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• 1 media/Blake Key Image.jpg 2016-07-27T13:20:34+00:00 Course Introduction 122 2023-24 image_header 2023-09-04T14:37:22+00:00

  Getting Started

  Profs. Trudy Tattersall and Daniel (Danny) Samson welcome you to HIST2F90! We're glad you have chosen to join us in our adventure in online learning. 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, but you have to do regular work every week.
  
  
  
  
  Once you've read the course syllabus, 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 e-textbook as well as the Brock University Brightspace learning management system. You can also view Brightspace or this e-textbook on a smartphone or tablet. If that helps you keep up with the course, great! Keeping up is important. Just be aware that a larger screen and keyboard will help you to be able to make the best use of your time and the resources we provide.
  
  When you go into Brightspace you will notice a series of tool icons on top of the screen. You will spend most of your time in the "Discussions" tab as you have all been assigned discussion groups in which you will post, respond, and engage with one another. Brightspace also gives you access to quizzes, assignments, a messaging system, a calendar, etc. We will make more of these options and tools available as the course progresses. Please familiarize yourself with Brightspace in the first week of the course (the Week starting on the first day of classes: Wednesday, Sept. 6. 2023), but be aware that more and more Brightspace resources will become available as the weeks of the course progress.
   

  Note: Unless we tell you otherwise, each course week will start on Mondays and finish on the Friday of that week. This is the time in which you have to complete each weekly Lesson and its Forum discussion contributions.

  For you to succeed in this course - and indeed for the course to succeed for all of you - we will all have to progress through the course on the same weekly schedule. A common schedule allows all of you to respond to one another in the weekly Forums. Therefore, while you can work mostly 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 Course Overview (aka "Home" on the dropdown menu) and Syllabus has the main details. The Calendar in Brightspace is there to help remind you of activities and deadlines (note that the Calendar in Brightspace will only be available starting in the second or third week of the course, and it will be updated from time to time -- so check back on the Calendar as well as other resources on a regular basis).
  
  We strive 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
  • Video introductions
  • Learning outcomes
  • Questions to consider, and learning activity
  • Background
  • Toolbox
  • Primary sources
  • Secondary sources
  • Supplemental material
  You'll be working with these headings every week, so let's have a look at what they contain. 

  This week's big question

  Each lesson has a "big question" focused on that week's theme. You should 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. Recall that we have a big over-arching question for the course:

  For the period between 1400 and 1850, what were the most significant factors in the rise of the liberal-capitalistic West?

  Each week's Big Question is what you will be discussing with other members of your Forum Group. You will use the primary and secondary sources in the Lesson to provide you with evidence as you think about and discuss the question. Good answers are based on evidence from the assigned sources!
  
  So, the course has a Big Question, each week has its own Big Question, and each week also has a series of smaller questions. They're all connected. The smaller questions help focus our attention on facets of the weekly big questions; the weekly big questions help us to think about the the Big Question for the entire course.
  
  For this week (Wednesday, Sept.6, to Monday, Sept. 11 2022 -- a short week, because Wednesday the 6th is the University's first day of classes) the "big question" is meant to help you introduce yourself to your Forum colleagues to each other, while also getting you to start thinking historically. 
  
  The question or task for the week is:    

  Introduce yourself to your Forum group. Tell everyone something about your perspective on the world, and perhaps, how do you see yourself fitting into a larger history. Perhaps it is an Atlantic history, or a North American History, or an Asian History...or perhaps, yours is a little more complicated.

  Video introductions

  The videos are meant to help you get started with the Lesson. Watch them before you begin each Lesson.

  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 you are learning something substantial.

  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). At the end of this course you should have 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 we will usually 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, a "background" section will provide you with some general context for the Lesson's subject. 

  In addition to introducing you to 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 (as well as 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

  Under this heading you learn the basic skills of historical interpretation.
  
  This course teaches you not only about the history of certain times and places, but also about the practice of history -- about doing and making 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.
  This week we will get you to acquire an overview of the principles of thinking historically. Historical thinking is a variation on critical thinking. To start learning about it, you should read the following introductions from The Historical Thinking Project (click on the links):

  • The general introduction to the 6 components of historical thinking;
  • The introductions to the concepts of perspective and evidence 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.

  Primary sources (sources from the past)

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

  Primary sources are created in the past worlds that we want to study. They take lots of forms: personal journals, travel accounts, letters, posters, and books and newspapers from the time you are investigating. In this course, most our primary sources are written/textual sources, but they can include paintings, prints, music scores, oral accounts, and archaeological remains (e.g., pottery, or even bones or DNA samples). 
  
