Freedom and Equality in the New World

Come read three texts concerning freedom and equality in the New World that will, in their individual ways, expand our ideas of what exactly the “Western tradition” says about who has freedom and self-government. First, Bartolomé de Las Casas argues (in advance of the Valladolid Debates of the 1550s) that Spain ought not conquer and enslave the natives precisely because they are fully political societies in the sense of Aristotle’s Politics. Next, we read Frances Parkman’s evidence and argument that the Native Americans of North America during the colonial era governed themselves using republican forms reminiscent of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Finally, W.E.B. Dubois argues that the U.S. Civil War was won largely by the enslaved, who deployed and withheld their labor strategically in order to tip the balance toward the U.S. only when it became clear that a Union victory would indeed mean abolition. REQUIRED TEXTS: PDFs of all readings will be provided on Canvas site for the course. 1. Casas, Barolomé de Las Casas. In Defense of the Indians. Northern Illinois University Press. ISBN 978-0875805566. 2. Parkman, Frances. The Jesuits in North America, in: France and England in North America: Volume One. Library of America. ISBN 978-0-94045010-3. 3. Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction. An Essay Toward A History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860-1880. Harcourt, Brace and Company. No ISBN because too old and out of print.

Course Outline

Course Syllabus

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Online registration closes August 29 at 5 pm CT.

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