Assignment II: Reading a Scholarly Article
For this assignment, you will read a scholarly article, provided for you in the Additional Readings module. This assignment requires you to pay close attention to the language the author uses and how he constructs their arguments (what they emphasize, what types of evidence they appeal to.)
This is article is entitled, “The Enemy is Us: Democratic Capitalism in the Early Republic,” by Gordon Wood. Wood is an eminent historian of the American Revolution and the early U.S. Republic.
In this essay, he describes a debate among historians over whether or not the early Republic was a “capitalist” society or not.
Write a two-page summary of his essay, in which you will do the following:
1. Identify the main of the article.
2. Identify the academic historians Wood cites in his essay, and briefly state what their arguments are.
3. Look at the footnotes to see the different types of sources he cites, and give a few examples.
4. State how Wood’s argument differs from the other historians he mentions in the essay.
ARTICLE: THE ENEMY IS US: DEMOCRATIC CAPITALISM IN THE EARLY REPUBLIC BY Gordon S. Wood