  In most Lessons in the e-textbook, under the "Primary Sources" heading you will normally find information about and links to the required primary readings for each week. For this introductory week, however, we will not provide you with any primary materials. You can think of your memories and stories as the primary materials for the week!

  Secondary sources (sources about the past)

  Secondary sources are interpretations that try to make sense of past worlds. Most secondary sources you will use in history courses are modern, published texts. Usually these take the form of essays in academic journals and books about historical subjects. Although the formats that secondary sources take are 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.
  
  The thing that all secondary sources have in common is that they provide interpretations of evidence from the past. Think about this when you write your answers to each week's big question. You are writing your own interpretation of evidence -- your own secondary source.

  Learning tip: Whenever you read a source (whether primary or secondary), always make sure you associate the main themes of the source with the author. Knowing who wrote a letter or painted a portrait or created a documentary or gave a lecture is usually a very important step for effective critical and historical thinking.

  Supplemental material

  Under this heading we'll provide you with some extra notes that are significant but are not required for the course. You may even find some of them interesting!

  For this first supplemental section we'll provide you some tips on how to succeed in this course.

  How to Succeed in the Course

  Plan 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.

  Take 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 Brightspace regularly (including Announcements and the Calendar);
  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).

  Reminder: Starting on Wednesday the 6th (2023) starting at 8 am it'll be time for you to start introducing yourselves to each other in the Brightspace Discussions. See the instructions above (in the section "This week's big question") for more details.

• 1 media/Death_of_Father_Sebastian_Rale_of_the_Society_of_Jesus.jpg media/Plymouth 1679.jpg 2016-06-27T13:29:55+00:00 Settler Colonialism 120 image_header 2023-07-25T21:32:22+00:00

  This week's big question

  Why did a major war break out between settlers and Indigenous peoples of colonial New England?

  Video introduction
  
  

  NOTE: In an earlier version of the course, students read Daniel Mandell's interpretation of King Philip's War in a book subtitled Colonial Expansion, Native Resistance, and the End of Indian Sovereignty (2010). Since making this video a few years ago, we have updated the lesson by replacing Mandell's interpretation with a newer one by Lisa Brooks. With the exception of this change, all parts of the video introduction still apply.

  
  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should:
  • understand some of the basic dimensions of political and social development in colonial North America;
  • know the fundamental contested issues between Indigenous peoples and British settlers in colonial New England;
  • know something of the bases for King Philip’s War and its major outcomes;
  • be able to explain how different forces – notably, religious, military, and economic power – affected the development of colonial North America.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  King Phillip's war was one of the worst wars in American history, with heavy losses on both sides. Its particular story is important. But it also helps us to think about the general issue of on-going relations between the Indigenous peoples of America and the increasingly large number of Europeans who were settling in, and thus occupying, what had been Indigenous lands.
  Here are some particular issues and questions that help you break down the big question into smaller parts:
  • Discuss the colonists view of Indigenous peoples. How did they explain war with Indigenous people? Where did they find legitimacy for their views?
  • What does the 1676 map tell us about these colonial societies? There's also a modern map on page 63 of the Mandell text.  Compare the 1676 map with the modern map. What's different?
  • Rowlandson's book was exceptionally popular in its day, and has been republished many times since. You only have a small excerpt, but why do you think it was so important?
  • What changed in 1675? What factors pushed people to take up arms in defence of their views?
  • Read the Wikipedia excerpt on King Philip's War after you've listened to the Lisa Brooks podcast. Look for differences in the ways she tells the story, who she emphassies, and what assumptions she brings to the table. 
  • Villebon's account is later (1690) and further north (in what is today New Brunswick). But it's all related. Can you see how? [The map of the Wabanaki Confederacy can help.]

  Background

  In 1675 a major war broke out in southern New England between English colonists in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and two Indigenous nations, the Wampanoag and Narragansett. King Philip’s War, named for a leader of the Wampanoag people, was the biggest war in colonial history. At a time when the population of the entire region was around 80,000 people almost 9,000 died, two thirds of them Indigenous. This was a period of transition in the North American colonies. Virginia and Massachusetts, in particular, had grown significantly in the past 60 years but were not yet the mature colonies that would rebel one hundred years later; the Wampanoag had lost their dominant place in the region, but were not yet a politically or militarily marginalized people. The colonies were experiencing powerful internal tensions and external pressures. Internally, growth had brought about wealth and expansion. That same growth was adding pressure to surrounding indigenous peoples, many of whom determined to push back more forcefully. The result was one of the bloodiest wars ever fought.
  Not all of New England’s Indigenous peoples rebelled. Many had converted to Christianity and a few of these “praying Indians” joined the attack (although in several instances that distinction was lost on colonial militias who often killed “Indians” on sight); others had long-standing poor relations with the Wampanoag and saw no reason to change that relationship. Indeed, in the later stages of the war, many Indigenous men fought with the colonists. Though the war was undoubtedly a war between colonisers and colonised, the lines were often blurred.
  
