Remember what you put but many of you focused on what historians would call the American Revolutionary era rather than the colonial era writ large. People like george washington, Thomas Jefferson, alexander hamilton, issues like taxation without representation, other founders and historical highlights and the imperial crisis in the war all popped up. A few mentioned paces, historic james town, plymouth plantation. A few mentioned slavery. What i thought was interesting was because it was because of either the 1619 project and the summer black lives matter protests. There were a few omissions. No one mentioned individual women or m Indigenous People by name. No one mentioned anything west of the appalachian mountains, much less west of the rockies or the west coast. Technically speaking this course runs from before contact of europeans with Indigenous People in the 15th century to 1763, the end of the 7 years war, french and indian war in what is now the territory called the United States of america. So, this covers hundreds of years, millions of lives havgs of which were women, coming together of people from africa, mostly enslaved and not of their own volition, as well as multiple countries and empires in europe, england being but one of among these and not even the first to establish a permanent settlement as we discussed, as well as Indigenous People intermingling on what is now the United States of america but originally was all indian territory. From the atlantic to the pacific, including hawaii and alaska. And of course we dont cover the American Revolutionary era and i did that on purpose because it tends to suck all the air out of the room. I love the american revolution. I teach a class specifically on that. But it does tend to overshadow the rest of the colonial era if its included. And yet most of you, like most americans, i think, would ask to think on what colonial American History means to you, you thought about a few white men in the 13 colonies of the Atlantic Coast who signed the declaration of independence and fought the american revolution. This makes complete sense. Most of us, unless we take advanced history courses or do a lot of outside reading have a narrow conception of what colonial america is. We had a memorable example of one of your classmates showing a Halloween Costume that was laughable but typical of how americans picture the past. There were a lot of silences in how we remember it. I hope this course has changed that for you. Spoiler alert, one of the things were going to do next week is im going to ask you to answer the same question so we can compare and contrast where we began in our conception of colonial American History and where we are now near the end of the course. So, i think the relatively narrow conception most americans have of what colonial American History even is is one of the reasons why we spent our first few weeks defining what the course means. In other words we talked about what does colonial mean . What does american mean . And what is history . And well return to those discussions next week too. A lot of these are controversial. The word american. America encompasses north america, south america, people in latin america take issue, understandably, with u. S. Citizens refer to ourselves as american. We sort of coopted that phrase. And what does history mean . Whos in charge of fashioning it and whos interpretation of the past do we focus on . But in the meantime, todays lecture is going to be a chance to connect a lot of the dots of the last woks weve spent thee mt. Ically learning together from the salem witch trials to virginia in 1619 to gender and religion and war. To use our reading of the book silence in the past power and production of history which youre finishing up this week and next, to think about how the history and created, communicated and memorialized not just in Academic Circles but in the broader public. Two ways colonial American History are popularized are the subjects of todays lecture. That will be myths and monuments. Im going to start sharing my korean. All right. So, i began the so far so good, right . I began the course by introducing you to one of the most Critical Concepts that i hope student who is study history in college walk away from my courses with. And thats that history is not the same thing as the past. History is not just a recitation of facts, dates, et cetera that happened in the past. But peoples interpretation of those dates, of those facts. And sometimes of course people believe in history thats not even based on facts at all, hence the myth part of this lecture. But when it comes to the history of colonial america, i think how we define the terms about which were speaking is critically important. For example, whose past are we discussing, when does it begin, where is it situated . These sound like basic questions around a history course but theyre not. What encompasses colonial American History and how we define it has shifted over time. And how we interpret this past matters to the american present because it includes answers to the questions of what and who do we celebrate, who or what do we silence, and what people and places and events do we count as important in the past . Now, myths and monuments do a lot of this work. They do it in a variety of ways of course outside college courses. This is one of the reasons pedagogical incite here i asked you to look into historical interpretations of the colonial american past. So everything from the names on street signs to disney films to Halloween Costumes to Historic Sites like Colonial Williamsburg and of course monuments to people, which weve discussed and will continue to discuss today. And i think trio puts it really nicely in silencing the past, and i quote here. History has many hearts and academics are not the sole history teachers in the land. So, in other words, people