Histories of Art, Race and Empire: 1492-1865

Unit Plan

• Week 1,
  • Intro question: Should we colonize the Moon? Mars? Why or why not?
    • This question should lead to an interesting discussion of the upsides and downsides of colonizing another planet. Things students might bring up include resources, more room to live, security if something happens to Earth, etc.
  • Follow up Question: Would your answer change if we found out that there were already people living on Mars?
    • From this, you can take their earlier answers and apply them to the real status of the Americas at the beginning of the 1500’s. Emphasize that this is actually a fairly close approximation of how the existence of Native Americans would have impacted Europeans, who had previously had no idea that such a race of people existed.
  • Powerpoint on reasons behind Early American colonization
    • Desire to get around Ottoman Empire to China inspired Columbus
    • 1493 Woodcut: What are some differences you see above between the natives and the Europeans? How does this indicate how the Europeans felt about them?
    • Emphasize desire for new resources from Columbian exchange.
  • Opening question: Do you think something like a zombie apocalypse could ever happen? Something which leaves humanity holding on by its fingernails, unsure if we can come back from the brink of extinction? Why or why not?
  • America Pox, the Missing Plague: https://youtu.be/JEYh5WACqEk¹⁸
  • Ask Questions at appropriate times: What do you think would happen to our society today if 9/10 of our population died? What advantages did Europe have when it came to diseases? Why did Americans not have those advantages?
  • https://jhiblog.org/2021/12/22/the-vegetable-lamb-of-tartary-renaissance-philosophy-magic-and-botany/¹⁹
    • What does this look like to you? Is it an actual plant or animal?
      • Kind of! It’s cotton!  Europeans had never heard of such a thing, and so when explorers started to bring back cotton from the New World, they heard that it came from a plant and made an association between cotton and the closest fiber they were familiar with, wool.  Thus the vegetable lamb was conceived of!
  • Matching/sorting activity: Two columns, America and Europe. List of plants and animals, list of advantages that an animal or plant would bring to a society, students will need to match animal or plant with region of origin, then with the advantage it creates
    • Example: Potato: American, A cheaply grown and energy efficient crop.
    • Horses: European, allows for swift transportation of goods and people across long distances.
  • Examination of art and political cartoons from the colonial periods, from the colonists’ perspective. This will include European art of both Native American peoples as well as enslaved Africans in the American South and the Caribbean. Use the first five examples from the Course Content section above for examples, and feel free to provide your own, as well.  This will include discussions of several different aspects of the process:

1. the diseases brought by the colonists that crippled native resistance and destroyed most of the extant American nations,

2.The search for resources and the economic structure which made colonization so attractive

• European explorers were looking for a way to bypass the Ottoman Empire and the taxes that they would have been required to pay to transport silk and spices through the Islamic Empire from China and India. After the discovery of the Americas, each European country was incentivized to establish New World colonies to send resources back to the home country that could then be sold to other countries. These started out as valuable metals for the Spanish, before the discovery and commoditization of tobacco and cotton by the English.  The colonies themselves were forbidden from benefiting directly from these trade arrangements, with the mother country always acting as the middle man in any trade networks to or from the colonies.

3. The depictions of native peoples in media “back home”, both positive and negative, with discussions of how those may have been helpful or harmful to native people.

• This should show a wide range. For the sake of keeping the unit to a manageable size, this unit will primarily be focusing on depictions of enslaved people from Africa and Native Americans, but those who pick up this unit should feel free to tailor their focuses according to what they believe their students will find most engaging.  The first five pieces of art in the course content section above are good examples of the types of art in question, but feel free to use other relevant art that you might prefer. 

4. A reading and examination of “The White Man’s Burden”²⁰ by Rudyard Kipling, and the racial politics that it espouses.

• Kipling, writing in the late 1800’s, espoused the view, common in European society at the time, that colonization was to the benefit of the conquered people. This belief that they were “uplifting” the colonized people acted to excuse the many exploitative practices put in place by the European empires upon native societies. 