  The causes of King Philip's war continue to be debated. Early accounts portrayed the war as civilised Christians in a struggle against primitive pagans. Though sometimes showing some sympathy for the Wampanoag, the main thrust of the story usually portrayed the settlers as defending themselves from hostile "warlike" peoples. Most of the story, too, centres on the Wampanoag leader Metacom (KIng Philip), typically portraying him as having turned his back on the peaceful relationship his father had struck with the settlers, and thus having betrayed an informal treaty. Others focus on the murder of Sassamon, a Wampanoag man who had converted to Christianity, and thus portraying the story as a savage response to Christianity overtaking their culture. More recent studies have offered a more contextual explanation focusing less on the immediate events that resulted in the outbreak of war and more on the longer-term deterioration of relations. The New Englanders, their populations expanding through high birth-rates and continued immigration, had pushed much more deeply and aggressively into Indigenous territory. 
  
  What marks almost all these accounts, whether sympathetic to the settler or Indigenous perspectives, is that they assume Metacom was the leader of the Wampanoag, and it was his leadership defining the war. That he played a major part, no one disputes. But one recent book by historian Lisa Brooks has uncovered new research that casts wholly new light not only on another leader, but also on a leader who was female. Weetamoo was Metacom's aunt, but more importantly she was a respected leader among a broad group of kin-related Wampanoag peoples. Brooks's examination is grounded in rigorously detailed archival research, and urges us not only to reexamine our assumptions of settlers versus Indigenous cultures, but also to question our assumptions about leadership when the documents so often focus on men. As we've seen in a number of cases already, it's very difficult to see the history of preliterate peoples. Brooks offers us a first glimpse of what it might mean to more effectively assume an Indigenous perspective on settler-colonial stories - a perspective where settler assumptions might actually block us from seeing what really happened. 
  
  Most of King Philip’s War was fought within 50 miles of , but it also spilled over onto northern and western frontiers. This brought in other Indigenous peoples, most of whom were allied with the French in Canada and Acadia. New France has a smaller population than the British colonies, but dominated trade (and therefore military alliances) with many Indigenous peoples in what is now the US northeast and mid-west (Maine, Vermont, western New York, Michigan, and Ohio). Though not direct players in the early phases of King Philip’s War, the field of battle moved into northern New England in 1677 and 1678, and it began to draw in French allies such as the Abenaki and Mi’kmaq (in what is today Nova Scotia and northern New England). The result was a decades-long frontier battle between French and English colonists and Iroquoian and Algonquian nations. Those continued tension - often small-scale wars - was very much part of the build up to the Seven Years War.
  
  The endless cycle of attack and counterattack is evident in some of our French readings this week. French colonization strategies were quite different than the English. Where the English brought in many settlers to “plant” colonies in the New World, the French strategy was based on trade much more than settlement. Thus, while the English strategy invariably put pressure on Indigenous communities, this was much less so the case with the French.  One major result of these different strategies was that by the late 1600s the English greatly outnumbered the French. Nevertheless, both groups pushed against the frontier, and both were compelled to negotiate, or resist, the complex politics of Indigenous peoples in the interior. The general result was one of tension between the colonies of the two major European powers and among and between their Indigenous allies in America.  While our readings focus on only one region in the late 17th century, those differences and their resulting conflicts, nevertheless, mirror much of the larger story of North American colonization. The defeat of the Wampanoag and their allies would come at a high cost for New England, both in terms of lives lost and the impact on their society and politics. It improved the colonists' security, establishing a base for the colonies' expansion through the 18th century (which we will examine in the next term). It would also, however, bring them into greater conflict with most northern and western Indigenous peoples such as the Abenaki and Mi'kmaq, and eventually with the Iroquois (Haudensaunee) - the dominant Indigenous nation of central North America. In northern New England, the Wabanaki Confederacy - an alliance of Mi'kmaq, Abenaki, Penobscot, and Maliseet peoples, with occasional French support - fought four wars with the Anglo-American settlers of what is now northern Maine and the southern Maritime provinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Over the next seventy years a series of smaller wars would be fought along the northern and western frontiers of New England. Of course, the Indigenous peoples of these regions didn't see this territory as English, but as their own. Further to the north, in the French colonies of Canada and Acadia, French colonial forces allied with these Indigenous peoples both for trading purposes and to weaken English efforts to push further inland. These protracted conflicts would culminate in an even larger war, the Seven Years War (1756-83), which would fundamentally reshape colonial and Indigenous North America.
  
