History 534/English 585
Culture and Contact: The Atlantic World, 1400-1800
Fall 2007
Wed. 4:00-6:40
Park 532
Prof. Erik Seeman
Park 534, 645-2181 x534
Office hours: Mon. 1-3
seeman@buffalo.edu
Goals: Between 1400 and
1800, the peoples of Europe, Africa, North America, and South America
became enmeshed in an increasingly dense web of cultural
contacts. Out of curiosity, desire for trade, and lust for power
sprung a new entity: the Atlantic World, with origins in all four
continents but with a cultural vocabulary all its own. Students
will engage with this vibrant and growing field in several ways:
through the theoretical literature on cultural contact and
colonization; using primary sources written by the colonizers and the
colonized; and by reading important secondary works. The themes
we will explore include: the role of Africans in the Atlantic
world and the persistence of African culture in the New World; the role
of coercion and domination in the interactions in the Atlantic world;
the links between global economic shifts and the lived experience of
ordinary people; religion as an agent of imperialism and a buttress of
resistance; the role that travel writing and contact narratives played
in "possessing" the New World. This semester, in conjunction with
a book I am writing on cross-cultural encounters with death in the New
World, we will examine the topic of death throughout the semester.
Assignments: Requirements
for this class are two short papers, a class presentation, one 12-15
page historiographical essay, and informed participation in
discussion. You are also urged to attend two lectures sponsored
by the Early Modern Reading Group.
-Three-page review of outside reading: Pick a week of interest to
you and read one book that complements the assigned reading.
Class will begin with a five- or ten-minute presentation on the book
you have chosen. The paper should be a standard critical book
review.
-Five-page topic review: Pick one of the topics we are spending
two weeks on (Pre-Contact/Pre-Colonial, Africa in the New World,
Representations, Euro-Indian Contact, Europe in the Age of Encounter,
or Revolutions). On the second week of that segment, write a
five-page critical review of all the books, articles, and documents we
have read on that topic.
-12-15 page historiographical essay: Choose a topic for outside
reading of approximately two books and three articles (secondary
sources, preferably) and write an extended critical review of the
literature. The subject should be chosen, in consultation with the
instructor, by Wednesday November 7.
-Lecture attendance: Ideally you will be able to attend the
public talks by two scholars who are coming to UB under the
auspices of the Early Modern Reading Group and whose books we are
reading this semester: Jennifer Morgan, New York University,
Thursday September 27; and Vincent Carretta, University of Maryland,
Thursday October 18. Both talks are 12:30-2:00pm.
Grading: Class discussion
will constitute the majority of the final grade, with the written
assignments making up the balance.
Readings: The following
books are required reading and may be purchased at the University
Bookstore. They are also on reserve at the Undergraduate
Library. All articles are available online through several
sources as indicated in the syllabus:
(BISON): UB’s online course reserve
(JSTOR): the JSTOR databse, accessible through the
UB Libraries webpage
(HC): History Cooperative, again through UB
Libraries webpage
(MUSE): Project Muse, through UB Libraries
webpage
John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World,
1400-1680, 2d ed. (New York, 1998)
Jennifer L. Morgan, Laboring Women: Reproduction and Gender in
New World Slavery (Philadelphia, 2004)
Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways, ed. Enrique Pupo-Walker
(Berkeley, 1993)
Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, ed.
