Rediker Syllabus Atlantic History Seminar

Atlantic History 1500-1800 - History 2721
Professor Marcus Rediker
University of Pittsburgh
Fall 1998

History has long been the captive of the nation-state. As J.G.A. Pocock has written, "historiography originates as the memory of the state and develops as the critical study of the processes that have brought the state int being." Historians have thus until quite recently focused most of their attention on the activities of the state; war, diplomacy, politics, administration, and government. Even today, when the subject matter of history has expanded far beyond this original conception, the vast majority of historians still make the nation-state the essential, often unquestioned framework of analysis.

This course is organized as a challenge to nationalist histories. Taking the north Atlantic as its point of reference, it seeks to connect and combine the various and hitherto artifically separated histories of Europe, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean, and to demonstrate how the most important processes of change can be understood only thourgh the international frame of reference.

The course is designed to introduce students to work in Atlantic history both old and new, ranging from R.R. Palmer's The Age of the Democratic Revolution, which provided soem of the intellectual underpinnings of NATO and the alliance of the west during the Cold War, to newer scholarship that approaches the Atlantic world "from the bottom up," from the perspective of social history. We shall link the four corners of the north Atlantic in order to study the movement of peoples, cultures, politics, and ideas in a broader, more illuminating context. Our emphasis will be on the popular classes -- on craftsmen and women, apprentices, wage laborers, sailors, indentured servants, slaves, farmers, peasants, cottagers, villagers, domestics, and vagabonds, of both genders and of many races, ethnicities, and nationalities. We shall study how the activation of these masses of people during the Atlantic's age of revolution changed global politics in decisive, irreversible ways. We shall seek to discover connections within the muticultural experiences and histories of working people, most of which have been either denied or ignored by historians. In doing all this and more, we shall try to build upon and extend the specializations and interests of members of the class.

The following books are available at the University of Pittsburgh Bookstore:

Harriet Applewhite and Darlene G. Levy,eds. Women and Politics in the Age of Democratic Revolution.

Emilia Viotti da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood: The Demerara Slave Rebelion of 1823.

Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies .

Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution.

C.L.R. James, The Black Jacobins: Toussaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution.

Lester Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution.

Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century.

Ian McIntosh, ed. Classical Sociological Theory.

R.R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution.

Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750.

William Shakespeare, The Tempest.

Albert Soboul, The Sans-Culottes: The Popular Movement and Revolutionary Government, 1793-1794.

E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

John Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400-1680.

Barry Unsworth, Sacred Hunger.

All readings are on reserve at Hillman Library.

ASSIGNMENTS:
(1) Wednesday, September 2
Introductory and organizational meeting.

(2) Wednesday, September 9
Reading: *Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies.

(3) Wednesday, September 16
Reading: *Thornton, Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World.

(4) Wednesday, September 23
Reading:
*Shakespeare, The Tempest.
*Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, " The Tempest and the Origins of Atlantic Capitalism," Chapter 1 of
The Many-Headed Hydra: The Adventures of the Atlantic Proletariat, from Colonial Plantation to
Metropolitan Factory and Back Again, (Boston: Beacon Press, 1999).
*William Brandon, " The Aliens," in his New Worlds for Old: The Effect of the Discovery of the New World
upon Social Thought in Europe, 1500-1800.
*Ronald Takaki, " The Tempest in the Wilderness: The Racialization of Savagery," Journal of American
History 79(1992), 892-912.
*Alden T. Vaughan, J.R.Pole, and Ronald Takaki, " Letters to the Editor," Journal of American History
80(1993), 764-772.

(5) Wednesday, September 30
Reading:
*Hill, The World Turned Upside Down.
*Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, " Putney, Ireland, Barbados, Gambia, Virginia," Chapter 4 of The
Many-Headed Hydra.

(6) Wednesday,, October 7
Reading:
*Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea.
*Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, " Hydrarchy," Chapter 5 of The Many-Headed Hydra.

(7) Wednesday, October 14
Reading: *Linebaugh, The London Hanged.

(8) Wednesday, October 21
Reading: *Unsworth, Sacred Hunger.

(9) Wednesday, October 28
Reading:
*Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. (vol.I)
*Peter Linebaugh and Marcus Rediker, " A Motley Crew of Rebels: Sailors, Slaves, and the Coming of the
American Revolution," Chapter 5 of The Many-Headed Hydra.

(10) Wednesday, November 4
Reading: *Applewhite and Levy, Women and Politics in the Age of Democratic Revolution.

(11) Wednesday,, November 11
Reading: *Soboul, The Sans-Culottes.

(12) Wednesday, November 18
Reading: *James, The Black Jacobins.

(13) Wednesday, December 2
Reading: *Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class.

(14) Wednesday, December 9
Reading: *da Costa, Crowns of Glory, Tears of Blood.

(15) Wednesday, December 16
Reading: *Langley, The Americas in the Age of Revolution.