HIST 375 Revolutionary America and the Early Republic
The American Revolution is all around us: in the news, on the bookshelves of Barnes & Noble, in our discussions of what America (by which of course we typically, and revealingly, mean the United States) ought to be. For Americans it is our touchstone, our origin story and the measuring stick by which we judge "who we are" even some 200+ years after the event. But the Revolution was not only an event in American history: it is an event in British imperial history, because before they declared independence colonial Americans were part of a wider empire, and their Revolution was shaped by the fact. And the Revolution is also an event in world history, because colonial Americans needed to craft a state that could survive international competition and which, as a result, shaped the subsequent history of the world. In this course we will explore the imperial origins of the United States, the difficult process of creating a nation out of the debris of empire, and the subsequent influence of that state on the world (and vice versa) so as to answer not only the traditional question we ask of the Revolution - "who are we" - but also, in a moment of profound global change and tension, "where are we?"