HIST 135 - American Violence to 1800: Warfare from Age of Contact to Revolutionary War

This course will interrogate the way scholars study large-scale violence (a broad definition of war) between human communities. Throughout class discussions we will consider the ways in which warfare has been recorded and analyzed in early America. While major political conflicts including King Phillips’ War, the French and Indian War, and the Revolutionary War will be discussed, the class will also engage the meanings of violence through an investigation of intra and intercultural violence within Euro-American populations, and those that involved indigenous American peoples and Africans, The chronological focus of the course, circ. 1500-1800, permits our examination of the idea of American exceptionalism. Is there a specific form or pattern of violence or warfare that can be called “American?” If so, does this type of violence remain present in our contemporary world? Alternate years. (4 Credits)