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• 1 media/Blake Key Image.jpg 2016-07-27T13:20:34+00:00 Course Introduction 38 image_header 2016-09-02T20:43:17+00:00

  Getting Started

  Welcome to History 2F90! We're glad you have chosen to join us in our adventure in online learning. Like you, we the instructors (Michael Driedger and Daniel Samson) will be learning a lot this year, since a topic as large as the history of the Atlantic world provides endless possibilities for new questions and new insights.
  
  If you have not already done so, please read the course syllabus. 
  
  To begin your learning in this course, take some time to look over the materials on this page. It's best to use a laptop or desktop computer to view course resources such as this online book as well as the Brock University Sakai learning management system. You can view the site on a smartphone or tablet, but we do not recommend that you do so regularly. If you wish, test out the difference for yourself.
  
  When you go into Sakai (*** LINK HERE ***) you will notice a series of tool icons on the left-hand side of the screen. These will help you navigate between the various components of the course that are not part of this online textbook. The Sakai learning management site gives you access to course sources (i.e., "the readings"), plus quizzes, assignments, a messaging system, a calendar, etc. We will make more of these available as the course progresses. Please familiarize yourself with Sakai in the first week of the course (the Week starting Sept. 12).
  
  We are striving to keep the structure of each Lesson the same, so that you know what to expect from week to week. With very few exceptions (such as this "Getting started" entry) each Lesson will include these headings:
  • This week's big question
  • Learning outcomes
  • Questions to consider, and learning activity
  • Background
  • Toolbox
  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
  • Supplemental material
  Please be aware that this course is designed for you to do all of your learning online on your own time. There are no scheduled classes. However, for the course to succeed we will all have to progress through the course on the same weekly schedule. The reason for keeping a common schedule is that we want you to be able to respond to one another in the weekly forums. Therefore, while you can work at your own pace within each course week, you will have to make sure that you complete each week's learning activities within the scheduled time. This is especially important for the Forums. Please plan your time well! The syllabus has all the details. The Calendar in Sakai is there to help remind you of activities and deadlines.

  Big question

  For each lesson there will also be a "big question" focused on that week's theme. You can use this question to help you organize your learning for the week, and also help you think in a step-by-step way about the overall course question. Here's a reminder of the big question for the course:
  • For the period between 1500 and 1850, what were the most significant factors in the rise of the liberal-capitalist West?

  Learning outcomes

  Each week under this heading we will outline a series of benchmarks to help guide your learning. These "outcomes" are meant to help you and us evaluate whether or not you are learning what we intend to teach you.

  You should notice that the syllabus also includes a list of learning outcomes for the course as a whole. In summary, the course outcomes fall under three categories (knowledge, professional practice, and skills) and are the ability to:

  1. Describe (and explain the significance of) the major developments in the early modern Atlantic world;
  2. Communicate ideas/arguments effectively and honestly in all course work;
  3. Ask good historical questions and form strong arguments that answer these questions using the best evidence you can find.

  For each week of the course the learning outcomes will be much more specific. For example, by the end of this Introduction (the first course week) you should have:

  • Read the syllabus and be able to answer questions about the main aspects of the course (themes, organization, and policies); and
  • Read about and be able to name the 6 dimensions of historical thinking, as outlined on the Historical Thinking website.

  Although you might not notice a direct connection between this week's learning outcomes and the outcomes for the course as a whole, you should keep the general outcomes from the syllabus in mind as we move through the course. In a month or two you should recognize yourself building more and more overall abilities in knowledge, professional practice and skills.

  Questions to consider, and learning activities

  Under this heading will give you more detailed questions. These further questions are meant as elaborations on the big question for the week. Therefore, you should always keep the big question in front of you.
  
  The questions are meant to guide not only your personal learning but also your discussions with other students in the course Forum. You should contribute to the Forum AFTER you have read and thought about all the assigned sources for the week, but you should also follow the schedule as outlined in the course syllabus and in on the Calendar. This will require that you PLAN CAREFULLY.

  Background

  Every week we'll include section that provides you with background about the Lesson's subject. For this Introduction, here's an example.
  

