Week 2: Debates over a standing army and navy / geography of war

Before class

Burnard, Trevor. “A Passion for Places: The Geographic Turn in Early American History.” Commonplace, July 2008. http://commonplace.online/article/a-passion-for-places/.

Hattendorf, John B. “Debating the Purpose of a Navy in a New Republic: The United States of America, 1775–1815.” In Ideologies of Western Naval Power, c. 1500–1815, 1st ed., 280–299. Routledge, 2020. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429316814-16. (available through GMU library)

Ostler, Jeffrey. “Just and Lawful Wars, 1783–1795.” In Surviving Genocide, 82–122. Native Nations and the United States from the American Revolution to Bleeding Kansas. Yale University Press, 2019. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvgc629z.7.

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On Tuesday, we’ll be introducing two bills in our Congress, in the session starting in 1792 (I mean, class): an act forming a peacetime navy and an act maintaining a peacetime army. You need to pick a side for one of these bills and find some friends to help you prepare your arguments for the debate on the floor of Congress. Your friends will be your classmates, but you also should see what the politicians, newspapers, and pamphlets of the time had to say about these issues. (If you need some help knowing where to find these documents, you might start with this video from our history subject librarian, Dr. George Oberle.) You may use these historical sources in your arguments.

In Slack, declare a side (5 people max to a team, and I reserve the right to redistribute as needed) and then begin preparing your defense of your position. I’d suggest a group DM in Slack to confab with your team.