Program Highlights
Faculty Director
Wayne Lee
Department of History
Program Highlights
English exploration and colonization in North America were a continuation of a long history of dynastic political expansion and consolidation over the assortment of lands within the British Isles (and failed attempts to control lands in France and elsewhere). It is not just an “American” story, it is a continuation of an older European one. Simultaneously, however, explorers and colonists in the Atlantic encountered new ways of life and new peoples. In the process all the players transformed and were transformed. This course explores the history of conquest and the political-military process of establishing control in the British Isles (including Ireland) and how that all affected English colonization in the New World. We will examine both European precedents and colonial transformations.
In addition to traditional classroom work and readings, we will explore how to conduct research in early modern materials, learning archival, edited, and online sources, up to and including reading 16th-century English paleography. Although the medieval component of the course will be mostly done through secondary sources and site visits, for the Irish and North American component we will dive deeply into primary sources on the nature, ideology, and process of the colonial project, exploring both the English and Native American experience. Hugely important to the course will be visits to key resources in London (the Maritime Museum, the British Museum, and the British Library) as well as more distant sites related to conquest and colonization at Portsmouth, Rochester, Norwich, as well as several locations in Ireland (Cork and Dublin among others).