  To start thinking about course themes, take a close look at the image above (we've also included it and a portion of the following text in the course syllabus). Few works of art get at so much history, so simply.  William Blake, a radical Romantic artist of the late 18th century, depicts three women in mutual embrace and support. Blake intended this as an allegory of human mutuality. The work was an illustration for a book that came from a European officer’s experience in suppressing a rebellion of African slaves in America.  Not much mutuality in that event!  But the book’s author, John Stedman, used his experience to speak out against slavery and against the gross exploitation of indigenous Americans.  The book, like many of its kind, was not unambiguous (you’ll look at the full picture, and read an excerpt from Stedman’s writing later in the course). Indeed, some historians have commented that the illustration speaks more to the hypocrisies of Europeans in the colonial world than it does to any actions directed at fostering genuine mutuality.  Europe, some have reminded us, was very clearly "supported" by African labour and American land.  But showing a rosy picture of a "present" reality was not the artist’s intention.  The picture was meant as an allegory for an imagined future –- of what might be, not of what was.  Both Blake and (later) Stedman saw clearly that Europe benefited by grossly unequal and decidedly un-mutual relationships, and they worked to end the slave trade. Their vision of an emerging Atlantic world economy and society was utopian.

  The early modern era –- roughly 1400-1800 –- marks an important watershed period in the history of "the West" (for this purposes of this course, Western Europe, with the gradual addition of America) in global history. In 1400, Arab, Turkish, and Chinese empires were far more powerful, far richer, and far more technologically advanced than any political force in the West.  By 1800, the reverse was true.  This course tracks that shift, that series of changes which brought about what we might call "the rise of the West".  That story is complex and even in this full-year course we will only scratch the surface of some of its many facets. But what we will see is that Blake, taken literally, was quite right: Europe was very much supported by Africa and America.  Its wealth came through many sources, but the real advances cannot even be imagined without the use of African labour and American land and resources. The Atlantic world (Europe, Africa, and the Americas) was a unified system, but its major players (Europeans, Africans, and Americans) experienced that system very differently.  This course explores that emergent Western dominance, with a keen eye to understanding the very different experiences that shaped it.

  In addition to teaching you about the history of the early modern Atlantic world, this course is also designed to teach you more generally about the practice of history. In everyday speech we often use the word "history" to mean "the past." To learn about history at the university level, however, you need to be aware of another more advanced meaning of "history": inquiry about the past. One of the most basic questions about the past is: How do we know anything? Where does our knowledge about the past come from? You might think the answer to this basic question is that knowledge about the past comes from textbooks. But where does the knowledge in textbooks come from? The answer to this question has many parts. The short answer is that we learn about the past most fundamentally not from sources about the past but rather from sources from the past. Historians call these primary sources. Learning how to work effectively with sources from (and about) the past takes lots of practice.

  As the course progresses, we will reveal more and more aspects to the study of history to you. The skills we will be teaching you are meant to be cumulative. This means that they build on each other. In other words, you should not think about each week's Lesson as an isolated unit but rather as one part of a larger whole. Our intention in teaching you about the practice of historical inquiry is that you will be able to apply the overall skills of inquiry to questions outside of the course.

  Toolbox

  This course teaches you not only about the history of certain times and places, but also about the practice of history. To practice a trade, you need tools. Under this heading we will provide you with tools or exercises that will help you improve your reading, writing, inquiring and thinking in this course -- and we hope also in your life beyond the course.
   

  HISTORICAL THINKING LOGO

  This week we will get you to learn about and practice thinking historically. Historical thinking is a variation on critical thinking. To start learning about it, you will read the following introductions from The Historical Thinking Project (click on the links):

  • The general introduction to the 6 components of historical thinking;
  • The introduction to the concept of perspective in historical thinking;
  • The introduction to the concept of cause and consequence in historical thinking.

  One of the purposes of the Forum exercise this week is to get you to think about your perspective as an interpreter of evidence about and from the past. The readings below (see "Secondary sources") will help you begin to think in more sophisticated ways about causes and consequences. You should also try to analyze the perspectives of the authors whose work we examine from week to week.

