American History to 1876

Catalog description

This course will survey the history of the present-day United States from precolonial times (pre-1500) to 1876. This was a tumultuous era of American, and world history, fraught with conquest and enslavement, revolutions and civil wars, mass migrations and democratization. This course will particularly investigate indigenous societies, European colonization and African slavery, the American Revolution and the founding of the US nation-state, social movements, sectional conflicts, expansionism and the American Civil War, as well as the reconstruction of American democracy in the wake of the Civil War. Throughout, the course will emphasize the place of the US in global history, the growth of American capitalism, tensions between race and democracy, and the various contributions of women, slaves, merchants, planters, Native Americans, and workers to American culture and politics. 001373