HIS 358 Atlantic Revolutions
This class will be a junior-level history course that will examine the development of Enlightenment era revolutions along the Atlantic Ocean. The class will consist of a balanced mixture of lectures and discussions based on the students’ reading of primary and secondary sources. We will begin with a discussion of the Enlightenment ideology that undergirded the age of revolutions. In this introductory module, students will read excerpts from some key thinkers that provided some of the ideological justifications for disrupting monarchical rule. After delving into social contract theory a bit, we will turn our attention to three Atlantic revolutions: American, French, and Haitian. While we will examine each of these revolutions along with the specific context in which each developed, the goal of the class will be to determine what factors did these revolutions share and what separated them. We will also look at how these revolutions affected class, race, and gender dynamics within their respective countries to help bring about the understanding of the various ways that revolutions played out in this period.