[
Wesleyan Home Page
] [
WesMaps Home Page
]
[
Course Search
] [
Course Search by CID
]
For the past 150 years debates about the role of commerce in American society have often revolved around a single question: Does the free exchange of goods and services, driven by profit-seeking, self-interested agents, benefit or detract from the public welfare? Today the moral implications of this question involve several facets of American life, from socio-economic inequality, health care and public schooling to the environment, zoning laws and the aesthetics of urban and suburban landscapes. This course will focus on the moral concerns that surrounded commercial exchange in colonial and revolutionary North America. We will look at the traffic in furs, liquor and guns between Indians and Europeans, the African slave trade, smuggling and piracy in the West Indies and North American port cities, and the dramatic spread of British luxury items throughout 18th-century North America. Each of these branches of commerce raised troubling moral questions for contemporaries, a fact that will allow us to explore how different groups of early Americans understood the relationship between private interest and public good.
Unless preregistered students attend the first class meeting or communicate directly with the instructor prior to the first class, they will be dropped from the class list. NOTE: Students must still submit a completed Drop/Add form to the Registrar's Office.
COURSE FORMAT: Discussion
Level: UGRD Credit: 1 Gen Ed Area Dept: SBS HIST Grading Mode: Graded
Prerequisites: NONE
Last Updated on MAR-24-2000
Copyright Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, 06459