Revolutionary America

Catalog description

This course explores the American Revolutionary era, from the origins of the crisis of the British Empire in the 1760s to the first presidential administrations in the 1790s. Topics include colonial resistance to imperial taxes and restrictions; social hierarchies and conflict in colonial societies; how resistance became revolution; the War for Independence as a conflict encompassing civil war among Americans, global war between Britain and France, an Indigenous struggle to control the Ohio Valley, and a large uprising of enslaved people; efforts to create republican governments, new social institutions, and a functioning union; debates over ratifying the Constitution; and the emergence of party conflict over political economy, constitutional interpretation, and views of citizenship in the 1790s.