  In the historical memory of New England, the war shaped how generations of settlers would understand "the savages" who surrounded them. If some would convert to Christianity and show signs of accommodating to the colonists' ways, others seemed all the more intent to resist and the drive the invaders back into the sea upon which they arrived.  There were several Anglo-Indigenous wars in the 17th and 18th centuries, though none were bigger, and none loomed larger in subsequent generations for what it taught them about Indigenous peoples. In the colonists' histories, Indigenous people were savages that needed to be contained, or crushed. Few stories caught this spirit more powerfully than the captivity narrative of Mary Rowlandson. Her story, published as a book shortly after the war and republished several times since, illustrated exactly what New England settlers thought about their Indian foes, and about themselves. The Indigenous captors were cruel and primitive; they ate barbarous foods; they engaged in horrendous practices. Mary Rowlandson, on the other hand, was a model of Christian womanhood: an innocent who lost her husband and child in an attack, suffering at the hands of cruel Indians, but kept strong by her Christian faith and noble demeanour. The story, as we'll see, also shows indications of Indigenous kindness, and New England barbarism, but the main elements of the story highlight a just fight against a cruel opponent. The narrative never considers the plight of the Wampanoag, that their people were dying of Europeans diseases, that their land was being taken away, and that New England officials continued to push back after every concession.  For generations afterward, this message for the colonists remained powerful, a clear story of the justice of their actions.
  
  We can see it very differently today, but we should also strive to understand that worldview - to understand what allowed people to believe so firmly in the correctness of their ways. But the war surely does contain in miniature a view of the larger state of settler-Indigenous stories. Not all were so violent, not all so clearly captured the naked ambition of New England colonization, not all were so powerfully and effectively narrated. But no story illuminates more effectively the broader pattern of warfare in securing European holds on the so-called New World.

  Toolbox

  This week you will practice analyzing the causes of a major set of conflicts. The details will matter here, but the general objective of thinking about causes and consequences in research applies to almost every historical question. Spend a few minutes reading about the general principles of thinking about this aspect of historical thinking by clicking here. The linked page from The Historical Thinking Project is not long, but it is helpful.
  

  Secondary sources

  Lisa Brooks, "A New History of King Philip's War", episode 191 of Ben Franklin's World podcast. (2018).
  
  King Philip's War, Wikipedia.
  
  You may wish to peruse Lisa Brooks's book, Our Beloved Kin: A New History of King Philip's War (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2018).

  Primary sources

  Read at least three or four of these primary documents. Note the final text is from French territory in what is now northern New England, but it offers a reminder that the war didn't simply end in 1678 and that in many ways it continued further north. 
  
  Pay attention to when each document was written! They can all tell us things about how to understand King Philip's War, but from different contexts. 
  • Increase Mather, A Brief History of Warr with the Indians of New-England (1676), pp. 9-15. (Note: Read up until the last full paragraph in the middle of p. 15).
  • Boston trader Sarah Knight on her travels in Connecticut, 1704
  • John Easton, “A Relation of the Indian War” (1676).
  • Mary Rowlandson, A Narrative of the Captivity, Sufferings, and Removes of Mrs Mary Rowlandson (Boston, 1791 [orig. 1685], 14-18.
  • Report of Governor Joseph Robineau de Villebon, 1691-2 in John Clarence Webster, ed., Acadia at the End of the 17th Century: Letters, Journals, and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Viillebon, Commandant in Acadia, 1690-1700 (Saint John, NB, New Brunswick Museum, 1979 [1934]), 57–66 [account of an attack against an English settlement, 1694] and 89–94 [account of an English attack on Fort Nashwaak – near modern-day Fredericton New Brunswick in October 1696].

  If you're doing the Captivity Narratives assignment, you'll recognise Rowlandson as one of your two titles. You should also note that Robineau's report was written while he was organising an attack with the Malecite Indigenous peoples from Nashwaak (near modern-day Fredericton) on Pentagoet (just north of modern-day Portland Maine). John Gyles, the author of your other title, was being held captive by the Malecite at that time. It's part of how King Philip's War extended north and east into Canada and Acadia/Nova Scotia. That this is twenty years later is a good indication that in some ways the war had never ended.