get their history from a wide variety of places. Historys produced outside of universities as well as within them. And the history of how our understanding colonial history is constructed necessitates in particular i think that we consider history and historiography not just within but beyond the academy. People do get a bigger dose of colonial American History when they go to Colonial Williamsburg or plymouth plantation in many cases than they do in their choices of reading or some of their k12 history courses. So, history, especially popularly consumed history, often takes this material form. And one reason we need to study objects, artifacts and places, Historic Sites as well as art, what i would think of loosely grouped together as what scholars call material culture, is that its a really great way to understand the production and consumption of history. I think thats one of the reasons trio spends a great deal of time in his book talking about history thats not just in books, right, history thats found in statues, as an example. Of course debates around monuments of which weve seen the last few years but a lot in particular in summer, debates about monuments and public art, whether they should stand or fall, what should be erected in the first place. Of course debates about history which itself is a form of commemorating. What i want to talk about today is how the story wes dont tell, the stories we silence are just as important as the stories we tell and really when we silence stories its kind of like tearing down statues in a sense. So, when it comes to colonial america, historiography shapes not just how the past is interpreted but the parameters that we put around discussing that past as well. Whose past is it, when does it begin, where is it situated . This is complicated, but the celebrations of it rarely are. And i think trios quote here is a really great one, again from the book that you read, the section you read for this week. The myth making process does not operate evenly. Celebrations are created and this creation is part and parcel of the process of the historys production. So, in other words we make choices with monuments, with celebrations like columbus day, just as we make choices in terms of what to put in our history books. And these commemorations, these celebrations, are usually pretty sanitized in the sense that theyre usually pretty simplistic, right . Monuments tend to offer a very simplistic narrative, an easilyunderstood one, a pretty black and white one. We know from class and our discussions that history is hardly ever a matter of black and white. Its shades of gray. Its complicated is the answer to a lot of questions we pose about the colonial past. But think about monuments. How many are there that have things inscribed on their base, to both sides of the messy complicated past. So, how we choose to interpret the american colonial past matters to the american president and what and who we celebrate and what or who we silence we can see in the places and spaces around us. And i think, for example, just to take one of the things we wrestled with in the early weeks of the class, when do we begin colonial america is critically important. And its a simple question, but its so hard to answer. And yet the answer predetermines to a large extent how we view colonial america. We talked, for example, about whether we should begin our concept of colonial america before contact between european and Indigenous Peoples, whether concepts like prehistory to describe indigenous histories before european arrivals actually do a disservice to the richness of the indigenous past, the idea that we should look at the historical artifacts and structures left behind by mississippien mount cultures you see in the middle here as just as valid as written historys that european peoples tend to leave behind. And yet we refer to indigenous histories as prehistory in a lot of cases. And what happens after contact is history. If we start in 1776 with, you know, thinking about america, then that defines america as always around this nationstate of the United States of america, when in fact there are hundreds of years of history that come before that in which it was by no means predetermined that the United States of america would ever be a thing that came into being, right . Similarly, we discussed a lot about dates that are important as starting points traditionally in how we talk about colonial American History and what we should do with that. 1492, of course, the idea that columbus discovering is often the word used. That word does a disservice because its about contact and conquest. Its not about discovering something that was of course well known to the many people who lived there before columbus stumbled upon it. Or do we begin with 1607 with the First PermanentEnglish Settlement . That ignores the fact that the english werent the first powers to establish settlement in the United States. Those were the spanish in florida. Or was it 1619, james town, the arrival of african who is became the first africans in an english permanent settlement or the establishment of the house or burgesss or 1690 with the pilgrims arrival in plymouth . In part one of the reasons i spent so much time discussing issues like when does colonial america, when does america begin, is that i think it helps us to determine what we discuss, who we celebrate and who we raise monuments to among other things. And getting to why these choices are important, i think theyre really important because as trio says, celebrations straddle the two sides of history. They oppose silence upon the events that they ignore and fill that silence with narratives of power about the event they celebrate. In other words, one reason i have you read trio in the first place is so we can discuss the man whose myth and monuments were going to begin with today, a man