In this course
we will survey issues and problems in Atlantic History from the perspective
of the unique experience of France. In so doing, we will confront the opposition
between doing history within a national framework, and looking at
the multilateral networks of contact and exchange and the supranational
forces that make up the Atlantic World.
One of the themes for our discussion will be the methodological
challenge of writing history on the Atlantic scale, in particular
how micro-history and "history from below" intersect with
macro-historical trends. Abandoning a strictly national framework also
means rethinking the construction of narratives of national and personal
identity in the modern world, a second theme of our discussion. Finally, we will question the established periodization
of Atlantic World History, and end with a discussion of memory and
contemporary legacies.
Week One: Introduction [Jan. 16]
Part
One: Contact
Week Two: “Antarctic France” [Jan. 23]
Jean de Léry, History of a Voyage to the Land of Brazil, otherwise
called America* (California, 1990), p. 3-14, p. 51-177,
Translator’s Introduction
Michel de Certeau, “Ethno-Graphy.
Speech, or the Space of the Other: Jean de Léry” in The
Writing of History (1988)
John McGrath, “Polemic and History in French Brazil, 1555-1560” Sixteenth
Century Journal 27 (1996)
Film: Nelson Pereira dos Santos, “How Tasty was my Little Frenchman”
(1971)
Week Three:
Black Robes in New France [Jan. 30]
Allan Greer, ed. The Jesuit Relations: Natives and Missionaries
in Seventeenth-Century North America* (Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2000), p. 1-185
Cornelius J. Jaenen, “Amerindian Views of French Culture in the 17th
Century” Canadian Historical Review 55 (1974)
Daniel Richter, “War and Culture: The Iroquois Experience” William
and Mary Quarterly 40 (1983)
Marshall Sahlins, “Captain James Cook, or: The Dying God” in Islands
of History (Chicago, 1985)
Film: Bruce Beresford, “Black Robe” (1991)
Week Four:
The People of New France [Feb. 6]
Peter Moogk, La Nouvelle France: The Making of French Canada—A
Cultural History* (MSU, 2000), Introduction, ch. 1-7
Gilles Paquet and Jean-Pierre Wallot, “Nouvelle-France/Québec/Canada:
A World of Limited Identities” in Nicholas Canny and Anthony Pagden,
eds. Colonial Identity in the Atlantic World, 1500-1800 (Princeton,
1989)
Pacing
Break
Week
Five: Gender
and Culture on the Frontier [Feb.
20]
Moogk, La Nouvelle France, ch. 8-9, conclusion
Natalie Zemon Davis, “New Worlds—Marie de l’Incarnation” in Women
on the Margins (Harvard, 1995)
________, “Iroquois Women, European Women,” in Margo Hendricks and
Patricia Parker, eds. Women ‘Race’ and Writing in the Early Modern
Period (Routledge, 1994)
Raymond Hauser, “The Berdache and the Illinois Indian Tribe
during the last half of the Seventeenth Century” Ethnohistory
37 (1990)
Part
Two: Empire, War and Revolution
Week Six: Empires in the Balance [Feb. 27]
Francis Parkman, Montcalm and Wolfe* (Modern Library,
1999), Introductions, Preface, Foreword, ch. 1-5, ch. 11-14, ch. 23-32
Colin Calloway, ed. “In a World of Warfare: Indians and the Wars
for Empire” in The World Turned Upside Down: Indian Voices from
Early America (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 1994)
Francis Jennings, “Francis Parkman: A Brahmin among Untouchables”
William and Mary Quarterly (1985)
Simon Schama, “The Many Deaths of General Wolfe” in Dead Certainties
(Unwarranted Speculations) (Vintage, 1991)
Spring
Break
Week Seven: The Imperial Frontier [March 13]
Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The Development
of Afro-Creole Culture in the 18th Century*
(LSU, 1992)
Daniel Usner, “The Frontier Exchange Economy of the Lower Mississippi
Valley in the 18th Century” William and Mary Quarterly
44 (1987)
Week Eight: Identity and Revolution [March 20]
Lloyd Kramer, Lafayette in Two Worlds: Public Cultures and Personal
Identities in an Age of Revolutions * (UNC, 1999)
Week Nine: Revolutionary History [March 27]
C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L’Ouverture and the
San Domingo Revolution* (Vintage, 1989)
Stuart Hall and Bill Schwartz, “Breaking Bread with History: C.L.R.
James and The Black Jacobins” History Workshop Journal
46 (1998)
Speeches and Letters of Toussaint L’Ouverture (handout reading)
Week Ten: Race and Revolution from Below [April 3]
Carolyn Fick, The Making of Haiti: The Saint Domingue Revolution
from Below* (Tennessee, 1990)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “Culture, Color and Politics in Haiti” in
Steven Gregory and Roger Sanjek, eds. Race (Rutgers, 1994)
Part
Three: Colonial/Postcolonial
Week Eleven: Gender and Slavery [April 10]
Bernard Moitt, Women and Slavery in the French Antilles, 1635-1848*
(Indiana, 2001)
Robert Stein, “The French West Indian Sugar Business” in The French
Sugar Business in the 18th Century (1988)
Week Twelve: The Case of Martinique [April 17]
Elborg Forster and Robert Forster, eds. and trans., Sugar and
Slavery, Family and Race: The Letters and Diary of Pierre Dessalles,
Planter in Martinique, 1808-1856* (Johns Hopkins, 1996)
Dale Tomich, “Slavery in Martinique in the French Caribbean” and
“The Other Face of Slave Labor: Provision Grounds and Internal Marketing
in Martinique” in Slavery in the Circuit of Sugar: Martinique and
the World Economy, 1830-1848 (Johns Hopkins, 1990)
Week Thirteen: A Republican Empire [April 24]
Alice Conklin, A Mission to Civilize: The Republican Idea of Empire
in France and West Africa, 1895-1930* (Stanford, 1997)
Gwendolyn Wright, “Residential Segregation and Colonial Architecture
in Morocco;” Owen White, “Miscegenation and Identity in French West
Africa;” Julia Clancy-Smith, “Saint or Rebel? Resistance in French
North Africa;” Benedict Anderson, “Imagined Community in Anti-Colonial
Nationalism” and Partha Chatterjee, “The Nation and the Home” in Alice
Conklin and Ian Fletcher, eds. European Imperialism, 1830-1930
(Houghton Mifflin, 1990)
Week Fourteen: Epilogue: Postcolonial Identity [May
1]
Richard Price, The Convict and the Colonel: A Story of Colonialism
and Resistance in the Caribbean* (Beacon, 1998)
Michel-Rolph Trouillot, “From Planters’ Journals to Academia: The
Haitian Revolution as Unthinkable History” Journal of Caribbean
History 25 (1991)
Film: Euzhan Palcy, “Rue Cases-Nègres” (1983)
Course grade will be based on the following:
1)
regular participation in weekly discussions;
2)
two in-class presentations (approx. 15 minutes) of outside
readings chosen from the list provided;
3)
three 8-10 page essays responding to questions assigned at
the end of each of the course units, based on assigned readings.
* denotes books available at Lehigh Bookstore