Led by: Prof. Alan Taylor (University of Virginia)
Course Number: AMHI 605
Semesters: Spring 2022, Spring 2024
Image: Matthew Seutter, Recens Edita totius Novi Belgii [New Netherland-New York], Augsburg, Germany, 1730 (The Gilder Lehrman Institute, GLC03583)
This course examines Spanish, French, Dutch, and British encounters with Native peoples of North America during the initial centuries of colonization: 1492–1800. The course combines the “Atlantic” approach to early America with a “continental” approach that accords dynamism and agency to Native peoples and enslaved African peoples in their relations with colonizers. The course defines colonial America broadly, extending beyond the British colonies of the North American coast to include New France, New Spain, and the West Indies.
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Alan Taylor, Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, University of Virginia
A specialist in the early history of the United States, Alan Taylor has written extensively about the colonial history of the United States, the American Revolution, and the early American Republic. He has received two Pulitzer Prizes and the Bancroft Prize and is the winner of the 2022 New-York Historical Society Book Prize in American History for American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783–1850 (2021).
The views expressed in the course descriptions and lectures are those of the lead scholars.