This week, I am facilitating my first national teacher seminar for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History in New York City. Yesterday, I was charged with moderating a one-hour question/answer session with two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient Dr. Alan Taylor, author of multiple books on American history, including the recommended American Colonies: The Settling of North America.
The second session with Professor Taylor went quite well. That is to say that it went well even when our scholar's computer shut down unexpectedly and we were left with Mr. Hoggatt to keep the ship afloat. I'm happy to report that the ship didn't take on water at all. I was very pleased with my ability to fill the time with meaningful content until he was able to reboot everything and rejoin the meeting.
Participants came up with more and more questions for the second and third sessions, but I was still prepared with a few of my own to keep things moving and meaningful. They aren't all related to one another directly, but for the third session, we were dealing with "the rest" of colonial history, so I didn't expect it to be as organized or concise as previous sessions. Here are my questions:
Participants came up with more and more questions for the second and third sessions, but I was still prepared with a few of my own to keep things moving and meaningful. They aren't all related to one another directly, but for the third session, we were dealing with "the rest" of colonial history, so I didn't expect it to be as organized or concise as previous sessions. Here are my questions:
- We don’t hear about convicts being transported to North America from Britain. You mention that 80% of these ended up in Virginia and Maryland, with even George Washington purchasing some, to the consternation of neighbors. At a third the cost of an enslaved African, the opportunity cost must have been a fear of violence and crime. Fifty thousand of these convicts were shipped to America? Talk to us about how the presence of convicts may have changed the atmosphere.
- How were the Gullah-Geechee people in the rice and indigo plantations able to develop a society that seems so different from other slave groups?
- Once again, we have to constantly acknowledge that history is ugly. Would you point to a particular event as the ugliest portion of colonial history in the Americas?
- Are there questions you would like to have been asked that apply to this session?
- What was the last new thing you learned about the American colonies?
- What projects are you working on now?
