AP UNITED STATES HISTORY SUMMER READING ASSIGNMENT

Advanced Placement United States History is designed to teach students to think critically about the issues that have confronted and influenced the United States through a process that integrates the examination of factual knowledge, the development and application of analytic skills, and the assessment of primary and secondary sources. This class is the equivalent of an introductory college survey course in U.S. history, and its content spans the discovery and settlement of the New World to the present. To accomplish this task, the APUSH Summer Assignment must cover the first 350 years of history during the summer. Below you will find your summer reading assignment. If you have any questions, email me at jdean@teaneckschools.org.

Assigned Reading:	Taylor, Alan. American Colonies. New York: Penguin, 2002. Print.

Note: The book can be purchased at any major physical or online bookstore retailer (around $14.00), procured at the local library, or a copy can be signed out at the Teaneck High School Guidance Office.

Task - There are TWO parts to the summer assignment:

1) Carefully read American Colonies
	Part I Encounters: CH 1-5 pp. 4-113,

2) Answer the thematic understanding section on page 3.

Grading of the Written Assignments

	All answers are to be typed in Google Docs, double spaced, 12 pitch font and in time new roman
	 The responses to the thematic questions will be graded on: clarity, comprehension and understanding of the themes. Each answer to the questions must be in your own words. Do not copy word for word from the reading.
	This assignment is worth 100 points.

NOTE: This is NOT a group effort. Do your own work! Integrity, honor and academic commitment are central to this class. I do not expect anything less of you. The question is, would you expect less of yourself?

Due Date and Submission Requirements

	This assignment must be submitted via Google Classroom by the first day of class. The class code for the Summer Assignment is: 65igymq

 Sign in to our Google Class with your Teaneck Schools email address.

Submission Bonus Opportunity
	If you submit your summer assignment by July 31st, an additional ten points will be added to your
first quiz
	If you submit your summer assignment by August 31st, an additional five points will be added to
your first quiz

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Book Analysis for AMERICAN COLONIES by Alan Taylor

Directions: You are to read carefully the assigned chapters of this book by Alan Taylor. Each chapter has a set of questions/list of topics to guide you in your reading before you answer the Thematic Understanding Questions portion of the assignment on page 3.

YOU DO NOT ANSWER THESE QUESTIONS! USE THEM TO HELP YOU ANSWER THE THEMATIC QUESTIONS ON PAGE 3.

Part One: The Encounters

Chapter One: Natives:
1) Old world explorers encountered in the new world complex and diverse peoples—who, where, etc? 2) Pre-Columbian America is “fraught with controversy.” What conflicts were they?
3) Without making Europeans out to be vile, cruel and violent, we should recognize that they had superior power but they gave new additions to Native Americans. Identify these additions.
4) Some natives had a culture that demanded less of the environment than that of other natives—such as: 5) What are Taylor’s three ideas which he argues about migration?

Chapter Two: Colonizers:
1) Taylor makes a big issue over environmentalism—why? 2) What caused the expansion of Europe and why?
3) What were the two major religions of the age of expansion? How do they come to impact the new world? 4) Why is the Atlantic Ocean such a central vital environmental concern for the colonizers?
5) What does Taylor say about slavery in the new world?
6) How significant was Renaissance science and technology for the colonizers?

Chapter Three: New Spain. 1) Conquests:
2) Conquistadores: 3) Consolidation: 4) Colonists:
5) Empire:
6) Gold & Silver:

Chapter Four: “The Spanish Frontier”:
1) Florida became the focus of Spain—why? How?
2) What significance can be attached to New Mexico Missions? Franciscans?
3) What was the Pueblo Revolt, how did it begin and what happen to cause the fanaticism?

Chapter Five: Canada & Iroquois [a shift in geography, a new culture, and very different group of Native Americans]
1) What were the two major Native American cultural groups? How were they distinct? 2) The key for economic development was the fur trade of New France. Why was that so? 3) Analyze and characterize The Five Nations. Who were they?
4) What impact did old world disease have upon new world natives?
5) In the new world the French brought the militant Jesuits to catholicize the new world. Did it work?

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Thematic Understanding Questions American Colonies

Directions: Using the Taylor reading and book analysis questions/topics frombeforeas a guide, type answers for the following APUSH theme questions (Definitions of each theme are located on pages 4 & 5 in this packet).You do not want to copy the material directly from Taylor’s book. It should be written in your own voice as a summary of understanding. Each response MUST be around 200 words in length (half a page).