5. Results of the Columbian Exchange on food and the economy in the Old World

• The largest impact on European countries was New World plants. Tobacco was the first to become a major cash crop, followed by cotton as the Industrial Revolution began to spin up in England.  Foodwise, tomatoes and potatoes became staple foods once their resemblance to nightshade was overcome. 

Week 2: American Nations: Overview of the theory, and of the Nations themselves.

1. What is a Nation? Is it different from a country?²¹
• A country is a governmental entity, a government recognized by others. A nation is a social entity, which can exist within or between countries.  Western tradition has tended to conflate these two, using them interchangeably, because many of the European nations are also the European countries.  e. France is where French people live, Germany where Germans live, etc.  This was not always the case, as many of the European empires, such as the Holy Roman Empire or the Soviet Union, contained various nations that in some cases only recently became countries.
  • Discussion Question: Does America have its own culture? Chances are some number of students will argue that we do not. Use the Nationhood lab website (https://www.nationhoodlab.org/tag/american-nations/)  and the American Nations breakdown below to illustrate that the United States, in fact, has many different cultures within its borders, and that the culture of your state or region may be much different from that of a region or state on the far side of the country.
  • Based on what you know or have heard about other states, how are your students different from, for instance, someone in California, or Texas, or New York? How are they similar? What are some explanations you can think of for why that may be?
  • Select one of the topics on the Nationhood lab website, such as views on gun control or voting patterns, and have the students read the article.
    • Assignment questions: Does the article line up with what you’d expect?  Why or why not?  Were you surprised at how far apart different parts of the same country could be on the same topic?  Do you agree or disagree with your own nation’s general view?  How might you try to convince someone who disagrees with you?
2. How did the American Nations form?
• The American nations were first influenced by the colonial nations which settled them, with El Norte being first settle by the Spanish, New France by the French, the New Netherlands by a mixture of Dutch and English, and the rest settled by successive waves of primarily British settlers, from the Puritans of the Northeast to the Scots-Irish settlers of Appalachia.
  • Discussion: What might make someone want to venture thousands of miles from their home, with no guarantee of safety or even survival? Answers might include looking for a better life, opportunity, money, etc. 
    • Indeed, many early settlers were influenced by exactly those things, and that shaped their expansion. They followed the money, as it were.  Beaver pelts in the North, rumors of gold and silver in the South, and later new cash crops such as tobacco and cotton. 
  • Where did the first Europeans enter America? (the Spanish in Central America)
  • What part of the United States was first settled by the English? (The East Coast)
• Secondly, each nation was heavily influenced by its attitudes towards and practice of slavery. The Deep South tended to be the most in favor of, and the most brutal in its practice of chattel slavery, whereas the North tended more towards abolitionism and at most debt bondage, with the other regions somewhere between those extremes. 
  • These divisions would take on great importance during the Civil War, when the nations of the Deep South and Tidewater broke with the rest of the country to form the Confederacy in defense of their supposed right to practice slavery. Both nations had heavily tied their economies into taking advantage of the forced labor of enslaved people, and considered it their own right to live richly off the profits that they garnered from it. They made comparisons to the Ancient Greeks, considering themselves, like the Greeks, to be a nation of philosopher kings supported by the forced labor of the conquered, and that this was a noble and correct way for society to function.
3. Overview of the major American Nations that started in the colonial period.
• El Norte²²: First of the American Nations, settled by the Spanish as an extension of the colony which would become Mexico. Abolished slavery early, and developed a unique culture from Central and Southern Mexico even before annexation by the United States as a result of the limited resources allocated to them by the Central Spanish, and later Mexican government.  Tended towards independence and Catholicism, with a heavy emphasis on missionary work and self-sufficiency.
• Yankeedom²³: The first broadly successful English colony in the New World, settled by the Puritans based on their religious and social mores. This resulted in very tightly knit communities where every citizen was expected to participate and contribute to the town, but where all other viewpoints, religious or otherwise, were deemed inferior and to be exterminated or converted at the earliest opportunity.
• New Netherlands²⁴: First established by the Dutch in and around the city of New Netherlands, this nation began as a very mercantile region. The Dutch were generally disinterested in the strict prohibitions and beliefs of their Yankee neighbors to the North, preferring to focus primarily on the business of doing business, with locals, Native Americans, visiting traders, etc.  This cosmopolitan inclination carried over when the British conquered the city and renamed it New York, and has remained an earmark of the nation to this day. 
• Tidewater^25: While technically the first New World nation to be settled by the English, the region around Virginia never really found prosperity until the demand for tobacco necessitated the creation of plantations in the region. These plantations would form one of the first major economic centers of English North America, as well as the first major markets for enslaved people from Africa and the Caribbean.
• Deep South²⁶: As the practice of slavery spread from Tidewater, the next region to be majorly affected by it was the Deep South.  There, cotton rather than tobacco would become the cornerstone of the economy, particularly after the invention of the cotton gin made the production of that crop much more efficient. Slavery was most heavily practiced in this region, to a degree and severity that made even some Caribbean overseers uncomfortable.  In the 1800’s, this nation would be the driving force behind the Confederacy. 
• Greater Appalachia²⁷: Primarily populated by Scots-Irish immigrants, Appalachia was the last nation settled before the Revolutionary War. This nation, perhaps more than any other, has tended towards fierce independence, both from England in the 1700’s, as well as from the United States federal government throughout the rest of U.S. history. 
4. Overview of those that came later.
• Left Coast²⁸: Settled primarily by missionaries and traders from Yankeedom, this nation has tended to show a similarly collectivist bent, but with slightly more of a Western emphasis on individualism and less on industry.
• Far West²⁹: Most of what is today thought of as the “Old West” was, by the late 1800’s, either purchased by private industries for its mineral wealth, or retained as publicly owned land by the Federal Government. As a result, despite their individualist preferences, the inhabitants of the Far West tend to be heavily dependent on the regulations and whims of foreign entities, whether Eastern corporations of the Federal government half a continent away.  The Far West might be considered an internal colony of the United States. 

