Subject Area: History
This course can also be studied in the following specialisations: Americas Studies

The course will explore different topics each week, but the major emphasis will be upon synthesis: --the interrelation of economic change, social structure, cultural life and politics from the origins of the American Revolution to the aftermath of the end of slavery. It will be argued that slavery and its nemesis in the form of free labour provides the central theme around which the American nation was made. It is hoped to explain the emergence by the 1890s of a nation-state and a market oriented society based upon free labour.

An attempt will also be made to put the subject into comparative perspective in order to make American history intelligible to an Australian audience which possesses its own history—a history superficially similar to American history but which differs in significant ways.