Slavery & Early Modern World

Course examines the experiences of participants in the world’s largest forced migration. Understanding the development, proliferation, and demise of racial slavery in the Americas is fundamental to comprehending the connected histories of the Americas, Europe and Africa. The trade of human beings, and the products which their labor produced, linked three continents and hundreds of islands for over 300 years. In addition to examining the slave trade and its participants, students come to understand the evolution of the Early Modern Atlantic World—from the discovery of the Americas to the abolition of the British slave trade in 1808 as well as its impact on the American experiment with democracy and the human experience post-1865. Overall, this course aims to introduce students to slavery as a part of global history and the modern world. Also, this course encourages individuals to think critically about the past and the present and to see interconnections between people, places, and times. Finally, this course gives students an introduction to the ways that historians think and work.