IBHOTA Chapter Questions

IBHOTA Chapter Questions

Chapter 1

1.  How did Indian societies of South and North America differ from European societies at the time the two came into contact? In what ways did Indians retain a worldview different from that of the Europeans?

2.  What role did disease and forced labor (including slavery) play in the early settlement of America? Is the view of the Spanish and Portuguese as especially harsh conquerors and exploiters valid—or is this image just another version of the English black legend concerning the Spanish role in the Americas?

3.  Are the differences between Latin America and North America due primarily to the differences between the respective Indian societies that existed in the two places, or to the disparity between Spanish and English culture? What would have happened if the English had conquered densely settled Mexico and Peru, and the Spanish had settled more thinly populated North America?

4.  In what ways are the early (pre-1600) histories of Mexican and the present-day American Southwest understood differently now that the United States is being so substantially affected by Mexican and Latin American immigration and culture? To what extent should this now be regarded as part of our American history?

5.  Why was the Old World able to dominate the New World? What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Old World? What were the strengths and weaknesses of the New World?

Chapter 2

1.  What did England and the English settlers really want from colonization? Did they want national glory, wealth, adventure, a solution to social tensions, and/or new sources of goods and trade? Did they get what they wanted?

2.  How did Spanish success in the New World influence the English colonial efforts? How did England’s earlier experience in Ireland influence its colonial efforts in the New World? How did different events in England (and Europe) affect England’s southern colonies in the New World?

3.  Were the English colonizers crueler or more tolerant than the Spanish conquistadores? Why did the Spanish tend to settle and intermarry with the Indian population, whereas the English killed the Indians, drove them out, or confined them to separate territories? How did this pattern of interaction affect both white and Indian societies?

4.  Was the development of enslaved Africans in the North American colonies inevitable? (Consider that it never developed in some other colonial areas, for example, Mexico and New France.) How would the North American colonies have been different without slavery? What role did the Spanish encomienda system and British sugar colonies play in introducing slavery to the southern colonies?

5.  How did the reliance on plantation agriculture affect the southern colonies? Were their societies relatively loose because they were primarily rural or because they tended to rely on forced labor systems?

Chapter 3

1.  Did the Puritans really come to America seeking religious freedom? How did they reconcile their own religious dissent from the Church of England with their persecution of dissenters like Hutchinson and Williams? Does their outlook make them hypocrites?

2.  How were government and religion—or church and state—related in New England and the middle colonies? How does the colonial view of these matters compare with more recent understandings?

3.  Was an American Revolution, separating the colonies from England, inevitable after the Glorious Revolution had encouraged colonists to end the Dominion of New England, England’s serious attempt at enforcing royal authority? Did England’s “salutary neglect” contribute to future problems in its empire? How might have England been able to successfully enforce its rule on the colonies without causing rebellion?

4.  How does the founding of the New England colonies compare with the origin of the middle colonies? In what ways were New England and the middle colonies each like the South, and in what ways were they different?

5.  In what ways were the middle colonies more open and diverse than New England? In what ways were they less democratic?

Chapter 4

1.  Why was family life in New England so different from family life in the South?

2.  Why did slavery grow to be such an important institution in colonial America? What were the effects of slavery on the Africans who were brought to the New World? What were the effects of the Africans on the New World?

3.  What was attractive and unattractive about the closely knit New England way of life?

4.  Were the Salem witch trials a peculiar, aberrant moment in an age of superstition, or did they reflect common human psychological and social anxieties that could appear in any age? How harshly should those who prosecuted the witches be condemned?

5.  Considering the extreme differences during the seventeenth century between New England and the southern colonies, was the Civil War inevitable?

Chapter 5

1.  How democratic was colonial American society? Why was it apparently becoming less equal?

2.  How were the various occupations and activities of colonial America related to the nature of the economy? Why were such occupations as lawyer, printer, and artisan taking on greater importance?

3.  What were the causes and effects of the Great Awakening? How did such an intense religious revival affect those who experienced conversion as well as those who did not? How did the Awakening help to create a sense of shared American identity?

4.  In what ways was colonial life attractive, and in what ways would it seem tedious and dull to the average twenty-first-century American? How were the educational, cultural, and leisured sides of colonial life affected by the basic nature of the economy?

5.  To what degree was a unique American nationality developing in the eighteenth-century colonies? Were regional differences in the colonies growing more pronounced or retreating in the eighteenth century?

6.  What shaped how ordinary colonists thought? What were important sources of influence on an ordinary colonist? Did England control these sources or did the colonists? What implications did this have for the future England and the colonies?

Chapter 6

1.  Why was the French Empire ultimately so much less successful than either the Spanish or the British Empires?

2.  If France, instead of Britain, had won the “duel for North America,” would the thirteen colonies ever have become independent of Britain, or would they have been forced to stay within the empire for protection against France? Would Detroit, St. Louis, and New Orleans now be cities in Canada rather than in the United States?

3.  How did the treatment of Americans by British officers and the military, during the war, contribute to simmering resentment against the mother country? Do the attitudes and behavior of the colonists during the war suggest that Americans felt less real patriotic loyalty to Britain and that the ties had become largely practical ones?

