 Greetings! Hi! Welcome to Economics 362, American Economic History. I'm Professor Gerald Friedman at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. I'm in the Department of Economics, but to be sure I have training in history. My undergraduate major was in history and my advisors were in the Economics Department and the History Department at Harvard University. I kind of think for myself as an historian, as much as an economist, used to be that I only did history because I never wanted to argue with my mother's personal experiences and her memories. So I couldn't talk about anything in the world that happened in the world after she was born in 1917. Well, she died a few years ago and I found myself working on 20th century events and things. That's a nice change, but I still love history. This course will be different than any other course you've had, I suspect. I could be wrong, but my approach to history and approach to economic history is different than the Convention and I like to think better, but that's up to you to decide. The conventional view of American history, which we could call triumphalism or the wig history, sees America as a triumph over geography, over stingy nature, over political extremism, and it celebrates these triumphs. America in the traditional story has gone onward and upward, ever forward. Everything is for the best. Everything is good. Everybody gains. Everybody wins. We all have gained. We've all won because America's become rich. And why? Why has America become rich? Because of great ideas, because of great men, Columbus, Henry Hudson, Washington, the cult of the founding fathers comes out of this vision of American triumphalism. We've won because America's great natural wonders. We have this continent that just kind of opened up for us with the Grand Canyon and the mighty rivers and on the great plains we've built alabaster cities that gleam untouched by human tears, because we've all triumphed in America as a great liberal country without feudalism, without original sin. I question this view. Sometimes I love this country, but it's not as simple as that. And in this course we will talk about all the pieces left out of this triumphalist story, not to say that there's no merit to it, but rather to say that we need nuance and we need, we can appreciate America and American history better if we understand the full picture. There was an America before the Americans. There were people before us. There were the natives, maybe over a hundred million of them. There were the Spanish, the Dutch, the French, all of whom need to be part of this story. Who built the prosperity? There were immigrant workers who's often dropped out of the Whig story. Not only those from Ireland and Germany who have been incorporated into America, as we know it, but those from Asia, those from Latin America, and of course those from Africa. Original sin, slavery probably should count. It's a story of American history, historiography, that American history is taught in secondary schools in two-year courses. The first year goes up to the Civil War, which means never quite get to slavery in the Civil War. The second course starts conventionally with 1877. Somehow we've, we teach American history with slavery and the Civil War left out. That kind of sums up the triumphalist Whig nature of conventional American history, the history that you may have been taught. This is a view of American history without conflict, without divisions. That's not the vision that we're going to have in this course. American history in this course is a history of conflict, of people fighting. This is a country that was founded to exploit African slaves. It was founded, built over the graveyard of huge civilizations. This country founded on conflict, conflict against the Native peoples who had survived, against the Spanish, against the Dutch, against the French. Conflict against slaves, conflict against other Americans. We have clash of civilizations in America, free labor against slavery, various forms of imperialism. The world's first revolution against colonial rule, 1776, when people stood up and declared for equality. This is an exciting story. It's much more exciting than the passive triumphalist Whig story. This is a story of the growth of an idea. America is an idea. It's an idea of opportunity. It's an idea that labor is valued, that people are valued according to what they do, according to their work, and that all are entitled to a decent living and decent opportunity to express themselves and to develop themselves, to pursue happiness as they see it. That is the idea of America. It's an idea that's developed through conflict among peoples, and it's an idea that we will talk about throughout this semester, and I look forward to it. I look forward to seeing more of you. Thank you. Bye-bye.