Recorded January and February, 2007 ~
Join us as Professor Richard R. Johnson returns to present the College of Arts and Sciences History Lectures. In this five-part series, Professor Johnson explores the lives and work of the first founders, those who created the societies of early North America.
Beginning with America?s first inhabitants-the Indians from the Northwest-Professor Johnson examines the effects, at once creative and catastrophic, of the arrival of new European and African peoples from across the Atlantic. Competing empires that rose and fell, set the stage for English colonies as they spread along the eastern seaboard. Johnson explores the fierce clash of race and culture and examines the interweaving of politics and religion. Finally, he examines the forces that forged new states and social systems, all of which ultimately shape the emergence of the United States.
Audio CD #1 & #2 ~ "A Clash of Continents" ~ After millennia of separate development, contrasting North American, European, and African societies and cultures collide as a flood of old world migrants cross the ocean. Amid fierce struggle and demographic upheavals, new American empires, both European and Indian, take shape within what is now an Atlantic world.
Audio CD #3 & #4 ~ "The Chesapeake and New England: The English Take Root" ~ The English, late upon the scene, struggle through hardship and exploitation to establish Virginia, the colony founded on smoke. To the north, Puritan settlers with very different motives craft bible commonwealths and town life in New England.
Audio CD #5 & #6 ~ "The Remaking of Government, Race and Labor" ~ A second wave of English settlement in Maryland, Carolina,and Pennsylvania brings new forms of constitutional government and religious practice, sharpening divisions within society. Indians and colonists move from coexistence to confrontation. Ways of life and work marked by class rivalries and white servant labor are reshaped by the massive importation of African peoples now destined by their race to be slaves.
Audio CD #7 & #8 ~ "A Time of Troubles and the Spread of Empire" ~ As the colonies pass through a time of social and political instability, they are drawn within England?s political control. A "Glorious Revolution" on both sides of the Atlantic launches half a century of royal government, imperial warfare and dramatic internal growth.
Audio CD #9 & #10 ~ "Reviving Religion and Inspiring Rebellion" ~ Amid a burgeoning prosperity, the colonists seek to recover their religious purpose in America?s first "Great Awakening", pioneering new relationships between church and state. Victory in war precipitates imperial reform and resentment, setting a course for rebellion and a new America.