Post on 01-Jan-2016
transcript
History 135: American History through 1877
Introduction & Course Policies
1. Review syllabus ASAP
2. Obtain the appropriate texts
3. Turn off all cell phones!
I. Was America a Mistake?
An 18th Century Debate
300th Anniversary of Columbian Voyage
(1992 - how to remember this event?)
A. Biological/natural inferiority
1. 1780s - Comte de Buffon
“It is a great and terrible spectacle to see one half of the globe disfavoredby nature that everything found thereis degenerate or monstrous.”
2. Animals were smaller
3. Natives illiterate, peaceful
4. Jefferson’s response
1787 - Notes on the State of Virginia
* natural bounty
* justified slavery
B. Cultural and racial degeneration
1. Slavery
2. Warfare among nation-states (1550-1815)
1600s: 87 conflicts; 1700-1800s, world war
3. Individual brutality
Conquistadors
4. Racial degeneration
coureurs de bois (French) mestizos (Spanish)
a. “mixed” couples
b. diluted religion
c. genocide
Fur Traders Descend the Missouri - Bingham
C. Mob politics
1. Dangers of democratization how far should it go?
2. Dark side of people
“Age of Jackson”
- Indian Removal, religious persecution,
political/social repression, nativism,
ecological devastation
D. Failure of the American Experiment
1. Enlightenment principles contract nationalism John Locke
2. The fall of the
United States
(version 1776)
“blood & iron”