Week 3: Flip the story the other way around, and look at the process from the native peoples’ perspective:

1. What did they think about this apocalyptic series of plagues? How did it affect their cities and nations?
• By some estimates, as much as 95% of the population of the Americas was wiped out by a combination of casualties from conquest and European diseases within . Native American cultures before Columbus built cities such as Cahokia (population ~20,000) and Tenochtitlan (population ~300,000), but by the time a generation had passed after Columbus’ discovery of the New World, all of these cities had been abandoned and depopulated, with the survivors in many cases being forced to adopt the nomadic existence we often associate with the Native American societies. 
2. How did native peoples view the colonists? What can their art show us about this question?
• See the last five of the resources above for good examples of Native American and African art depicting Europeans and their societies from both the colonial era and some time thereafter. These resources should guide your discussion of the topic with the students.  Make sure to allow them time and opportunity to discuss what they see, and how it indicates the colonialized people felt about European invaders.
3. First hand accounts of resistance and collaboration with the colonists from native people.
• Of particular interest would be the invasion of Tenochtitlan, as the people of the Aztec Empire both fought with and against the Spanish. The legend of Malinche, a possibly folkloric figure from this time, encapsulates the complicated feelings the invasion created amongst the people of the Empire, particularly in her possible relationship with the Mexican ghost story of La Llorona. 
4. Effects of Columbian exchange on people of the New World.
• American societies adapted quickly to the use of metal in weapons and tools, and such items were highly sought after for some time. Additionally, many Plains societies incorporated horses into their lifestyles, utilizing them for both hunting and travel.  So completely did they integrate this formerly foreign creature into their cultures that today we often associate horses with people like the Cherokee and Apache more than any other animal, despite the fact that none of them would have ever seen a horse before the early 1500’s. 
5. Read and discuss “The Black Man’s Burden” by H.T. Johnson, an African American clergyman who wrote the poem as a direct response to Kipling’s.  How does his perspective differ from Kipling’s?  Who do you think has the better point?