At the turn of the sixteenth century, England was a tiny island kingdom just emerging from the wreckage of a decades-long civil war. Over the next two centuries, its people struggled to survive through rebellions and dynastic drama, religious uncertainty and massacres, plagues and famines, continent-wide wars and seaborne invasions. This course will examine the political, economic, religious, cultural, and social transformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in England with a particular emphasis on how its people attempted to understand and thrive in an uncertain world. In doing so, they could never have imagined they were laying the foundations for a British Empire on which the sun never set and whose American colonies gave birth to the nation we live in today.

From the top menu of this website, you can navigate to:

• About: who, when, where, what you need to download/buy
• Policies: the fine print
• Grading: how contract grading works
• Assignments: a lists of the assignments and their final due dates
• Schedule: what you need to read, when
• Resources: things that may help, will be updated throughout the semester

The course Zoom link will be available via the course Slack instance, which you will receive an invitation to join at your GMU email address near the beginning of the semester (depending on when you enroll in this class).