This course will explore the origins and evolution of the British presence in North America, from the beginnings of English, Scottish and Irish activity in the Atlantic in the 16th century, through the consolidation and expansion of settlements and commercial activities in the early modern period, to the great crisis of the American Revolution in the late 18th century. Individual lectures will explore several key themes central to the evolution of British interests in this period, and will introduce students to the different perspectives historians have used to define and interpret the emergence of British settlements of various kinds.
One of the underlying themes of this course is an interrogation of the concept of ‘empire’, and how imperial perspectives evolved because of the growing emergence of a British presence in America. We will consider how the history of British America might be interpreted within the rubric of ‘the First British Empire’, and examine how appropriate it might be to use the label ‘Colonial America’ in describing this period. Participants will question the coherence of the terminology historians have used to understand the evolution of British interests in America, and the presence of Britons (and British Americans) beyond Europe, whose relationship with the motherland was often fraught and complex. The first session of this course will explore this specific issue in relation to the almost accidental emergence of colonial interests in America in the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and consider how historians have sought to develop new frameworks and contexts for examining British America within the terms of emerging European empires, global trade, and religious crises in continental Europe.
The second and third sessions will explore the lived experience of American settlers, their aspirations, and the social structures which shaped their lives. In particular, these sessions will explore several key themes: social hierarchy and order in the American settlements; work and commercial activity; the settlers’ domestic world; gender; the relationship between settlers and Native American peoples; religion and toleration. The final sessions of the course will consider how the British responded to the discovery that they possessed an empire and the impact of domestic British perspectives on the empire’s evolution in the 18th century. Finally, we will consider the limits of empire by focusing on the various imperial crises of the late 18th century which resulted in trans-Atlantic war and the loss of the American colonies.
