Course Contents at a Glance

The following list shows the chapter-level topics and assignments for the course.

Chapter 1: The Americas, Europe, and Africa (Before 1492)

  • The Americas
  • Europe on the Brink of Change
  • West Africa and the Role of Slavery
  • Assignment: The Black Atlantic

Chapter 2: Early Globalization — The Atlantic World (1492–1650)

  • Portuguese Exploration and Spanish Conquest
  • Religious Upheavals in the Developing Atlantic World
  • Challenges to Spain’s Supremacy
  • New Worlds in the Americas: Labor, Commerce, and the Columbian Exchange

Chapter 3: Creating New Social Orders — Colonial Societies (1500–1700)

  • Spanish Exploration and Colonial Society
  • Colonial Rivalries: Dutch and French Colonial Ambitions
  • English Settlements in America
  • The Impact of Colonization

Chapter 4: Rule Britannia! The English Empire (1660–1763)

  • Charles II and the Restoration Colonies
  • The Glorious Revolution and the English Empire
  • An Empire of Slavery and the Consumer Revolution
  • Great Awakening and Enlightenment
  • Wars for Empire

Chapter 5: Imperial Reforms and Colonial Protests (1763–1774)

  • Confronting the National Debt: The Aftermath of the French and Indian War
  • The Stamp Act and the Sons and Daughters of Liberty
  • The Townshend Acts and Colonial Protest
  • The Destruction of the Tea and the Coercive Acts
  • Disaffection: The First Continental Congress and American Identity

Chapter 6: America’s War for Independence (1775–1783)

  • Britain’s Law-and-Order Strategy and Its Consequences
  • The Early Years of the Revolution
  • War in the South
  • Identity during the American Revolution

Chapter 7: Creating Republican Governments (1776–1783)

  • Common Sense: From Monarchy to an American Republic
  • How Much Revolutionary Change?
  • Debating Democracy
  • The Constitutional Convention and Federal Constitution
  • Assignment: The Constitution

Chapter 8: Growing Pains — The New Republic (1790–1820)

  • Competing Visions: Federalists and Democratic-Republicans
  • The New American Republic
  • Partisan Politics
  • The United States Goes Back to War

Chapter 9: Industrial Transformation in the North (1800–1850)

  • Early Industrialization in the Northeast
  • A Vibrant Capitalist Republic
  • On the Move: The Transportation Revolution
  • A New Social Order: Class Divisions
  • Extra Credit Assignments

Chapter 10: Jacksonian Democracy (1820–1840)

  • A New Political Style: From John Quincy Adams to Andrew Jackson
  • The Rise of American Democracy
  • The Nullification Crisis and the Bank War
  • Indian Removal
  • The Tyranny and Triumph of the Majority

Chapter 11: A Nation on the Move: Westward Expansion (1800–1860)

  • Lewis and Clark
  • The Missouri Crisis
  • Independence for Texas
  • The Mexican-American War, 1846–1848
  • Free Soil or Slave? The Dilemma of the West

Chapter 12: Cotton Is King — The Antebellum South (1800–1860)

  • The Economics of Cotton
  • African Americans in the Antebellum United States
  • Wealth and Culture in the South
  • The Filibuster and the Quest for New Slave States

Chapter 13: Antebellum Idealism and Reform Impulses (1820–1860)

  • An Awakening of Religion and Individualism
  • Antebellum Communal Experiments
  • Reforms to Human Health
  • Addressing Slavery
  • Women’s Rights

Chapter 14: Troubled Times — The Tumultuous 1850s

  • The Compromise of 1850
  • The Kansas-Nebraska Act and the Republican Party
  • John Brown and the Election of 1860
  • The Dred Scott Decision and Sectional Strife
  • Assignment: Pre-Civil War Perspectives

Chapter 15: The Civil War (1860–1865)

  • The Origins and Outbreak of the Civil War
  • Early Mobilization and War
  • 1863: The Changing Nature of the War
  • The Union Triumphant
  • Course Project

Chapter 16: The Era of Reconstruction (1865–1877)

  • Restoring the Union
  • Congress and the Remaking of the South, 1865–1866
  • Radical Reconstruction, 1867–1872
  • The Collapse of Reconstruction
  • Assignment: Reactions to Jim Crow