  Primary sources

  Under this heading you will normally find information about and links to the required primary readings for each week. For this introductory week, however, there are no primary materials.

  Sources are the building materials of historical studies. You might already have a good idea of the difference between primary and secondary sources. Here's a quick refresher.

  

  The most common kinds of primary sources you will use in history courses are published texts. These might take lots of forms: personal journals, travel accounts, letters, posters, and novels. Primary sources do not have to be written sources. They might include paintings, music scores or recordings, archaeological remains (even bones or DNA samples). These lists are not complete by any means.

  Like primary sources, the most common kinds of secondary sources you will use in history courses are published texts. Usually these take the form of essays in academic journals and books about historical subjects. Although the formats that secondary sources take is less varied than is the case for primary sources, not all secondary sources take the form of printed materials. Lectures are an example, as are documentaries.

  Here's a challenge for you to think about: If people wanted to write a book about your life 100 years from now, what kinds of primary sources might be available, and what could they learn about you from the sources? What couldn't they learn from them?

  Secondary sources...

  The readings for the opening week provide you with three very different accounts of the forces that have shaped people's lives in the past: ideas, material and technological factors, and social conflict. Think of each as a useful point of reference that you can use throughout this course when you want to try to understand a new subject. What were the most important ideas, technologies, and social conflicts that we need to learn more about to understand that subject?

  Learning tip: Whenever you read a source, always make sure you associate the main themes of the source with the author. This is a very important step for effective critical and historical thinking.

  Be aware and always keep in mind that each of the readings for this week are excerpts from much longer books. Click on the authors' names to find these excerpts.

  Here's a historical thinking challenge for you to think about before you write you Forum responses: What are the most important ideas, technologies, and social conflicts that have shaped your life?

  Supplemental material

  Under this heading we may include some light-hearted materials, but also ...

  Under the "Supplemental material" heading you may also find serious material. Here's an example:

  How to Succeed in the Course

  Planning your time: To succeed at a high level in most university courses, you need devote between 6 and 9 hours of time to each course, each week. We have structured the expectations in HIST 2F90 to be more modest in the first few weeks, so that you have a chance to get used to learning in the online environment. However, the workload will increase as the course progresses, so you need to plan your time effectively and be disciplined every week. You will need to stay disciplined, of course, in all of your university courses, if you wish to succeed, but disciplined and regular work is especially crucial for success in an online course such as this one. Based on the experiences of students in other online courses, those who keep up with course work tend to do better than they might in face-to-face courses, while those who do not keep up tend to do more poorly. We would like you all to succeed.

  Taking responsibility for your own learning: One of the great advantages of an online course is that it offers you great flexibility in your time; one of the great disadvantages of an online course is that it’s easy to ignore.  Success in this course demands that you schedule your time wisely and take responsibility for your own learning.

  To be an effective and active learner we expect that you will: 

  1. Check Sakai regularly (including Messages);
  2. Make sure that you read all available resources thoughtfully and carefully;
  3. Review readings and materials thoughtfully and reflectively before you make contributions to each week's Forum;
  4. Be self-motivated and self-directed rather than passive;
  5. Manage your time effectively;
  6. Troubleshoot problems rather than simply waiting to be told what to do;
  7. Keep records of your research and learning (this includes all essay notes and drafts and copies for assignments).
• 1 media/Election_Day_1815_by_John_Lewis_Krimmel (detail) .jpg 2016-06-29T07:08:28+00:00 Work and Freedom 33 image_header 2023-03-07T20:37:27+00:00

  This week's big question

  Our big question this week is how did the new freedoms of the liberalizing world change the 19th-century Atlantic world? 

  Video introduction
  
  
  
  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should:
  • know something of the varied political and economic landscape of industrializing America;
  • understand the tensions between free and unfree labour in 19th-century society;
  • understand something of the response of British colonial officials to the end of slavery;
  • be able to compare the place of free and unfree labour in the liberalizing Atlantic World.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  Read ONE of the two essays below (though read BOTH for the exam!!).
  • What were the economic forces that were changing American society?
  • What were the political forces that were changing American society?
  • Does slavery appear to have been sustainable in America at this time?
  • How did British colonial planners imagine the future of post-emancipation Trinidad?
  • In the British planners' vision of the future of Trinidad, would freedom prevail?

