Studying at York
The Margins of Empire: Frontiers & Borderlands in the Americas & Southeast Asia, 1550-1800 - HIS00179M
- Department: History
- Credit value: 20 credits
- Credit level: M
- Academic year of delivery: 2024-25
Module summary
While the idea of territorial borders may seem enduring, for most of human history states were more the exception than the rule. This changed in the early modern period with the rise of European projects of expansion and conquest. Indigenous peoples across the globe were brought into contact with new imperial formations, which brought merchants, missionaries, soldiers, and other agents of empire into their communities, creating often violent disruptions to everyday life. While this is a familiar story, in this course we will explore the frontiers and borderlands that existed on the margins of empire. In doing so, this course challenges students to rethink traditional narratives of imperial expansion and conquest. Adopting a ‘frontier perspective’ allows us to interrogate imperial fragility, disruption, and dissent. Frontiers were ‘contested ground,’ zones where imperial power was tenuous. They were areas of both volatility and vitality, prone to violence and confrontation but also sites of negotiation where imperial cultures could be both resisted and adapted. For Indigenous peoples, frontiers often marked the beginning of autonomous spaces – sometimes called ‘zones of refuge’ – where Indigenous peoples continued to pursue their own lifeways outside of European control or intervention.
The study of frontiers invites comparisons across time and space. Using a thematic approach, this course will look at a myriad of different ways in which Indigenous communities across the Americas and Southeast Asia encountered, negotiated, and contested empire. Students are invited to consider interdisciplinary methodologies, including the use of archaeology and ethnohistory, to recover Indigenous experience of colonial frontiers and beyond.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are to:
- Develop skills of source analysis and interpretation
- Assess a range of source material and relevant secondary works; and
- Develop students’ powers of evidence-based historical argument, both orally and in writing.
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will:
- Demonstrate a knowledge of a specialist historiographical literature;
- Present findings in an analytical framework derived from a specialist field;
- Solve a well-defined historiographical problem using insights drawn from secondary and, where appropriate, primary sources.
- Set out written findings using a professional scholarly apparatus.
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1. Students will then attend a 2-hour seminar in weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing (RAW) weeks during which there are no seminars, and during which students research and write a formative essay, consulting with the module tutor. Students prepare for eight seminars in all.
Seminar topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
- Introduction: What is a Frontier?
- Creating the Frontier: Empires and Violence
- Middle Grounds: Trade and Intercultural Exchange
- Escaping Empire: The Frontier and Zones of Refuge
- Mountains and the Friction of Terrain
- Insurgent Ecologies and Escape Agriculture
- Cultural Frontiers: Gender, Spirituality, and Imperial Ideology
- Beyond the Frontier: Indigenous Lifeways
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
Students submit a 2,000-word formative essay in week 9.
A 4,000-word summative essay will be due in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Essay/coursework | 100 |
Module feedback
Students will typically receive written feedback on their formative essay within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their seminars and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their formative essay during their tutor’s student hours—especially during week 11, before, that is, they finalise their plans for the Summative Essay.
For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For the summative assessment task, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The tutor will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For reading during the module, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
-
Juliana Barr and Edward Countryman (eds.), Contested Spaces of Early America, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014
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James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009
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Paul Readman, Cynthia Radding, and Chad Bryant (eds.), Borderlands in World History, 1700-1914, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014