In 1775, thirteen of Britain’s twenty-six American colonies began an unlikely revolt against the most powerful army in the world. By 1898, the United States had brushed aside European rivals and assumed continental dimensions, announcing itself as an economic, political, and military rival to the great imperial powers of Europe. This course examines the development of the United States from the American Revolution to the Spanish-American war, but challenges simple narratives of triumph or exceptionalism by focusing on the limitations placed on the diverse population of the United States and the very human costs of expansion. Indeed, for a nation “conceived in liberty”, the simple premise that “all men are created equal” proved rather more problematic in practice. How can we explain the effective exile of non-whites from the promises of the Declaration of Independence? Did white Americans view black people and Native Americans as inherently inferior, perhaps even sub-human? Did expansion into the space of the frontier place impossible strains on the political, cultural, and social unity of the new nation? And what impact did race, class, and gender have upon both the politics of the period and the understandings and projections of power in the United States and abroad?

This course explores issues associated with race, space, and power in the United States from the 1770s to the 1890s. Topics include: the American Revolution; race and slavery in the early Republic; America’s unstable position in an “Age of Revolutions”; politics and class divisions; the various plans of the U.S. government for ‘civilizing’ or ‘removing’ Native Americans and free blacks; the influence of racial prejudice on the Mexican-American War and the Civil War; the violence of Reconstruction; western expansion and the rise of the United States as an imperial power.

On successful completion of the module a student will be able to:

Intellectual skills:

• Critically address the history of American expansion on the continent and abroad, examining how this was shaped by and reflected racial, political, and ideological positions.
• Demonstrate an understanding of nineteenth-century debates about race, class, and gender, and identify key historiographical and methodological issues associated with these.
• Acknowledge and explain the varied responses of marginalised groups to aggression and exploitation in the United States and abroad.

Use evidence and examples to compare the relative merits of historical interpretations on American history in the nineteenth century

How the module will be delivered

This course will be taught over two semesters, and a range of teaching methods will be used, comprising a mixture of lectures and seminars.

There will be 20 x 1 hour lectures weekly and 10 x 1 hour seminars fortnightly. The lectures will provide an introductory framework for the topics listed, identifying key issues and offering suggestions for historical, methodological, or historiographical reflection. The seminars will take the form of a guided discussion, allowing for intensive analysis of the topics covered in the reading or issues associated with the lecture. These may include focusing on a particular historical episode or event, examining primary sources, or student led presentations

Skills that will be practised and developed

While studying this module, students will communicate ideas and arguments in a variety of forms, including oral presentations, group work, and in written form. They will develop critical reading and writing skills as they engage with historical literature, placing this in a historiographical and methodological framework and coming to their own conclusion as to the validity of evidence and material on topics studied. They will, as a consequence, engage with theoretical arguments and apply this in their own work. During seminars students will analyse primary materials, collaborate with their peers to present ideas and arguments, offer presentations, and engage in plenary class discussions.

Assessed coursework - to be agreed with module tutor

Syllabus content – Provisional lecture and seminar list:

1. An imperial crisis: the problems of British America
2. Breaking the chains: the American Revolution
   1. Seminar – Empire and Independence
3. Conflict, consolidation, and compromise in the early Republic
4. The limitations of the American Revolution
   1. Seminar – “All men are created equal...”
5. America in the world: An “Age of Revolutions”
6. Native Americans, expansion, and the War of 1812
   1. Seminar – An Empire for Liberty?
7. Politics in the Early Republic
8. Getting rich in America
   1. Seminar - Power and politics
9. Slavery in North America
10. Slave resistance and rebellion
    1. Seminar – The internal slave trade and slave resistance.

Essential Reading and Resource list

Seminar 1: Empire and Independence

• Robert Allison, The American Revolution: A Concise History. Oxford, 2011. 1-94.
• P.J. Marshall, ‘A Nation Defined by Empire’, in Alexander Grant and Keith J. Stringer, eds., Uniting the Kingdom? London, 1995. 208-222.
• J.H. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World. New Haven, 2006. 292-301.
• T. H. Breen, ‘“Baubles of Britain”: The Consumer Culture of Eighteenth-Century America and the Coming Revolution’, Past & Present, 119.1 (May, 1988), 73-104.
• Select essays from Jack Greene, ed., A Companion to the American Revolution. Oxford, 2003.
• Select chapter from Steven Sarson, ed., British America, 1500-1800: Creating Colonies, Imagining an Empire. London, 2005.

