This description articulates the overarching conception of History 16.  In practice full coverage on all points of the description is not possible.  One aim of History 16 is to showcase as guest lecturers some of the fine expertise available on the Berkeley campus--thus the syllabus-as-actualized varies from year to year.
 
      History 16 focuses on the expansion of British North America and the later United States in the context of the world-transforming encounters of American, African, European and Asian continents with highly developed and vastly divergent cultures that had their beginnings far before the crucial year of 1492. What was present in the Americas before the arrival of peoples from the old world complex of Africa-Eurasia?  Why were large portions of terrain and large populations in the Americas so vulnerable to the impact of Old World diseases, plants, and
animals?  As an approach to these questions, we will look at paradigms of cultural encounter and clash:  first, the initial Spanish incursion into the Caribbean, and second,  the subsequent overthrow of the Aztec civilization in Mexico. The shock of these initial meetings are crucial to subsequent events in North America, both in the widespread impact of disease and the establishment of large, Spanish-governed mestizo societies and complex borderland domains that we will see the United States subsequently acquire later in the course.  And by the late 1500's the Spanish outreach to the Philippines from Mexico has established a strategic and trade link with Asia.
     The complex interaction of cultures on North America prior to the watershed year of 1763 are illustrated by examining themes of Native-American, Anglo-American, and African encounters.  We will look at these in (1) New England--what mindset and experiences helped form Anglo-American perceptions of Native Americans? (2) the Middle colonies, including the uneasy balance of power between the Iroquois, Anglo-Americans, and French; and (3) the conditions in the Virginia colony that led to replacement of white indentured laborers by enslaved African and later African-American persons.  We will examine "the central paradox of American history"--that the rise of liberty and equality is accompanied by the rise of slavery.
     The situation for Native Americans changed abruptly with the British victory over the French in the Seven Years War (1754-1763), a conflict that led directly to the American Revolution. What was revolutionary about the American Revolution?  Some of the topics considered include the formation of the American Republican character, views of the Founders on race, issues of national citizenship, and territorial expansion in the face of
Native American resistance in the early Constitutional era.
    Rapid and continuing increase of United States population propelled its expansion across a continent into regions long settled and shaped by Native American and Mexican American peoples.  United States expansion entailed war with and eradication of Native American peoples and their concentration into reservation areas.  The uprooting of the Cherokee and Creek Nations in the Jackson era and the long struggle on the Plains that led to Wounded Knee will illustrate the different nature of US-Native American interaction east and west of the Mississippi.We will examine United States legal and military policy, the assumptions behind them, and the justifications making possible the nation's dominance of its original settlers.  This process of conquest and ecological transformation on the great plains creates a myth of a heroic freewheeling westerner whose frontier
ways model an American character.  These assumptions we will study partly through audio-visual material and the writings of both  Theodore Roosevelt and Frederick Jackson Turner.
     Mexico was obliged to cede 1/3 of her territory to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War.  The gain portended extension of American slavery and African American people into the acquired territory, a fundamental cause of the Civil War.  We will look at the freeing of African Americans from slavery and their loss of much of that freedom in legislation and court rulings which imposed what some historians term a virtual apartheid at the end of the century.
      With the continental United States achieving a boundary on the Pacific its overseas thrust and pull of Pacific peoples onto its shores brings Asia to America.  By the late 19th century Asians and Asian-Americans, Mexican-Americans, and African Americans and many European immigrant groups form a labor pool to power a nation that contemplates global outreach.  The Reader in particular provides documents for the experience of Asian immigrants and the nativist reaction against them.
      The Spanish-Cuban-Filipino-American War creates an imperial presence.  The subjugation of the Philippines passed from the Spanish to an American Army experienced in warfare against Native Americans.  The United States has fulfilled the Columbian dream of the drive to Asia and by 1904 has hegemony over those Caribbean and West Pacific regions which were original parts of the Spanish empire founded at the beginning of our era.

We will explore these dynamics through use of primary source material from different groups as well as scholarship from a variety of disciplines.