|
|
|
Partnership Programs: American Revolution American Revolution: Evaluations {Read what the participants have to say about each session.} "To Form a More Perfect Union" (PDF) Read the article printed in Five College Ink magazine about the series (PDF files require Adobe Acrobat Reader 4.0 to view. Download free program) Participants (are
from the four collaborating districts, which include Belchertown,
Holyoke, Mohawk Trail and Hampshire Regional). Judith Atwood, Peck Middle School |
Theme: Empire: From an Anti-imperial Revolution
to the Manifest Destiny of a Democracy Teaching includes lecture courses on North America, 1400-1800; Native American Indians, 1400-present; a seminar on the American Revolution; and colloquia on various topics in colonial, Native American, western American history, and on the teaching of history in secondary schools. Bob Hansbury is a social studies teacher and department chair at Belchertown High School. He is currently on the Board of Directors of the Mass. Council for the Social Studies. He has participated in many Partnership programs through the years including the Native American series and Daniel Shays. The rhetoric of empire provides a fascinating continuity from 1740 to 1840, though who wields it, and how, changes fundamentally. The material enactment of various kinds of imperial ambitions and designs configures North American history centrally. The 18th century cannot, of course, be understood apart from the imperial hopes of the three dominant European powers: France, Great Britain, and Spain. Nor can this history be separated from the clash of these powers not only on the mainland but also in the Caribbean and in Europe itself. The colonists in rebellion used anti-imperial rhetoric brilliantly while seeking to extend their own dominion over Africans and American Indians. In time a new imperial language and practice emerges as white Americans begin to characterize themselves and their new nation in terms of a "manifest destiny" to "civilize and settle" all of North America, including Mexico. In making their Revolution, the American colonies broke from the most powerful empire the world had yet known, that of Great Britain. In their revolutionary rhetoric, American patriots equated empire with British tyranny. Yet historical scholarship over the past three decades has revealed the extent to which most white colonists were invested psychologically as well as materially in the benefits of imperial membership. The struggles among colonists after the Revolution turned on, among other issues, the size and the reach of the new American republic. Was the new nation a radically new, historically unprecedented political order or was it a continuation of the old British empire without Britain? We will examine these questions with particular reference to early United States expansion and to the experiences of Native Americans in and west of the thirteen original states. Secondary Readings: Woody Holton, "Land Speculators versus Indians and the Privy Council," In Holton, Forced Founders: Indians, Debtors, and Slaves in the Making of the American Revolution, ch. 1. John M. Murrin, "A Roof without Walls: The Dilemma of American National Identity," in R. Beeman, et al (eds.), Beyond Confederation: Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity, 333-48. Robert F. Berkhofer Jr., "Early United States Policy: Expansion with Honor," in Berkhofer, White Man's Indian: Images of the American Indian from Columbus to the Present, pp. 134-45. Primary Source Readings: Alexander McGillivray, Letter to Arturo O'Neill [Governor of Florida], 10 July 1785, in J. Caughey (ed.), McGillivray of the Creeks, 90-93. Brutus I, "To the Citizens of the State of New-York" [1787], in J. Kaminski and R. Leffler (eds.), Federalists and Antifederalists, pp. 4-13. Alexander Hamilton, Federalist Papers, no. 11. Thomas Jefferson, Third Annual Message [1803]. Meriwether Lewis, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 23 September 1806, in R. Thwaites (ed.), Original Journals of the Lewis and Clark Expedition (New York, 1905), 334-37 |