Seminar 2: “All men are created equal...”

• Max Edling, A Revolution in Favor of Government: Origins of the U.S. Constitution and the Making of the American State. New York; Oxford, 2003. Chapters 5 & 7 (73-88, 101-114).
• Edward Countryman, The American Revolution, revised edition. New York, 2003. Chapter 6 (“One Republic”) 167-203.
• Woody Holton, Unruly Americans and the Origins of the Constitution. New York, 2007. 179-198.
• Rosemarie Zagarri, ‘The Rights of Man and Woman in Post-Revolutionary America’, William and Mary Quarterly, 55.2 (1998), 203-30.
• Gary Nash, The Forgotten Fifth: African Americans in the Age of Revolution. Cambridge, Mass., 2006. 69-122.
• Kenneth Morgan, ‘Slavery and the Debate over the ratification of the United States Constitution’, Slavery & Abolition, 22.3 (Dec. 2001), 40-65.

Seminar 3: An Empire for Liberty?

• Jay Sexton, The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth Century America. New York, 2011. 15-45.
• Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early American Republic. New York; Oxford, 2009. 357-400, 659-700.

• John M. Murrin, ‘The Jeffersonian Triumph and American Exceptionalism’, Journal of the Early Republic 20.1 (Spring 2000), 1-25.
• Stuart Banner, How the Indians Lost Their Land: Law and Power on the Frontier. Cambridge, Mass., 2005, 112-149.
• Robert M. Owens, ‘Jeffersonian Benevolence on the Ground: The Indian Land Cession Treaties of William Henry Harrison,’ Journal of the Early Republic, 22.3 (Autumn 2002), 405-35.
• Reginald Horsman, ‘The Indian Policy of an “Empire for Liberty,”’ in Frederick E. Hoxie, Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Native Americans and the Early Republic. Charlottesville, Va, 1999. 37-59.

Seminar 4: Power and politics

• James Roger Sharp, American Politics in the Early Republic: The New Nation in Crisis. New Haven, 1993. 53-68.
• Gordon S. Wood, Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early American Republic. New York: Oxford, 2009. 276-356, 459-68.
• Daniel Walker Howe, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848. New York; Oxford, 2007. 125-47, 270-84, 411-445.
• Andrew M. Schocket, ‘Thinking about Elites in the Early Republic’, Journal of the Early Republic, 25.4 (2005), 547-555.
• Alexander Keyssar, The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States, revised edition, New York, 2009. 22-42.
• Sean Wilentz, The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln. New York, 2005. Chapter 12, ‘1832: Jackson’s Crucial Year’, 359-90.

Seminar 5: The internal slave trade and slave resistance

• Adam Rothman, Slave Country: American Expansion and the Origins of the Deep South. Cambridge, Mass., 2005. 165-216.
• Steven Deyle, Carry me Back: The Domestic Slave Trade in American Life. New York; Oxford, 2005. 245-275.

• Damian Pargas, ‘The Gathering Storm: Slave Responses to the Threat of Interregional Migration in the Early Nineteenth Century’, Journal of Early American History, 2.3 (Fall 2012), 286-315.
• Judith Kelleher Schafer, ‘New Orleans Slavery in 1850 as Seen in Advertisements’, Journal of Southern History, 47.1 (1981), 33-56.
• Michael Tadman ‘The Reputation of the Slave Trader in Southern History and the Social Memory of the South’, American Nineteenth Century History, 8.3 (2007), 247-271.
• Edward E. Baptist, ‘“Cuffy,” “Fancy Maids,” and “One-Eyed Men”: Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the United States’, American Historical Review, 106.5 (2001), 1619-1650.