   

• 1 media/Illustrations_de_Moeurs copy.jpeg 2016-06-24T10:40:55+00:00 Missionaries 96 image_header 2023-07-25T18:46:54+00:00

  This week's big question

  What role did missionaries play in the colonization of North America?

  Video Introduction
  
  

  Learning outcomes

  At the end of this week you should:

  • have a good understanding of who the missionaries were, why they were in North America, and their relationship with Indigenous peoples;
  • be able to describe and make sense of different historians understandings of missionaries’ roles;
  • and be able to discuss the significance of missionaries in the history of colonial North America​.

  Questions to consider, and learning activity

  This week you should read all of the primary sources and one of the secondary sources [see below] before you begin your posts.

  Here are some questions to help guide your discussions for this Lesson:

  • What can we learn about Indigenous peoples from the Jesuit Relations?  What can we learn about Jesuits from the Jesuit Relations?
  • This week, consider what we can learn specifically about the missionaries themselves from their writings about Indigenous peoples.
  • Looking at any of these primary sources, can you see points where there might be different ways of interpreting them? Or where interpretation is unclear?
  • How would you characterize the views of Blackburn and Seeman​? Do they see the Jesuits in the same way?  Do they see the relationship between Jesuits and Indigenous peoples the same way? 
  • Most of our traditional expectations on the native-newcomer relations focus on differences between the two.  Do these readings allow us to think about similarities? If so, what are they?

  Background

  As we saw in our examination of imperial expansion, one of the reasons put forth in support of colonizing America was that Christianity could be brought to its “heathens”.  Thus, from the very beginning, missionaries accompanied expeditions and settlements in the New World.  In the Catholic countries – France, Spain, and Portugal – these missionaries were organized typically through the larger religious orders such as the Society of Jesus, more commonly called the Jesuits (we learned about them in Module 1). The Jesuits were one of the most important religious orders in Christian history, and their influence particularly in education remains significant around the world today (for example, Pope Francis comes from a Jesuit background). They were founded in the wake of the Reformation, and their military-like organization and evangelical zeal marked them as key players in the Catholic Church’s efforts to battle the Protestant reformers. These were strong, dynamic, and intelligent men. Unlike the monks who retreated into monasteries for contemplation, prayer, and self-examination, the Jesuits went out into the world determined to defeat Protestant “heretics” and to reach the minds of “heathens”. The Jesuits were active around the globe, and their most important roles were in missions (sometimes called proselytization) and education. These two roles came together in New France in the 17th century.   
  
  In this context, as we examine North America, we should remember that the Jesuits were Catholic and they saw themselves as contesting the heretics of the Reformation (i.e. the various protestant churches, particularly in England and Holland). We tend to think of the North American struggle for power as an imperial struggle between the imperial states. It was, but it was also a struggle among the Christian faith groups. Few saw this connection between political and religious struggles more clearly than did the Jesuits.

  For historians, the Jesuits are important not only for the role they played in the colonization of New France, but also in their writings, the Jesuit Relations. At a time when less than half the population could read and fewer still could write, Jesuits received very good educations. They read ancient, classical texts, and could write very effectively. In relating their experiences, the Jesuits provided remarkable portraits of the peoples of the New World, while also justifying​ the costs involved in the missionary project. And, because northern Indigenous peoples were pre-literate societies, the Jesuit Relations are among the best sources remaining to us for understanding the early years of contact between European and Indigenous peoples.

  We will explore the question of cultural relations more this week, but an important basic issue is just what these texts can tell us. Though clearly effective in describing the Jesuits’ views of the encounter with Indigenous peoples, it’s much less clear what they can tell us about the Indigenous people they purport to describe. The role of the Jesuits has been controversial.  While in the past much of this controversy was mired in confessional (Catholic/Protestant) and national (British/French) prejudices, there remains significant debate over whether the Jesuits should be interpreted as engaged in the sincere higher calling of proselytizing (spreading the Word of God), or as agents of empire. Were their interests tied only to converting non-Christians, or were they actively aiding the colonizing forces? Or, however they imagined their actions, were they doing both? All of which leads us to our key question: Who were the Jesuits? Who were these men? What were their motivations? Were they agents of empire, or God (that is, the Catholic Church)? Or both?

