Colonial Case Study: Massachusetts on the Eve of Revolution

In our review of Abbe Raynal's Two Indies, we examined the work's treatment of the growing discord in Britain's North American colonies.  While the work can be a reflection of the period, it also could be examined as a secondary source in it's day.  The authors (there were several contributors) were not present to witness the crisis as it unfolded.  In this discussion post regarding Raynal's prediction of the emerging colonial troubles and subsequent Revolution, I posited an alternate conclusion that suggested Raynal's powers of foresight perhaps could have been attributed to the publishing history of his texts.

 

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In British Carribean-Colonial America students prepared presentations about the distinctiveness of about each of Britain's more rebellious colonies in North America and their relationship to the British Caribbean during the American Revolution.  My presentation was on colonial Massachusetts and synthesized my interpretation from several journal articles that focused on the "carrying" industry, the slave trade, and other seafaring industries.  In this presentation, I suggested that colonial rebellion, at least in part, emerged as a result of the disruption of these industries by British mertcantilist policies 

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This set of lessons was developed to emulate the research process accomplished in our student colonial research presentations.  This series of lessons first has students examine different types of colonies using Shoemaker's framework and then has students, in small groups analyze and research one of the British colonial holdings in the Americas.  The culminating activity then is an live, online discussion where students exchange information and ask clarifiying questions to understand the other colonial regions' economic, social, and political structures for comparison in the final assessment.

 

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