Write a double-spaced, 2-3-page response paper using Word, Times New Roman, and 12-point font that advances the above, highlighted course learning outcome while responding to lectures and assigned reading from Week 4 (see the syllabus), at your discretion. This means that you will have to use your judgement when selecting which articles and chapters you write about, and that do not need to write about all of them. Make your own decision.
As far as the above learning outcomes go, it remains implicit in this assignment that you will necessarily cover outcomes 2, 3, and 5. In this particular paper, you must focus outcome 4, highlighted above.
Respond to these questions: What were the origins and nature of the political systems that appeared in the Americas in the nineteenth century? What kind of systems were they (kingdoms, aristocracies, dictatorships, other)? Be specific, cite cases or examples, and get into the details and vocabulary of the lectures and assigned reading.
This remains a thinking-oriented paper that requires you to put this information together in a way that makes sense to you and then explain it to me. Do not recite or merely summarize. I want to know what you have learned and what you think about it.
The material that should be used
Lectures note :
- Spanish colonial institutions
- Columbian Exchange
- Transatlantic politics, communications, and trade, 1500- 1800.
- The Atlantic revolutions and Latin American independence
- Time of Troubles: The Americas in the Nineteenth Century
- The United States, the Open Door, and Pan-Americanism into the twentieth century
Readings : - Jared Diamond, “Hemispheres Colliding.” From Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies [1997], Rev. ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 2005), 354-375.
- Philip Curtin, “The North American Fur Trade.” From Philip Curtin, Cross-Cultural Trade in World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 207-229.
- William Beezley, Mexico in World History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 38-55
- James Lockhart, “Chilean Expansion and Southern South America’s Integration into the Modern Capitalist System, 1879-1931.” From Sabrina Joseph, ed., Commodity Frontiers and Global Capitalist Expansion: Social, Ecological and Political Implications from the Nineteenth Century to the Present Day (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), 183-214
- James McPherson, “Mexico Will Poison Us.” From James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil War Era (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 47-77.
- Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, “The Open Door and the First International Rules, Or, How the United States Chose Another Way, 1900-1920.” From Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman, American Umpire (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 179-208.
Videos : - Marie Arana’s Ted Talk, “The Impact of Simón Bolívar (2014),” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reFr06PGB3c
Sample Solution