Seminar 6: Expansion and expulsion

• Anthony Wallace, The Long, Bitter Trail: Andrew Jackson and the Indians. New York, 1993, 50-72.
• Herman J. Viola, Thomas L. McKenney, Architect of America’s Early Indian Policy: 1816-1860. Chicago, 1974. 200-222.
• Kathleen DuVal, On Native Ground: Indians and Colonists in the Heart of the Continent. Philadelphia, 2006. 196-226.
• Nicholas Guyatt, ‘“The Outskirts of our Happiness”: Race and the Lure of Colonization in the Early Republic’, Journal of American History, 95.4 (March 2009), 986-1011.
• James T. Campbell, Middle Passages: African-American Journeys to Africa, 1787-2005. New York, 2006. 15-56.
• John Saillant, ‘The American Enlightenment in Africa: Jefferson's Colonizationism and Black Virginians’ Migration to Liberia, 1776-1840’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 31.3 (1998). 262-82.

Seminar 7: Texas and the Mexican-American War

• Lars Schoultz, Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy Toward Latin America. Cambridge, Mass., 1998. 14-38.
• Gregg Cantrell, Stephen F. Austin, Impresario of Texas. New Haven, 1999. 104-131.
• Brian DeLay, ‘Independent Indians and the U.S.-Mexican War’, American Historical Review, 112.1 (Feb. 2007), 35-68.
• Robert M. Utley, The Indian Frontier of the American West, 1846-1890. Albuquerque, 1984. 31-63.
• Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of Racial Anglo-Saxonism. Cambridge, Mass., 1981. 208-249.
• Thomas R. Hietala, Manifest Design: Anxious Aggrandizement in Late Jacksonian America. Ithaca, 1985. 132-172.

Seminar 8: “The Fiery Trial”: race, abolition, and the Civil War

• David Brion Davis, Inhuman Bondage: The Rise and Fall of Slavery in the New World. New York, 2006. 250-267.
• Edward Bartlett Rugemer, The Problem of Emancipation: The Caribbean Roots of the American Civil War. Baton Rouge, 2008. 258-291.
• Paul Goodman, Of One Blood: Abolitionism and the Origins of Racial Equality. Berkeley, 1998. 235-260.
• Matthew Pratt Guterl, American Mediterranean: Southern Slaveholders in the Age of Emancipation. Cambridge, Mass., 2008. 12-46.
• Gary J. Kornblith, ‘Rethinking the Coming of the Civil War: A Counterfactual Exercise’, Journal of American History, 90.1 (June 2003), 76-105.
• Eric Foner, The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery. New York, 2010. 63-91.

Seminar 9: Violence in the postbellum South

• Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution. New York, 1988. 228-280.
• Steven Hahn, A Nation Under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles In the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration. Cambridge, Mass., 2003. 265-313.
• James L. Huston, ‘Reconstruction as it Should Have Been: An Exercise in Counterfactual History’, Civil War History, 51.4 (2005), 358-63.
• William J. Harris, ‘Etiquette, Lynching, and Racial Boundaries in Southern History: A Mississippi Example’, The American Historical Review, 100:2 (1995), 387-410.
• James Campbell, Crime and Punishment in African-American History. London, 2012. 60-81.
• Kidada Williams, ‘Resolving the Paradox of our Lynching Obsession: Reconsidering Racialized Violence in the American South after Slavery’, American Nineteenth Century History, 6.3 (Sept. 2005), 323-350.

Seminar 10: An Imperial Power?

• Jay Sexton, ‘Toward a synthesis of foreign relations in the Civil War era, 1848-77’, American Nineteenth Century History, 5.3 (2004), 50-73.
• Louis A. Perez Jr. ‘Incurring a Debt of Gratitude: 1898 and the Moral Sources of United States Hegemony in Cuba’, American Historical Review, 104.2 (Apr. 1999), 356-398.
• Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad. New York, 2000. 15-59, 221-261.
• Richard Drinnon, Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire-Building. Minneapolis, reprint 1997, 1^st pub. 1980. 355-374.
• Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. New York, 1987. 194-202.

Thomas Schoonover, Uncle Sam’s War of 1898 and the Origins of Globalization. Lexington; KY, 2003. 53-65; 88-123