construction of Colonial Societies

Reading: text, chapter 6.

Reading: Guillaume Aubert, “’The Blood of New France’: Race and Purity of

Blood in the French Atlantic World,” William and Mary Quarterly, third series,

61 (2004): 439-78.

Oct 2 The English and Dutch Atlantic World Empire

Reading: J.H. Elliott, “Contrasting Empires: The Differences—Cultural

Religious, Ethnic, and Economic—between the Spanish and British Approaches

to their Empires in the Americas,” History Today 56 (2006): 12-22.

Reading: text, chapter 10.

Reading: text, chapter 7.

Oct 9 No Class: Fall Break
Oct 11 France in North America

Reading: Greer, Mohawk Saint, begin

Reading: Greer, Mohawk Saint, continue

Oct 16 Discussion: The Pursuit of Souls in New France

Reading: Greer, Mohawk Saint, complete.

Oct 23 No Class: McGill Research Seminar

Reading: Rediker, Villains of All Nations, begin.

Oct 25 Maritime Labor in the Atlantic World

Reading: text, chapter 8, and Rediker, Villains of All Nations, continue.

Oct 27 Discussion: Arrrrrr, Here there be Pirates

Reading: Rediker, Villains of All Nations, complete.

Oct 30 Atlantic Migrations

Reading: text, chapter 9.
Nov 1 Communication Networks

Reading: John J. McCusker, “The Demise of Distance: The Business Press and

the Origins of the Information Revolution in the Early Modern Atlantic World,”

American Historical Review 110 (2005): 295-321 (reserve).
Nov 3 Discussion: News of the Atlantic World

Pennsylvania Gazette Paper due at start of class.

Nov 6 The Enlightenment

Reading: Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder, begin.
Nov 8 The American and French Revolutions

Reading: Declaration of Independence and Declaration of Rights of Man and

Citizen (handout).
Nov 10 Discussion: The Ideology of the Atlantic Revolutions

Reading: text, chapter 11.

Nov 13 Latin American Revolutions

Reading: Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder, continue.
Nov 15 Cents and Sensibility: The Trans-Atlantic Anti-Slavery Movement, I

Reading: Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder, continue.

Reading: Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder, continue.

Nov 20 Discussion: The Science of Revolution

Reading: Dray, Stealing God’s Thunder, complete.

Nov 27 The Haitian Revolution

Reading: Carolyn Fick, “Emancipation in Haiti: From Plantation Labour to

Peasant Proprietorship,” Slavery and Abolition 21 (2000): 11-40 (reserve).

Reading: Abraham Bishop, "'The Rights of Black Men,' and the American

Reaction to the Haitian Revolution," Journal of Negro History 67 (1982): 148-54

(JSTOR) and text, pp. 244-50.

Reading: Salih, History of Mary Prince.

Dec 4 Atlantic World Emancipations

Reading: Steven Mintz, “Models of Emancipation during the Age of Revolution," Slavery and Abolition, 17 (1996): 1-21 (reserve).

Reading: text, chapter 12, and Gregory Rodriguez, “Mongrel America,” Atlantic Monthly (January/February 2003): 95-97 (handout).

Dec 8 Course Evaluations and Review for Final Exam

Dec 11 Final Exam, 8:30-11:30 a.m.

Each student will select one chapter from Atlantic Lives and write a paper that explores some element of that chapter in greater detail. The paper must feature research done in sources (primary and/or secondary) beyond Atlantic Lives and the course syllabus.

The following are some suggestions for how you might frame your approach to the paper. This is not an exhaustive list; think creatively about what you want to do with the topic and feel free to discuss your approach with me if you have questions about it.

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  In-depth analysis: identify some element of the chapter's topic that you would like to investigate in greater depth.
  

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  Primary source(s): identify a significant primary source or sources associated with the chapter's topic and write a paper based on the analysis/comparison of these sources.
  

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  Biographical study: select one of the people featured in the chapter and research and write about the person’s life beyond what is featured in the chapter selection on him or her.
  

Early in the semester, I will assign students to the chapters on which they will work. I will then assign due dates for the papers according to the chapters, usually falling within one to two weeks after that chapter is discussed in class.

“The Freshest Advices, Foreign and Domestick”: The Pennsylvania Gazette and

In the eighteenth-century Atlantic World, people, goods, and information moved together in a constant flow between major cities and seaports. A good way to measure the content and pace of this exchange is by examining colonial newspapers, which collected news from around the world and packaged it for local consumption. One such newspaper was the Pennsylvania Gazette, published in Philadelphia by Benjamin Franklin and David Hall.

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  Internet Sources
  
  • 
    While you may include some internet resources in your research, you may not rely solely on such sources.
    

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  Documentation
  
  • 
    Each paper should have a bibliography and footnotes or endnotes completed in proper format (see handout).
    

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  Penalty for Late Work