  Historians, as we saw last week, often take very different approaches to similar questions. This week we'll see that sometimes they arrive at very different conclusions about their subjects, particularly when it comes to controversial groups such as the Jesuits. Recent historians have focused on the cultural impact as well as the motivations of the Jesuits. The aim of these historians has been to assess the impact of the Jesuits on Indigenous people, the place of Jesuit writings in shaping European understandings of the New World, and how that helps to understand the broader story of empire in the early modern Atlantic World.  As you’ll see, our two main secondary readings have quite different views of the nature of that relationship. The differences between Blackburn and Seeman illustrate the interpretative nature of historical writing. Like most authors writing on the Jesuits, they rely on the Jesuit Relations –- writings by the Jesuits themselves relating their experiences for an audience back in France –- but take quite varied meanings from their sources. The Jesuit Relations are complex texts and can be seen as both faithful accounts and propaganda, as both accurate and profoundly misleading. It’s not surprising then that historians offer very different ways of understanding the meeting of Europeans and Indigenous peoples.
  .
  
  Toolbox

  Review all of the Toolbox entries from last term before you read the sources, and practice applying the skills you've learned so far in this course.
  

  Primary sources

   
  • Jean de Brébeuf describes the Huron Feast of the Dead, 1636, in Jesuit Relations, volume 10, 279-317. (Note: Odd pages only.)
  • Paul Le Jeune describes conversions and resistance near Quebec, 1640, in Jesuit Relations, volume 18, 99-107​. (Note: Odd pages only.)
  • Chrestian Le Clercq, New Relations of Gaspesia: With the Customs and Religion of the Gaspesian Indians, translated and edited by William F. Ganong (Toronto, Champlain Society, 1910 [1691]), 207-14.
  • Joseph Robineau de Villebon, “Memoir Concerning the Conduct of the Missionaries of Acadia,1693”, in John Clarence Webster, ed., Acadia at the End of the 17th Century: Letters, Journals, and Memoirs of Joseph Robineau de Viillebon, Commandant in Acadia, 1690-1700 (Saint John, NB, New Brunswick Museum, 1979 [1934]), 49-52.

  Secondary sources

  Read ONE of the following two sources:
  
  If your last name begins with the letters A to L, read:
  • Carole Blackburn, Harvest of Souls: The Jesuit Missions and Colonialism in North America, 1632-1650 (Kingston and Montreal, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2000), 105-28. eBook
  
  If your last name begins with the letters M through Z, read:
  • Erik R. Seeman, The Huron-Wendat Feast of the Dead: Indian-European Encounters in Early North America (Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 59-79.
  We want to explore these books' different perspectives. Obviously, they are talking about different people at different times, so it's not the subjects we want to compare, but the general viewpoint and arguments each suggests. Each author interprets the place of Jesuits differently. Explore how they arrive at those differences. 

  Supplemental Materials

  Click on the images throughout this page to expand them and to learn more about them. They are all found at the online Archive of Early American Images​ at the John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, RI. We have added these to the supplementary section, because we are requiring you to focus your Forum posts on the written texts. However, if you wish to practice your analysis of visual sources, you may be interested in these issues:

  • These images tell very different stories. In other words, they provide you with a chance to identify conflicting interpretations in primary sources.
  • Consider the significance of violence in general, and martyrdom in particular, in these images.
• 1 media/Historical Thinking Logo.png 2017-02-04T12:15:37+00:00 NEW: Toolbox Overview 30 Updated: Jan. 2019 image_header 2019-01-23T15:00:34+00:00

  This page collects the Toolbox entries from the individual course lessons in one spot for easier review.

  From "Introductory Week"

  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.
  
  This week (the Introductory Week) we will get you to acquire an overview of the principles of thinking historically. Historical thinking is a variation on critical thinking. To start learning about it, you should read the following introductions from The Historical Thinking Project (click on the links):

  • The general introduction to the 6 components of historical thinking;
  • The introductions to the concepts of perspective and evidence 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.

  Module 1

  From "Rulers and Subjects (1)"

  Probably the most basic and important skill all historians practice is the analysis of primary source evidence. Therefore, if you've ever taken a history course in university before, you've probably already had some good practice with this skill.
  
  This week you should think some more about use of sources and about the overall goal of a history education when you watch the following web video. Click here to start the video in a new window.
  
