Category: History

Module 2

In this learning module, students will explore and compare the colonial and national histories of the three countries that emerge in North America.

Learning Objectives

After completing this learning unit, each course participant should be able to:

Identify the colonial holdings of different European powers on the North American continent.

Compare and contrast the features of emerging North American nations in the nineteenth century.

Discuss the role of different commercial, labor, and property regimes in North America in the colonial period and nineteenth century.

Apply comparative critical analysis reading skills to peer-reviewed articles and textbooks.

Assigned Readings for Module 2:

We continue with Brescia and Super, North America, but from now on we will be jumping around, reading parts of chapters (usually in about 5 page chunks) that take the material by topic chronologically.

We start Sparks, have one book chapter (pdf provided) and three articles in the Library collection.

There is also a film. For those of you using the Kindle or other electronic version of Brescia and Super, the blue section headings are to guide you.

While the e-book link issue is being resolved, you can find chapters 3-9 of Brescia and Super here (Links to an external site.).

Brescia and Super, 89-100 Chapter 5 sections “Colonial Configurations,” “Early Diplomacy,” “War” and “A New Era”; Chapter 5 “Manifest Destiny and Beyond,” “Civil War in the United States,” & “Expansion Modified;”
109-19 Chapter 6 sections “Problems of Definition,” “Early Interactions,” “Mexican Conquest,” “Quebec Trade,” “English Policies,” Post-Colonial Relations in NA “United States”, and “Canada”;

129-133 Chapter 7 “Early Immigration,” “New France,” English Colonies,” “Slavery,” and “Movement in the North”;

149-154 Chapter 8 Colonial and Rural Labor “Labor and Conquest,” “Labor in the Northern Forests,” “Labor Along the Seaboard, “The Other Side of Rural Labor” and “Continued Rural Arrangements”

167-172 Chapter 9 “Early Patterns of Trade,” “Mercantilism,” “Early National Goals,” and “Liberalization of Trade”

187-196 Chapter 10 “European Background,” “Orthodoxy in New Spain,” “Catholicism in the North,” “Religious Pluralism in British Colonies,” “The Church in Post-Colonial America”, “Mexican Issues,” “Canadian Differences,” and “Revivalism in the United States”

203-209 Chapter 11 “Bedrock Features,” “Economic Structures,” and “Reform”

Richard Salvucci, “Some Thoughts on the Economic History of Early Colonial Mexico,” History Compass 2010 8(7): 626–635.
Philip McMichael, “Slavery in Capitalism: The Rise and Demise of the U.S. Ante-Bellum Cotton Culture,” Theory and Society 1991 20(3): 321-349.
Beverly Tomek, “A Nation Built on Capitalism and Torture: Two New Histories of Slavery’s Centrality to the Making, Expansion, and Success of the U.S.” WorkingUSA. 2015 (18,1):137-142.
R.E. Ommer, “’All the Fish of the Post’: Resource Property Rights and Development in a Nineteenth Century Inshore Fishery,” Acadiensis 1981 10(1): 107-23. Excerpted inWatkins and Grant, Canadian Economic History [pdf] Ommer.pdf
Sparks, 1-82 Chapters 1 and 2

Film: Textiles: Birth of an American Industry

By Thursdayy, everyone post your Intrigue Journal to the Discussion Board, and then by Friday post a comment on a peer’s Intrigue Journal.
By Friday, everyone complete the activities (4 comments and a “Takeaway” slide) in VoiceThread 3, and by Saturday comment on a peer’s VT “Takeaway” slide before hitting SUBMIT ASSIGNMENT.