  Background

  Rule Britannia!
  Britannia rule the waves.
  Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.

  The history of “Rule Britannia” – which remains Britain’s most popular patriotic song – dates from the 1740s. It was a time when many still recalled the creation of the Bill of Rights in 1689 [resisting internal tyrants], the wars with France, Holland and Germany [resisting external foes], and when Britons were enslaved, captured and often ransomed by the famed Barbary pirates of North Africa [resisting actual enslavement, if not in numbers anywhere close to those that the British took from Africa].  It’s ironic of course because at that time Britain was the largest and wealthiest slave-trading nation in the world. The power of the Royal Navy was in large part supported by seamen who learned their craft plying the coasts of Africa, carried on ships financed by slave capital, and on revenues earned in Caribbean plantations. Britons would “never, never, never be slaves”, but their power and ultimately their freedom would be built on slavery. 100 years later that would be over. In 1833 Britain made slavery illegal. In short, this is a remarkable tale of political and economic transformation.
  
  This week, we want to take a quick look at a time when that story seemed to have been ending. We’ll have fewer readings this week. In part, this is because we’re wanting you to concentrate on your essays; but in part it’s also because we’re wanting you to take this opportunity to prepare for your take-home exam. The exact question for that exam will be given out the day after your final essays are due. But you’ll see that the question is closely linked to the readings. 
  
  There are two readings on the list of secondary sources this week, but we’re only asking you to read one for now (however, for the exam, you should read both). Each essay looks at the period around 1840 as a moment of transition and adaptation.  Each essay looks at a changing economy during the industrial revolution, and examines how people thought about wealth, power, liberty, and politics in this moment when democracy was expanding, and slavery was just beginning to end. Slavery, of course, would not die in the United States until the Civil War in (1861-65).  But in the British Empire slavery was banned after 1833, and the electoral franchise had been extended to far more people with the Great Reform Act of 1832.
  
  Thus, this was a time of change. Yet, these changes were no less contentious, and many people worried about what these changes would mean. Last week, in reading about abolitionism, we saw that one of the anti-abolitionists' arguments was that social chaos would result from abolition: in other words, that the labour market would be flooded with poor black workers, that whites and blacks would mix inappropriately, and that social order would decline.  Our essays this week examine some of these moments of change.
  
  The first essay examines the schemes British colonial planners had for Trinidad after emancipation. Trinidad was a major slave colony, producing sugar for the global-western market.  How, these planners asked, could that continue, in the era of free market labour?  The second essay is about America. It is a chapter from John Larsen’s book The Market Revolution. Larsen’s book takes readers through the many “marvelous improvements” of early 19th-century America, the financial panic of 1837, and its social and economic fall-out over the next twenty years.  In our chapter, we read of the different impacts the economic and political changes had for farmers, workers, women, and slaves.
  
  In all these cases, we see the impact of economic and political change on the lives of ordinary people, and in the imaginations of those who would govern them.

  Primary sources

  There are no primary sources for this week.

  Secondary sources

  Choose either
  • John L. Larson, "Heartless Markets, Heartless Men," ch. 3 from The Market Revolution: Liberty, Ambition, and the Eclipse of the Common Good (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), selections.
  or
  • James Epstein, “Freedom Rules/Colonial Fractures: Bringing ‘Free’ Labor to Trinidad in the Age of Revolution”, in Simon Gunn and James Vernon, eds., The Peculiarities of Liberal Modernity in Imperial Britain (Berkley: University of California Press, 2011), 39-53.

  Please. note these are selections so there are gaps in the sources above. These gaps are deliberate. Read the sections provided.

  
  Also read:  
  
  Boon, Sonja. What the Oceans Remember : Searching for Belonging and Home. Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2019. (Chapters Twelve and Thirteen ) We will be discussing Boon in MS Teams workshops this week in conversation with the secondary sources, and in preparation for your take home exam. Attendance at at least one workshop is mandatory, and will replace your forum contributions this week.