4.  How important was William Pitt’s leadership in winning the Seven Years’ War? Is strong political leadership essential to military victory? Is strong political leadership or strong military leadership more important to winning a war? What about during revolutions?

5.  From Britain’s perspective, were stationing soldiers in the New World permanently and issuing the Proclamation of 1763 good colonial policies? What problems were these policies trying to address? How else might have Britain solved those problems while limiting colonial contempt?

6.  Should the French and Indian War be considered one of the major causes of the American Revolution? Why or why not?

Chapter 7

1.  Evaluate the system of mercantilism. What were the benefits for Britain and for the colonies? What were the costs to Britain and to the colonies? Is the system of mercantilism sustainable or will colonies inevitably revolt?

2.  Was the American Revolution inevitable? Could America have gradually and peacefully developed independence within the British Commonwealth, as Canada later did, rather than engaging in a violent revolt? At what point in time, if any, was a violent revolt inevitable? What could the British have done to stop the Revolution?

3.  Were all the American grievances really justified, or were the British actually being more reasonable than most Americans have traditionally believed?

4.  What was the Revolutionary movement, at its core, really all about? Was it about the amount of taxation, the right of Parliament to tax, the political corruption of Britain and the virtue of America, the right of a king to govern America, or the colonies’ growing sense of national identity apart from Britain? Was the Revolution truly a radical overturning of government and society—the usual definition of a revolution—or something far more limited or even conservative in its defense of traditional rights?

5.  In 1775, which side would a neutral observer have expected to win—Britain or the colonies? Why?

Chapter 8

1.  What was radical and new in the Declaration of Independence and what was old and traditional? What did statements like “all men are created equal” mean in their historical context and what did they come to mean later?

2.  Was military strategy or politics the key to American victory in the war? How did the two coincide?

3.  If the “Model Treaty” that John Adams authored had been the basis for the American alliance with France, would the results of the Revolution have been the same? Do you agree that Benjamin Franklin’s French alliance is an example of “practical self-interest trumping idealism,” as the authors state? In what other situations during the Revolutionary War does practical self-interest trump idealism?

4.  Did the Loyalists deserve to be persecuted and driven out of the country? What difference does it make to understand the Revolution as a civil war between Americans as well as a war against the British?

5.  How important were the diplomatic relations between European nations in determining the success of the American Revolution? How significant a role did the French play in securing American independence? How significant a role did the rest of Europe play? How did the American Revolution change diplomatic relations in Europe?

6.  What has the Revolution meant to later generations of Americans, including our own? Do we still think of the United States as a revolutionary nation? Why or why not?

Chapter 9

1.  Which of the social changes brought about by the Revolution was the most significant? Could the Revolution have gone further toward the principle that “all men are created equal” by ending slavery or granting women’s rights?

2.  Was the United States in a crisis under the Articles of Confederation, or was the crisis exaggerated by the Federalists to justify their movement? Could the United States have survived if the Articles had stayed in effect? What successes did the Articles of Confederation achieve? Was the Constitutional Convention a second American Revolution?

3.  Why was the United States so uniformly held in contempt by European governments after the Revolution? Was it due more to the Articles of Confederation or to being a recently created nation?

4.  Should the Founding Fathers’ general elitism and indifference to the rights of people, women, African Americans, and Indians be held against them? Or should they be viewed with more understanding in their historical context?

5.  What was really at stake in the debate between Federalists and Anti-Federalists? Did the Federalists win primarily because of their superior political skills or because they had a clearer view of the meaning of the Revolution and the future of the United States? What role did the ratification process play in the fight between the Federalists and Anti-Federalists (and did it favor one side or the other)?

Chapter 10

1.  Did the Bill of Rights satisfy the Anti-Federalists concerns? Was individual liberty and state sovereignty protected by the new amendments? What about assaults on the new Bill of Rights such as the national bank and the Alien and Sedition Acts?

2.  Why did Hamilton move so rapidly to create large financial commitments by the federal government? Since we normally think of the federal debt as something bad, why did Hamilton think of it as something good and necessary for the national welfare?

3.  How sympathetic should Revolutionary Americans have been to the king-killing French Revolution?

4.  Why were political parties viewed as so dangerous by the Founding Fathers? Why did parties come into being at all, and why did they come to be accepted as legitimate ways to express political disagreement?

5.  How wise was Washington’s insistence on neutrality? What about the fact that, while this foreign policy stance may not have violated the letter of the alliance with France, it did violate the spirit of the alliance? Do you agree that, as the authors contend, “self-interest is the basic cement of alliances”? Does a nation have an obligation to maintain alliances previously established, even when it is no longer in that nation’s self-interest?

6.  What role did domestic politics and economic realities play in establishing an American foreign policy? How should American diplomats interact with European governments? Consider the fact that some Americans do not want diplomats to follow standard European protocol (like kissing the Queen’s hand or paying bribes to speak to public officials).

7.  Contrast the Hamiltonian Federalist belief that the wealthy and well educated ought to run the government with the Jeffersonian Republican belief that the common person, if educated, could be trusted to manage public affairs.