Suggested Pacing Guide - You will have around 10 weeks to complete the assignment (depending when you start). I recommend you read approximately 60-70 pages per week (8-10 pages per day) and complete 3 thematic questions per week. By following this guide, you’ll finish before the due date with little stress and time to spare. DON’T PROCRASTINATE!

Identity
1. How did the identities of colonizing and indigenous American societies change as a result of contact in the Americas?

Work, Exchange, and Technology
1. Explain how patterns of exchanging commodities, peoples, diseases and ideas around the Atlantic World developed after European contact and shaped North American colonial-era society.
2. How did the Columbian Exchange—the mutual transfer of material goods, commodities, animals, and diseases—affect interaction between Europeans and natives and among indigenous peoples in North America?

Peopling
1. Explain how and why people moved within the Americas (before contact) and to and within the Americas (after contact and colonization).
2. Analyze the effects that migration, disease, and warfare had on the American Indian population after contact with the Europeans.
3. Explain how free and forced migration to and within different part of North America caused regional development, cultural diversity and blending, and political and social conflicts through the 17th
century.

Politics and Power
1. How did Spain’s early entry into colonization in the Caribbean, Mexico, and South America shape European and American developments in this period?

America in the World
1. How did European attempts to dominate the Americas shape relations between Native Americans, Europeans, and Africans?
2. How did the competition between European empires around the world affect relations among the various peoples in North America?

Environment and Geography- Physical and Human
1. How did pre-contact populations of North America relate to their environments? How did contact with Europeans and Africans change these relations in North America?

Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture
1. How did cultural contact challenge the religious and other values systems of peoples from the Americas, Africa, and Europe?

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AP United States History Themes

I. Identity
This theme focuses on the formation of both American national identity and group identities in U.S. history. Students should be able to explain how various identities, cultures, and values have been preserved or changed in different contexts of U.S. history, with special attention given to the formation of gender, class, racial, and ethnic identities. Students should be able to explain how these sub identities have interacted with each other and with larger conceptions of American national identity.

II. Work, Exchange, and Technology
This theme focuses on the development of American economies based on agriculture, commerce, and manufacturing. Students should examine ways that different economic and labor systems, technological innovations and government policies have shaped American society. Students should explore the lives of working people and the relationships among social classes, racial and ethnic groups, and men and women, including the availability of land and labor, national and international economic developments, and the role of government support and regulation.

III. Peopling
This theme focuses on why and how the various people who moved to, from, and within the United States adapted to their new social and physical environments. Students examine migration across borders and long distances, including the slave trade and internal migration, and how both newcomers and indigenous inhabitants transformed North America. The theme also illustrates how people responded when “borders crossed them.” Students explore the idea, beliefs, traditions, technologies, religions, and gender roles that migrants/immigrants and annexed peoples brought with them and the impact these factors had on both these peoples and on U.S. society.?

IV. Politics and Power
Students should examine ongoing debates over the role of the states in society and its potential as an
active agent for change. This includes mechanisms for creating, implementing, or limiting participation in the political process and the resulting social effects, as well as the changing relationships among the branches of the federal governments and among national, state, and local governments. Students should trace efforts to define or gain access to individual rights and citizenship and survey the evolutions of tensions between liberty and authority in different period of U. S. history.

V. America in the World
In this theme, students should focus on the global context in which the United States originated and developed as well as the influence of the United States on world affairs. Students should examine how various world actors (such as people, states, organizations, and companies) have competed for the territory and resources of the North American continent, influencing the development of both American and world societies and economies. Students should also investigate how American foreign policies and military actions have affected the rest of the world as well as social issues within the United States itself.

VI. Environment and Geography- Physical and Human
This theme examines the role of environment, geography, and climate in both constraining and shaping human actions. Students should analyze the interaction between the environment and Americans in their efforts to survive and thrive. Students should also explore efforts to interpret, preserve, manage, or exploit natural and man-made environments, as well as the historical contexts within which interactions with the environment have taken place.

VII. Ideas, Beliefs, and Culture
This theme explores the roles that ideas, beliefs, social mores, and creative expression have played in shaping the United States. Students should examine the development of aesthetic, moral, religious, scientific, and
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philosophical principles and consider how these principles have affected individual and group actions. Students should analyze the interactions between beliefs and communities, economic values, and political movements, including attempts to change American society to align it with specific ideals.

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