who, as you know, never stepped foot on the United States of america, but who nevertheless begins our surveys of its past. That is of course christopher columbus, who got a lot of attention this summer and has for a while due to the holiday celebrating him. Columbus day, which has gotten a great deal of push back for columbus and his reputation, right . So, theres columbus, the man. Theres columbus the myth. And a lot of monuments of course celebrate columbus the myth. But we can talk about columbus the man as we have in this course. And i think one of the reasons that columbus the myth has gotten pushback is because more and more people have become aware of why he deserves analysis and critique from his enslavement of Indigenous People from his first point of contact in the americas to the rape, disfiguring and killing of indian people done at his command in the name of the pursuit of profit, specifically gold in the caribbean. And yet hes celebrated and weve discussed this too as the sort of kick start of the chain of events that led to the establishment of european colonies in north and south america and the caribbean, without which, of course, the United States of america would not be here in its present iteration. One of the things thats a common response to critiques to the actions of people like columbus whose actions we condemn as deplorable in many ways is that he was a man of his time. We discussed this too. There were always people who stood against atrocities such as those ordered, participated in. Notably Indigenous People at the time. They did not approve of what he was doing but also other europeans at the time. We discussed the dominican friar, former enslaver himself who also participated in the 1513 invasion of cuba. But who came to have a change of heart in part as a priest and in part as someone who believed that the treatment of Indigenous People was wrong. And then who journeyed in florida and texas in the 1520s and 1530s with alongside him was enslaved african esteban, which is an interesting point of contention. Some historians have made with the 1619 project, which touts the first arrival of enslaved africans when in factest bab was there in florida a century before. Despite the fact that critics besieged his fellow spaniards to not enslave them and treat them better than columbus had done, for example. And yet despite pushback in his own time and since, we have so many reminders of columbus, not just in statues like these, what you see in fulfill at the left, which has not been defaced in part because men stood around it and protected it this summer so it wouldnt be defaced. Just showing you the strong emotions that people have for as well as against columbus. Statue of columbus in San Francisco in the middle, which has been splashed with red paint, which is often something protesters used to deface monuments that they of historical figures that they feel have blood on their hands. And then on the right a statue im going to spend a little bit more time talking about, statue of columbus in a park called bird park in richmond that was toppled this summer and put into a pond thats in the lake. So, lets talk a little bit about this statue of this monument of columbus in richmond because i think it gets us at how columbus is really just a starting point for our discussion of monuments and myths and their power in how we view colonial American History, especially scattered throughout our landscape. So, i mentioned that the stoo which you of columbus that was put in a pond in richmond is nay park called bird park. So, byrd park, not like a song bird. Byrd park named for a family in virginia, a colonist who grew quite property. And william byrd ii is one of the family to helped found the city of richmond. So, byrd park is named for him as a founder of the town of richmond. But this is something that i think is important to note because when the columbus statue was toppled this summer and put in the water in byrd park, a lot of the focus was on columbus and what columbus tells us about colonial American History. No one really talked about william byrd, for whom the park is named. I think its really important to bear in mind how rememorialize colonial america is just as powerfully found in the names of parks and streets as it is in things like a monument, like a statue. And in some ways these are more important because these are just as hard to topple. People are very attached to names of things. If we think about christopher columbus, we would have to rename among other things our capital city, washington, the district of columbia, which is something that comes out of columbus name. If you think about william byrd ii you have to question whether his name should grace the name of a park which people gather to enjoy themselves. William byrd ii, very wealthy, very air indict, had a fabulous library, wrote a number of books, including his secret diaries which he wrote in code. In his secret diaries he records his serial philandering. He was married twice but he continued to have multiple sexual affairs, many of which were rapes of enslaved womens, all of which he details in his diaries. He also had some terrible habits of interaction with enslaved people who he claimed as property. One enslaved man, for example, had a habit of wetting the bed at night. And as punishment once, william byrd ii made him drink his own urine after wetting the bed. Not an attractive figure. Sort of contrary. Sort of representing the worst of virginia colonial aristocracy, and yet his name is what this park is richmond, virginia, is named the park is named for him. So, when we think about monuments like that of columbus in byrd park that are toppled, i think we need to think about the wider connections. The name of byrd park itself sals important. What do we do with that . Where do we draw the line with our questionpjg of these m