History 533
Readings in Early American History
Fall 2006
Prof. Erik Seeman
Mon. 4-6:40, Park 532
Park 534, 645-2181 x534
seeman@buffalo.edu
Office
hours: Mon. 1-3
Goals: This course will
introduce graduate students to the major themes and methodologies in
colonial American history. The course will serve as a foundation
for those students wishing to prepare an examination field in colonial
America or for anyone who wants to gain a broad perspective on the most
important developments in the field. This course will be
organized as a series of "updates": we will examine five topics
for two weeks each (in one case for three weeks), and for each topic
the first work is a classic and the second is a more recent
contribution that builds on or departs from the classic text in
important ways. The lengthy lists of recommended books are meant
to aid students preparing exam lists and those who wish to study a
particular topic in greater depth. Class sessions will consist of
analytical discussions of the week's readings; as a result careful
reading of the texts is imperative. In addition, this course will
allow students to hone some professional skills: how to write
(and critique) book reviews and review essays, how to find primary
sources, and how to discuss historical materials critically yet fairly.
Assignments: There are
several assignments required of students in addition to active and
informed class discussion.
•Review of Reviews. Find three substantial reviews of the book
for Sept. 11 (White), Sept. 18 (Merrell), Sept. 25 (Morgan), or Oct. 9
(Brown). Look for longer reviews, such as those in the William
and Mary Quarterly and Reviews in American History, not the very short
reviews in the American Historical Review. Write a critical
assessment (5 pages) of those reviews in light of your reading of the
book. How do the reviews differ in style? How do the review
authors indicate their own preferences for method and
interpretation? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the
reviews? Would you add critiques of the book that the review
authors overlooked?
•Oral Presentation and Book Review. Each student will choose a
week to read one book from the list of recommended books for that
week's topic. Class will begin with a five-minute presentation in
which the student summarizes the book for the rest of the class and
relates it to the readings for that week. Students will have one
week after presenting the oral report to hand in a formal three-page
book review.
•Historiographical Paper. Each student will choose a topic for an
in-depth review of the recent literature in 12 to 15 pages, due Dec. 11
by noon. Students should consult with me during office hours no
later than Nov. 13 about an appropriate topic. Students may use
the lists of recommended books to get started, though other subjects
not covered by the lists may also be studied. The additional
reading for the paper should amount to about three books and two
articles (though these are not hard and fast figures). This paper
may be used as a prospectus for a later research project or as the
first step toward a dissertation topic.
Grading: Class discussion
will constitute the majority of the final grade, with the written
assignments making up the balance.
Readings: The following
books are required reading and are available for purchase at the
University Bookstore.
Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics
in the Great Lakes Region, 1650-1815 (New York, 1991)
James H. Merrell, Into the American Woods: Negotiators on the
Pennsylvania Frontier (New York, 1999)
Edmund S. Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom: The Ordeal
of Colonial Virginia (New York, 1975)
Kathleen M. Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious
Patriarchs: Gender, Race, and Power in Colonial Virginia (Chapel
Hill, 1996)
Perry Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness (Cambridge, Mass., 1956)
David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular
Religious Belief in Early New England (New York, 1989)
Stanley M. Elkins, Slavery: A Problem in American Institutional
and Intellectual Life, 3d ed. (1959; Chicago, 1976)
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)
Trevor Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire: Thomas Thistlewood
and His Slaves in the Anglo-Jamaican World (Chapel Hill, 2004)
Bernard Bailyn, The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution,
enlarged ed. (1967; Cambridge, Mass., 1992)
T.H. Breen, The Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics
Shaped American Independence (New York, 2004)
Reading Schedule:
Aug. 28: Introduction
Sept. 4: Labor Day – Class Cancelled
Sept. 11: Indians I
White, Middle Ground
Sept. 18: Indians II
Merrell, Into the American Woods
Sept. 25: Chesapeake I
Morgan, American Slavery, American Freedom
Oct. 2: Yom Kippur – Class Cancelled
Oct. 9: Chesapeake II
Brown, Good Wives, Nasty Wenches, and Anxious Patriarchs
Oct. 16: New England I
Miller, Errand Into the Wilderness, ch. 1, 3, 5, 6, 7, 10
Oct. 23: New England II
Hall, Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment
Oct. 30: Primary Sources
Nov. 6: Slavery I
Elkins, Slavery
Nov. 13: Slavery II
Berlin, Many Thousands Gone
Nov. 20: Slavery III
Burnard, Mastery, Tyranny, and Desire
Nov. 27: American Revolution I
Bailyn, Ideological Origins of the American Revolution
Dec. 4: American Revolution II
Breen, Marketplace of Revolution
Mon. Dec. 11: historiographical paper due by noon
Recommended Readings
Indians
James Axtell, The Invasion Within: The Contest of Cultures in
Colonial North America (New York, 1985)
