What explains these differences and similarities?

1. What did societies in Europe, Africa, and the Americas have in common on the eve of the Columbian voyages in 1492? What were significant differences between these societies? How did both similarities and differences facilitate European colonization of the Americas?

2. Why did the Spanish, French, and Dutch (NOT the English) establish colonies in the Americas (the entire hemisphere)? Be sure to include the original goal of these enterprises. What was the institutional structure and purpose of the first colonial establishments? Where did these imperial powers establish their colonies and why? What were the similarities and differences in colonial approaches? What explains these differences and similarities?

3. Compare and contrast the English colonies in the New England region and the Chesapeake region. Include motivations, governance, settlement patterns, society, demographics, political participation, and relationships with Indians.

4. What caused the American Revolution? What events, ideas and developments drove many (not all) colonials together in protest to the British Parliament? What did the “revolutionaries” plead for from King George III in the Olive Branch Petition and subsequently the Declaration of Independence? Why would they make these demands and why did they do it the way they did?

5. How did the structure of the newly independent United States change from 1776 to 1787? Explain the ideological, political, and governmental shift for the Framers from the Declaration of Independence to the S. Constitution? Be sure to explain the conflicts that led to the change and occurred during the process of transforming the national government.

6. How did slavery exist prior to circa 1500 in Europe, Africa, and the Americas? Describe ‘unfree’ labor in early Colonial America? How did slavery and race become related? How did it vary by region? Describe African slave culture and explain how slaves resisted bondage.