HISTORY 2050 First Exam Essays
Write essays on three (3) of the following four (4) questions. Each essay should be about 750 words (roughly 3 typed, double-spaced pages). Combine all three essays into one file and submit on Blackboard.
Do not plagiarize!!! This means: do not buy, steal or borrow someone else’s words. If you use another writer’s words, put them in quotation marks and cite them properly (make sure I know where you got them). You should feel free to quote from the textbook or other sources, but make sure to give credit where it is due. If you have any questions about plagiarism, check your student handbook or contact me directly. Remember: using another’s words without proper citation – even if you didn’t mean to!!! – is plagiarism and will result in – at least – a failing grade on the exam, possibly even for the course.
You may use any sources you like, including my comments and your classmates’ words from our discussion board. Again: just give credit when you use someone else’s words.
You need to have your own thesis as well as supporting evidence for your thesis. And present your ideas in a clear, well-organized essay.
In writing your essays, be sure to refer to specific PRIMARY SOURCE documents whenever possible. Your essays will be graded on your ability to explain clearly by synthesizing your understanding of what you have read in the textbook with the primary source documents we read each week. In order to get a good grade on this exam, you must refer to and discuss the documents. I do not want a simple summary of the textbook.
The Questions – CHOOSE THREE (3):
Use these questions as starting points for essays of your own construction, with your own thesis.
1. One of the current controversies in our nation concerns how we memorialize our past. How should we remember Columbus and the history of the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere? What should we do about statues and holidays? Write an essay making an argument for a historical memorial to this period. Be sure to discuss specific people, events, and readings.
2. Why did the English colonize the New World after 1600? What was going on in England in the late 16th- and early 17th centuries? What social and economic changes were occurring which fostered colonization? What religious and political issues were at stake?
3. Discuss the experiences of the English in the New World in the 17th century. Compare the lifestyles of the American Indians, the Chesapeake colonists and the New England settlers in the seventeenth century. Discuss also the relations between European settlers and Native Americans in North America using specific examples. How did things change by the middle of the 18th century?
4. Discuss the labor situation in the New World from the beginning of English settlement to the middle of the eighteenth century. What problems did investors and settlers (both voluntary and coerced) face, and how did they solve them? Why did African-American slavery emerge as the dominant form of labor in the colonial south?
For all the questions you must use PRIMARY SOURCES as evidence!