William Cronon, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the
Ecology of New England (New York, 1983)
Alan Gallay, The Indian Slave Trade: The Rise of the English
Empire in the American South, 1670-1717 (New Haven, 2002)
Patricia Galloway, Choctaw Genesis, 1500-1700 (Lincoln, Neb., 1995)
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers
Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico,
1500-1846 (Stanford, Calif., 1991)
Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonialism,
and the Cant of Conquest (New York, 1976)
Andrew L. Knaut, The Pueblo Revolt of 1680: Conquest and
Resistance in Seventeenth-Century New Mexico (Norman, Ok., 1995)
Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins
of American Identity (New York, 1998)
Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Settling With the Indians: The Meeting of
English and Indian Cultures in America, 1580-1640 (Totowa, N.J., 1980)
James H. Merrell, The Indians' New World: Catawbas and Their
Neighbors from European Contact Through the Era of Removal (New York,
1989)
Michael Leroy Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca, 2003)
Daniel K. Richter, The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of
the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (Chapel Hill,
1992)
Daniel K. Richter, Facing East from Indian Country: A Native
History of Early America (Cambridge, Mass., 2001)
Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and
the Making of New England, 1500-1643 (New York, 1982)
Gordon Sayre, Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of
Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature (Chapel
Hill, 1997)
Ian K. Steele, Warpaths: Invasions of North America (New York,
1994)
Laura M. Stevens, The Poor Indians: British Missionaries, Native
Americans, and Colonial Sensibility (Philadelphia, 2004)
Bruce G. Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada's "Heroic Age"
Reconsidered (Kingston, Ont., 1985)
Daniel H. Usner, Jr., Indians, Settlers, and Slaves in a Frontier
Exchange Economy: The Lower Mississippi Valley Before 1783
(Chapel Hill, 1992)
Chesapeake
T. H. Breen, Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great
Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (Princeton, 1985)
T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and
Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York, 1980)
Lois Green Carr, Russell R. Menard, and Lorena S. Walsh, Robert Cole's
World: Agriculture and Society in Early Maryland (Chapel Hill,
1991)
April Lee Hatfield, Atlantic Virginia: Intercolonial Relations in
the Seventeenth Century (Philadelphia, 2004)
James P. Horn, Adapting to a New World: English Society in the
Seventeenth-Century Chesapeake (Chapel Hill, 1994)
Allan Kulikoff, Tobacco and Slaves: The Development of Southern
Cultures in the Chesapeake, 1680-1800 (Chapel Hill, 1986)
Kenneth A. Lockridge, The Diary, and Life, of William Byrd II of
Virginia, 1674-1744 (New York, 1987)
Gloria L. Main, Tobacco Colony: Life in Early Maryland, 1650-1720
(Princeton, 1982)
John Ruston Pagan, Anne Orthwood's Bastard: Sex and Law in Early
Virginia (New York, 2002)
Darrett B. Rutman and Anita H. Rutman, A Place in Time: Middlesex
County, Virginia, 1650-1750 (New York, 1984)
Thad W. Tate and David L. Ammerman, eds., The Chesapeake in the
Seventeenth Century: Essays on Anglo-American Society and
Politics (New York, 1979)
Anne E. Yentsch, A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves: A Study in
Historical Archaeology (New York, 1994)
New England
David Grayson Allen, In English Ways: The Movement of Societies
and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay
in the Seventeenth Century (New York, 1981)
Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social
Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge, Mass., 1974)
Richard L. Bushman, From Puritan to Yankee: Character and the
Social Order in Connecticut, 1690-1765 (Cambridge, Mass., 1967)
Jon Butler, Awash in a Sea of Faith: Christianizing the American
People (Cambridge, Mass., 1990)
Cornelia Hughes Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and
Society in Connecticut, 1639-1789 (Chapel Hill, 1995)
Richard Godbeer, The Devil's Dominion: Magic and Religion in
Early New England (New York, 1992)
Philip J. Greven, Jr., Four Generations: Population, Land, and
Family in Colonial Andover, Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y., 1970)
Philip F. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion's Glory: Puritan Radicalism in
New England, 1620-1660 (Middletown, Conn., 1984)
Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan
Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill,
1982)
Christine Leigh Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime
Communities of Colonial Massachusetts, 1690-1750 (New York, 1984)
Jane Kamensky, Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in
Early New England (New York, 1997)
Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft
in Colonial New England (New York, 1987)
Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province
(Cambridge, Mass., 1953)
Edmund Morgan, Visible Saints: The History of a Puritan Idea
(Ithaca, N.Y., 1963)
Mark A. Peterson, The Price of Redemption: The Spiritual Economy
of Puritan New England (Stanford, 1997)
Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New
England (Ithaca, 1997)
Erik R. Seeman, Pious Persuasions: Laity and Clergy in
Eighteenth-Century New England (Baltimore, 1999)
David E. Stannard, The Puritan Way of Death: A Study in Religion,
Culture, and Social Change (New York, 1977)
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives: Image and Reality in the
Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650-1750 (New York, 1980)
Michael P. Winship, Making Heretics: Militant Protestantism and
Free Grace in Massachusetts, 1636-1641 (Princeton, 2002)
Primary Sources
Robert J. Allison, ed., The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano,
Written by Himself (New York, 1995)
William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620-1647 (New York, 1981)
Elaine G. Breslaw, ed., Records of the Tuesday Club of Annapolis,
1745-1756 (Urbana, Ill., 1988)
Colin G. Calloway, The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices
from Early America (New York, 1994)
John Demos, Remarkable Providences: Readings on Early American
History, rev. ed. (Boston, 1991)
Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography (Philadelphia, 1788)
Jack P. Greene, ed., The Diary of Colonel Landon Carter of Sabine Hall,
1752-1778 (Richmond, Va., 1987)
David D. Hall, ed., Witch-Hunting in Seventeenth-Century New
England: A Documentary History, 1638-1692 (Boston, 1991)
Alan Heimert and Andrew Delbanco, eds., The Puritans in America:
A Narrative Anthology (Cambridge, Mass., 1985)
Carol F. Karlsen and Laurie Crumpacker, eds., The Journal of Esther
Edwards Burr, 1754-1757 (New Haven, 1984)
William G. Mcloughlin, ed., The Diary of Isaac Backus (Providence,
R.I., 1979)
Thomas Paine, Common Sense (Philadelphia, 1776)
Mary Rowlandson, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God, edited by Neal
Salisbury (New York, 1997)
M. Halsey Thomas, ed., The Diary of Samuel Sewell, 1674-1729 (New York,
1973)
Francis G. Walett, ed., The Diary of Ebenezer Parkman, 1703-1782
(Worcester, Mass., 1974)
Slavery
Ira Berlin, Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of
Slavery in North America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998)
T. H. Breen and Stephen Innes, "Myne Owne Ground": Race and
Freedom on Virginia's Eastern Shore, 1640-1676 (New York, 1980)
David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca,
N.Y., 1966)
Sylvia R. Frey and Betty Wood, Come Shouting to Zion: African
American Protestantism in the American South and British Caribbean to
1830 (Chapel Hill, 1998)
Rhys Isaac, Landon Carter’s Uneasy Kingdom: Revolution and
Rebellion on a Virginia Plantation (New York, 2004)
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The
Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the Eighteenth Century (Baton
Rouge, 1992)
Peter Kolchin, American Slavery, 1619-1877 (New York, 1993)
Jane Landers, Black Society in Spanish Florida (Urbana, Ill., 1999)
Winthrop D. Jordan, White Over Black: American Attitudes Toward
the Negro, 1550-1812 (New York, 1968)
Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in
New World Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004)
Philip D. Morgan, Slave Counterpoint: Black Culture in the
Eighteenth-Century Chesapeake and Lowcountry (Chapel Hill, 1998)
Robert Olwell, Masters, Slaves, and Subjects: The Culture of
Power in the South Carolina Low Country, 1740-1790 (Ithaca, 1998)
Mechal Sobel, The World They Made Together: Black and White
Values in Eighteenth-Century Virginia (Princeton, 1987)
Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and
Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York, 1983)
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World,
1400-1680 (New York, 1992)
Shane White, Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New
York City, 1770-1810 (Athens, Ga., 1991)
Peter H. Wood, Black Majority: Negroes in Colonial South Carolina
from 1670 through the Stono Rebellion (New York, 1974)
American Revolution
Ira Berlin and Ronald Hoffman, eds., Slavery and Freedom in the Age of
the American Revolution (Urbana, Ill., 1983)
Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman and
her Family in Revolutionary America (New York, 1984)
Colin G. Calloway, The American Revolution in Indian Country:
Crisis and Diversity in Native American Communities (New York, 1995)
David W. Conroy, Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial
Massachusetts (Chapel Hill, 1995)
Jay Fliegelman, Declaring Independence: Jefferson, Natural
Language, and the Culture of Performance (Stanford, Calif., 1993)
Jay Fliegelman, Prodigals and Pilgrims: The American Revolution
Against Patriarchal Authority, 1750-1800 (New York, 1982)
Susan Juster, Disorderly Women: Sexual Politics and
Evangelicalism in Revolutionary New England (Ithaca, N.Y., 1994)
Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in
Revolutionary America (New York, 1980)
Jean B. Lee, The Price of Nationhood: The American Revolution in
Charles County (New York, 1994)
Pauline Maier, American Scripture: Making the Declaration of
Independence (New York, 1997)
Gary B. Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political
Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge,
Mass., 1979)
Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary
Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, 2d ed. (1980; Ithaca, 1996)
Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental
Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (New York, 1979)
Garry Wills, Inventing America: Jefferson's Declaration of
Independence (New York, 1979)
Gordon S. Wood, The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 (New
York, 1969)
Gordon S. Wood., The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York,
1991)
Alfred F. Young, ed., The American Revolution: Explorations in
the History of American Radicalism (Dekalb, Ill., 1976)
Rosemarie Zagarri, A Woman's Dilemma: Marcy Otis Warren and the
American Revolution (Wheeling, Ill., 1995)