  The webcast is by Sam Wineburg, an excellent educational psychologist in the United States. Wineburg is the author of a book with the intriguing title Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. In order to move beyond naive readings of source materials, Wineburg and many other educators recommend that you pay careful attention to the following additional skills when reading primary sources:

  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  The webcast introduces these skills and explains their relevance to the process of historical interpretation. Watch the webcast before you post in the Forum this week, and make sure to take notes. When you read sources for this week's Lesson -- and for all remaining Lessons -- make sure that you pay attention to these dimensions of source analysis.

  Note that a student at the beginning of the webcast refers to AP History, which is an American "advanced placement" exam that many high school students take.

  From "Rulers and Subjects (2)"

  In last week’s Toolbox you learned about the skills of primary source analysis. The resources provided by the web tutorial “Why Historical Thinking Matters” broke down these skills into 4 main parts:
  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  In this week’s Toolbox, you will learn a little about a related skill that is important for primary source analysis, as well as most other aspects of historical research and thinking. That skill is chronological thinking.
  
  Historians usually think chronologically (usually in stories or narratives). In fact, organizing evidence chronologically is crucial for effective contextualization, corroboration, and sourcing. A current example of the importance of chronology is found is the controversy in the American election campaign about when presidential candidate Donald Trump started opposing the War in Iraq in the early 2000s. What happened when? This seems like a straightforward question, right? Answering it in some cases can become complicated and even politically charged. That’s why it’s good to pay attention to and become good at clear, basic chronological thinking.
  
  Most cases of historical chronology are not so controversial today, but they can be important nonetheless. For example, in this week’s Lesson we are comparing and practicing close reading of three sources from 1649. What order do you think the documents were written? The question matters, because writers in the English Civil War were responding to events and ideas that were changing quickly, and they were often responding to one another, sometimes in anger, and sometimes with charges that could lead to imprisonment or even death (Charles I!!!).
  
  Be aware that the answer to the “simple” question of what order these three sources was written is not so simple. You can look for dates in the documents. That can help, for sure. The problem is that each of these documents had complex histories. This means that each was written in stages.
  
  One main challenge for the Lesson is to find clues in the sources. The best clues will be passages in the sources. Dates in the text are potentially valuable, but they are not the only clues. Passages from the texts that discuss ideas or events that provide clues are also REALLY VALUABLE. Think like a detective. Ask questions about your evidence. When you do so, you are also thinking like a historian!

  From "Agricultural Revolutions"

  The main skill to practice this Lesson is the analysis of secondary sources. In effect, you'll be learning an important of source analysis that is related to historical thinking. We could call this "historiographical thinking". The section above provide you with more details about historiography.
  
  A historical thinking skill that is related closely to historiographical thinking is the recognition and analysis of perspective. Not only can we analyze differing perspectives in primary sources from the past, but we can also recognize how people's perspectives (including our own) are complex and varied "today". This is of course also true of the writings of historians who try to make sense of the past. In this course (and in all your other history courses -- or courses on other subjects) practice comparing perspectives in all the sources you examine.
  
  One further aspect of historical thinking that is worth reviewing for this Lesson is the skill of identifying continuity and change. After all, it is the issue of change that Kerridge and Overton discuss in their related but importantly different interpretations of British agricultural history. Note that continuities and changes can take place in the short, medium, or long term. In other words, our view of change depends on the perspective that we take. This is one of many examples of how the elements of historical thinking are interrelated with one another.
  
  Follow the links in the two paragraphs above to read more about perspective, and continuity and change.
  
  You can use the chart below as a rough guide to aspects of European and Atlantic World history. These chronological categories can help you think in general terms about continuity and change. Please be aware that the periods outlined on the chart are not "facts" but rather generally agreed upon headings for periods. In a way, they are short-hand for interpretations of lots and lots of sources.
  

  Module 2

  From "Tranfcribing (!) Early Modern Sources"

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  From "Europe's Empires Expand"

  Before you read this Lesson's sources, make sure you review the Toolbox entries from the three Lesson's of Module 1. In the First Module you practiced the effective analysis of primary and secondary sources, and you also learned about the importance of paying attention to the different perspectives historians take when they analyze sources. Don't forget what you've learned in these Lessons. Your goal should be to build on your skills throughout the course.
  
  In your Forum entries for this week's Lesson, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. In a way similar to historians having different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:

  • Who was the author and what economic or social or religious or political interests did that person have?
  • When did he or she create the source?
  • What is the source about and what did the author think about that subject?

