HIUS 4501

In recent years, scholars have debated the following question: What was the relationship between the proliferation of slavery and the rise of capitalist economic development in the United States, specifically, and the Atlantic World more broadly?  This course will offer students the opportunity to interrogate and answer this question.  In this course, students will learn about early American economic history through the lens of slavery, beginning with Native American contact with European colonists, continuing through the trans-Atlantic slave trade, and ending in America’s post-Reconstruction era.