This course will cover the period from Columbus’s first voyages to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, until the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions of the late eighteenth century. The course will be divided into three units: Exploration, discovery, and conquest; Colonization, Slavery, and Commerce; and Enlightenment and Revolution. Through these units, we will see how over the course of three centuries the Atlantic Ocean’s role in human society changed from being a seemingly insurmountable barrier to being a place across which people, ideas, and commodities moved. The end point will be an Atlantic World in which governments run by people of European descent flourished on both sides of the ocean; where key governments embraced the ideals of the Enlightenment, but where millions of people were still living in slavery.

Topics during the semester will included Columbus’s journeys; the colonization of Virginia; the English Civil War and its impact on the Americas; the growth of the trades in sugar and tobacco; and the spread of the Enlightenment.

Each week will include at least two readings, mixing primary sources and secondary sources. So along with stressing the material covered,  there will also be an emphasis on developing students’ abilities to analyze primary texts.

Week 1: Introduction to Atlantic History

Week 2: The Spanish and the Age of Discovery

Reading, Primary: Sandoval, selections (blackboard)

Reading, Secondary: Terraciano, “The Early Iberian American World,” from The Cambridge History of America and the World

Key Character: Sandoval

Week 3: Emigration and Settlement

Reading, Primary: https://docsouth.unc.edu/southlit/smith/smith.html, pp. 47-9, 110-114, 121-125

Reading, Secondary: Games, “Making Colonies and Empires in North America and the Greater Caribbean,” from The Cambridge History of America and the World

Key Character: Pocahantas

Week 4: Pirates and Slave Traders

Reading, Primary: Code Noir – https://revolution.chnm.org/d/335/;  https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/73564/pg73564-images.html, chapters VI-VIII

Reading, Secondary: Dubois, Laurent, ‘The French Atlantic’, in Jack P Greene, and Philip D Morgan (eds), Atlantic History: A Critical Appraisal

Key Character: Francois l’Olonnais

Week 5: Constitutions and Empires: from 1688 to 1763

Reading, Primary: Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography, pp. 13-17, 23-25, 43-48, 52-53: https://english.hku.hk/staff/kjohnson/PDF/FRANKLINautobiographyB.pdf

Reading, Secondary: Dunn, Richard S., ‘The Glorious Revolution and America’, in Nicholas Canny, and Wm Roger Louis (eds), The Oxford History of the British Empire: Volume I

Key Character: Benjamin Franklin

Week 6: Slavery (Plantation and Otherwise) in the New World

Reading, Primary: Phillis Wheatley, Selected Poems: 1. On Being Brought from Africa to America; 2. An Hymn to the Morning; 3. An Hymn to the Evening; 4. To the Right Honourable William, Early of Dartmouth

Reading, Secondary: John Thornton, “African Dimensions of the Stono Rebellion”, The American historical review, 1991-10, Vol.96 (4), p.1101-1113.

Key Character: Phillis Wheatley

Week 7: The Enlightenment

Reading, Primary: La Condamine, the preface, and pages 1-5, 100-108 (on blackboard week 7 section)

Reading, Secondary: Winterer, “Enlightenment and the American Revolution,” in The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions, https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cambridge-history-of-the-age-of-atlantic-revolutions/enlightenment-and-the-american-revolution/2AC61696FC382E722B55674AC367ED27

Key Character: La Condamine

Week 8:  American Revolution I

Reading, Primary: Thomas Paine, Common Sense, pages 67-68, 84-101, https://calhum.org/files/uploads/program_related/TD-Thomas-Paine-Common-Sense.pdf. 

Reading, Secondary: Peterson M, The Revolution in British America: General Overview. In: The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions.

Key Character: Thomas Paine

Week 9: American Revolution II

Reading, Primary: US Constitution and Bill of Rights

Reading, Secondary: Edling, Max M., and Wim Klooster. “Shaping the Constitution.” Chapter. In The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Key Characters: Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson

Week 10: French Revolution I

Reading, Primary: Declaration of the Rights of Men;

                                   Selected letters from Thomas Jefferson:

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0100
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0272

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0259
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-15-02-0172

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0194

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0242 (this one is quite long; don’t get caught up in the details)

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Madison/01-12-02-0248 (paragraphs 2 and 3 only)

https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/01-24-02-0079

Reading, Secondary: Overview of the French Revolution By David Andress – The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions

Key Character: Lafayette

Week 11: French Revolution II

Reading, Primary: The Writings of Thomas Paine, Volume II, selections on Blackboard; A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, selections: pp. 22-25, 71-73, and 159-161. Document is on Blackboard.

Reading, Secondary: Suzanne Desan, “Foreigners, Cosmopolitianism, and French Revolutionary Universalism,” in Suzanne Desan, Lynn Hunt, William Max Nelson. The French Revolution in Global Perspective. Cornell University Press; 2013

Key Characters: Thomas Paine and Mary Wollstonecraft

Week 12: Haitian Revolution I

Reading, Primary: Selections (blackboard)

Reading, Secondary:  Taber, Overview of the Haitian Revolution – Cambridge History of the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions

Key Character: Vincent Ogé

Week 13: Haitian Revolution II

Reading, Primary: Selections (blackboard)

Reading, Secondary: Phillipe Girard, Toussaint Louverture, the Cultivator System, and Haiti’s Independence (1798–1804). In: The Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. The Cambridge History of the Age of the Atlantic Revolutions.

Key Character: Toussaint L’Ouverture

There will be three quizzes, at the end of each unit; a primary source assignment; and a take-home final.

Breakdown:

This course has four tutorial sessions. Grading of tutorials will be based on your participation in discussions focusing on the primary and secondary reading listed for the corresponding week (5% each tutorial).

Topics covered are as listed:

1. Week 3: Emigration and Settlement—2024/09/19
2. Week 5: Constitutions and Empires: from 1688 to 1763—2024/10/03
3. Week 8:  American Revolution I—2024/10/24
4. Week 10: French Revolution I—2024/11/07

Venue & Time: HYS-G04, 12:30-13:30

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at https://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

• In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
• For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.