Janet Whatley (Berkeley, 1993)
Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self-Made
Man (New York, 2007)
Stuart B. Schwartz, ed., Victors and Vanquished: Spanish and
Nahua Views of the Conquest of Mexico (Boston, 2000)
Kristina Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons: Praying Indians in
Colonial America (Ithaca, 2004)
Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of
Tradition and the Shock of Discovery (Cambridge, Mass., 1992)
Stephen Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions: The Wonder of the New
World (Chicago, 1991)
Andrew Jackson O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided: The American
Revolution and the British Caribbean (Philadelphia, 2000)
Laurent Dubois, Avengers of the New World: The Story of the
Haitian Revolution (Cambridge, Mass., 2004)
Aug. 29: Introduction
Sept. 5: Orientations: Death and the Atlantic World
Bernard Bailyn, "The Idea of Atlantic History," Itinerario 20 (1996):
19-44 (BISON)
David Armitage, “Three Concepts of Atlantic History,” in Armitage and
Braddick, eds., The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (New York, 2002),
11-27 (BISON)
Alison Games, “Atlantic History: Definitions, Challenges, and
Opportunities,” American Historical Review 111 (June 2006): 741-57 (HC)
Erik R. Seeman, "Reading Indians' Deathbed Scenes:
Ethnohistorical and Representational Approaches," Journal of American
History 88 (June 2001): 17-47 (HC)
Sept. 12: Pre-contact Americas: Diversity
Neal Salisbury, "The Indians' Old World: Native Americans and the
Coming of Europeans," William and Mary Quarterly 53 (July 1996): 435-58
(JSTOR)
Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500-1650
(Norman, Okla., 1996), 130-39 (BISON)
Inga Clendinnen, "Victims," in Aztecs: An Interpretation (New
York, 1991), 87-110 (BISON)
Jean de Brébeuf, "Of the Solemn Feast of the Dead," in Allan
Greer, ed., The Jesuit Relations (Boston, 2000): 37-38, 61-69 (BISON)
Roger Williams, A Key Into the Language of America (London, 1643),
193-205 (BISON)
Sept. 19: Pre-colonial Africa: Power
Thornton, Africa and Africans, 1-125
Ann Hilton, "The Economic, Social, Religious, and Political
Environment," in Hilton, The Kingdom of Kongo (Oxford, 1985): 1-31
(BISON)
Pieter de Marees, Description and Historical Account of the Gold
Kingdom of Guinea (1602), trans. Albert van Dantzig and Adam Jones
(Oxford, 1987): 179-85 (BISON)
Sept. 26: Africa in the New World: Women
Morgan, Laboring Women
Bernard Moitt, “In the Shadow of the Plantation: Women of Color
and the Libres de fait of Martinique and Guadeloupe, 1685-1848,” in
Beyond Bondage: Free Women of Color in the Americas, ed. David
Barry Gaspar and Darlene Clark Hine (Urbana, 2004), 37-59 (BISON)
Oct. 3: Africa in the New World: Transformations
Thornton, Africa and Africans, 129-334
Erik R. Seeman, “Across the Waters: African-American Deathways,”
unpublished manuscript (BISON)
Oct. 10: Representations: Narratives of Contact
"Digest of Columbus's Log Book," in J.M. Cohen, ed., Christopher
Columbus: The Four Voyages (London, 1969): 51-73 (BISON)
Cabeza de Vaca, Castaways
de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, esp. 51-177
Montaigne, "On the Cannibals," in The Essays of Michel de Montaigne,
edited by M. A. Screech (London, 1991), 228-41 (BISON)
Oct. 17: Representations: Narratives of Slavery
Carretta, Equiano the African
Narratives of John Marrant and Belinda, in Unchained Voices: An
Anthology of Black Authors in the English-Speaking World of the 18th
Century, ed. Vincent Carretta (Lexington, Ky., 2004), 110-33,
142-4(BISON)
Oct. 24: Euro-Indian Contact: Mesoamerica
Schwartz, ed., Victors and Vanquished, 1-155, 182-243
Marcy Norton, “Tasting Empire: Chocolate and the European
Internalization of Mesoamerican Aesthetics,” American Historical Review
111 (June 2006): 660-91 (HC)
Susan Schroeder, "Jesuits, Nahuas, and the Good Death Society in Mexico
City, 1710-1767," Hispanic American Historical Review 80 (Feb. 2000):
43-76 (MUSE)
Oct. 31: Euro-Indian Contact: North America
Bross, Dry Bones and Indian Sermons
Patricia E. Rubertone, "Retelling Narragansett Lives," in Rubertone,
Grave Undertakings: Roger Williams and the Narragansett Indians
(Washington, D.C., 2001), 132-64 (BISON)
Nov. 7: Europe in the Age of Encounter: Knowledge
Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts
J.H. Elliott, The Old World and the New, 1492-1650 (Cambridge, Eng.,
1970), 28-53 (BISON)
Nov. 14: Europe in the Age of Encounter: Possession
Greenblatt, Marvelous Possessions
Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra, “The Devil in the New World: A
Transnational Perspective,” in The Atlantic in Global History,
1500-2000, ed. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Erik R. Seeman
(Upper Saddle River, N.J., 2007), 20-37 (BISON)
Nov. 21: No class—Thanksgiving break
Nov. 28: Revolution: Connections
O’Shaughnessy, An Empire Divided
Trevor Burnard, “Freedom, Migration, and the American Revolution,” in
Eliga H. Gould and Peter S. Onuf, eds., Empire and Nation: The
American Revolution in the Atlantic World (Baltimore, 2005), 295-314
(BISON)
Dec. 5: Revolution: Saint Domingue
Dubois, Avengers of the New World
John K. Thornton, "'I Am the Subject of the King of Congo':
African Political Ideology and the Haitian Revolution," Journal of
World History 4 (1993): 181-214 (BISON)
Dec. 12: Final paper due by noon in the History Department