 | Instructor Resources |
Support student learning and save time with these password-protected materials. To request a password, please complete and submit the request form. After your request has been reviewed and authorized, you will receive a response from our Faculty Services team within 48 hours.
|
Some content requires software plugins. Visit our Plugin Help Center for help with downloading plugins.
|
Additional Class Topics
For Further Interest: Additional Class Topics
Chapter 7:
The Road to Revolution, 1763 - 1775
- Focus on the question of the inevitability
of the War of Independence by asking whether independence might have come
without a war. Use Canada as a counterexample to show that British colonies
in America did not have to revolt but might have
developed autonomy (and eventually independence) peacefully within the empire.
- Examine the issue of whether the Revolution
was a true revolution in the political and social order or whether it was
instead a conservative movement, in the sense of defending a
status quo Americans had long ago accepted as their natural birthright. A
good way to sharpen this question is to discuss whether the Revolution should
be viewed primarily as a change from monarchy to republic, as a fight to preserve colonial rights, or as the separation of the
colonies from England.
- Focus on one of the dramatic episodes
of the early Revolutionary struggle: The Stamp Act crisis, the Boston Massacre,
the Boston Tea Party, or Lexington and Concord. Discuss how the particulars
of the event (for example, rock throwing at British soldiers, dumping the
tea) fit into the larger political context of the movement toward Revolution.
- Discuss the role of African Americans
and Indians in the Revolution, both in support of the Patriot cause and as
Loyalists drawn to back the British. Consider the tensions and
contradictions in the Patriots language of rights and liberty in relation
to their treatment of slaves and others whom they did not consider part of
their communities.
- Reexamine the conditions and events leading
up to the Revolution from a British perspective, including the system of mercantilism
and the imposition of taxes. Discuss why the British might have thought they
were being quite generous to the colonists (for example, in defending them
from France almost for free) while seeing the Americans as ungrateful and
hostile to all authority.
|