  You can probably think of other general questions that will help you to think about the perspective in any source. These are questions that are related to the skills of "sourcing" that you learned about in Module 1. To find our more about the general kinds of questions you should always have in mind when you consider a source's perspective, see the two Historical Thinking worksheets available through the link. The particular questions to think about for this week (in the Lesson above) will also help. Together, these general and particular questions will guide you as you look for differences (and similarities) in the perspectives of each primary source.

  From "Early Modern Africa"

  Because our focus for this Lesson is what, if anything, we can learn about early modern Africa from European sources, it is appropriate that we revisit the historical thinking skills that we practiced last week: the analysis of primary source evidence, and the careful attention to people's perspectives in the past. Another reason for revisiting these skills is that the links from the Historical Thinking Project website are working again. Please pay special attention to those links. Note that the text below is largely the same as last week's. Review is always important, and these skills are crucial for you to master.
  
  In your Forum entries for this week's Lesson, you will continue to practice the analysis of primary sources. Pay particular attention to the perspectives in each document. Just as historians have different interpretations of the same questions, so too did people in the past have different interpretations of their worlds. You can consider questions such as:
  • Who was the author and what economic or social or religious or political interests did that person have?
  • When did he or she create the source?
  • What is the source about and what did the author think about that subject?

  You can probably think of other general questions that will help you to think about the perspective in any source. These are questions that are related to the skills of "sourcing" that you learned about in Module 1. To find our more about the general kinds of questions you should always have in mind when you consider a source's perspective, see the two Historical Thinking worksheets available through the link.

  From "The Slave Trade"

  In past weeks we have introduced you to several of the concepts of historical thinking, and in particular, you have focused on the skills of working with sources. In addition to these tools for historical thinking, you should also understand the challenges of thinking about the ethical dimensions of historical analysis. The authors of the introduction to ethical thinking in history highlight what they call a "difficult paradox": historians try to understand the past lives of people in terms that are fair to those people, but at the same time the accounts of the past that historians create do make moral judgements about past people's actions and beliefs.

  Read the short introduction to ethical dimensions of historical analysis. While you should not forget about "the depths to which humanity can sometimes fall" (as we acknowledge in our introduction above), your challenge for your writing and learning this week is to practice understanding slave owners and traders in their own terms. In other words, you have to try to avoid imposing today's values and beliefs on them, even though we cannot agree with what they did or believed.

  From "The Columbian Exchange"

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  Module 3

  From Workshop Introducing Voyant Tools

  • There was no Toolbox entry for this week.

  From "Indigenous Cultures," "Missionaries," and "Colonial Societies"

  • The Toolbox entries for these weeks required you to review previous Toolboxes from Modules 1 and 2.

  From "Settler Societies and Commercial Expansion"

  This week's Toolbox entry introduces you to an important skill related to thinking historically: drawing inferences. 
  
  Inferences are the best guesses that we can make, based on the available evidence. They are necessary, because we NEVER have complete and perfect knowledge of the past. In fact, most of our knowledge of the past is based on very fragmentary evidence. Like detectives, historians have to collect whatever evidence they can in the search for answers to questions that interest them, and once they collect the evidence they have to piece its meaning together like judges or storytellers.
  
  How do you make strong inferences as opposed to plain and flimsy guesses? You use the skills of source analysis that we learned about earlier in the course ("Rulers and Subjects [1]"): close reading, corroboration, sourcing, and contextualization.
  
  Before you post to the Forum this week, make sure you review these skills, and when you post you should try to practice making strong inferences. We're including them below for your convenience:

  Probably the most basic and important skill all historians practice is the analysis of primary source evidence. Therefore, if you've ever taken a history course in university before, you've probably already had some good practice with this skill.

  This week you should think some more about use of sources and about the overall goal of a history education when you watch the following web video.

  Click here to start the video in a new window.

  The webcast is by Sam Wineburg, an excellent educational psychologist in the United States. Wineburg is the author of a book with the intriguing title Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts. In order to move beyond naive readings of source materials, Wineburg and many other educators recommend that you pay careful attention to the following additional skills when reading primary sources:

  • close reading,
  • contextualization,
  • corroboration, and
  • sourcing.

  The webcast introduces these skills and explains their relevance to the process of historical interpretation. Watch the webcast before you post in the Forum this week, and make sure to take notes. When you read sources for this week's Lesson -- and for all remaining Lessons -- make sure that you pay attention to these dimensions of source analysis.

  Note that a student at the beginning of the webcast refers to AP History, which is an American "advanced placement" exam that many high school students take.

  From "The Seven Years War"

  Like last week, this week's Toolbox is about drawing inferences. The skills of inference drawing are really important, and each of you can improve your work in this area.