Syllabus: HSTY2034

Week 4: Life in the Eighteenth Century

Lecture 1: Consolidating the English Empire: the Middle Colonies and the Lower South
Lecture 2: Transatlantic Culture and Politics in the Eighteenth Century

Tutorial: The Origins of Slavery

Essential Reading:

Edmund S. Morgan, "Slavery and Freedom: The American Paradox," (Course Reader)
Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano , pp. 33-46, 100-125, 149-160, 182-196 (Course Reader).

Questions:

According to Edmund Morgan, what did freedom mean to Jefferson? What does Morgan see as the relationship between slavery and freedom?   Where does he think racism comes from?   Do you find his argument compelling?   What kind of picture does Equiano paint of his African slave experiences as opposed to his later encounters with slavery in the New World?   How does he portray himself and why?   What are his arguments against slavery?   What can his narrative tell us about religion and transatlantic commerce in the eighteenth century?

Further Reading: Early History of Slavery & Race

Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1998).

T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Own Ground": Race and Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York: 1980).

Winthrop Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1968).

Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1616-1877 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1993)

Edward S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal of Colonial Virginia (New York: Norton, 1975).

Kenneth Morgan, Slavery and Servitude in North America, 1607-1800 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000).

Gary B. Nash, Red, White, And Black: The Peoples Of Early America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1974).

Alden T. Vaughan, Roots of American Racism: Essays On The Colonial Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).

Betty Wood, The Origins of American Slavery: Freedom and Bondage In the English Colonies (New York: Hill and Wang, 1997).

Donald R. Wright, African Americans in the Colonial Era: From African Origins through the American Revolution (Arlington Heights, IL: Harlan Davidson, 1990).

Optional Assignments

Visit virtual Jamestown, the site of one of the earliest British settlements in the New World.   At this site you can look at the colonists' original maps, labour contracts, court records, letters and other historical artefacts.   http://www.iath.virginia.edu /vcdh/jamestown/

Or take a look at a virtual exhibit on the history of the African-American community in Hartford, Connecticut from 1638 to the present.   This is a great exhibit, although the images take a little time to load - worth the wait though.   http://www.hartford-hwp.com/HBHP/exhibit/menu.html