Week 2 Discussion — How Much Can a Founding Paper Carry? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

In 1620 a group of settlers off Cape Cod agreed to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation", and four hundred years of retelling have turned that one sheet into a symbol. This week you learned what a charter and a covenant are, how four empires built different kinds of colonies, and how to tell a claim a source shows from one that goes beyond it, and those tools raise questions with no single right answer.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: How much weight can the Mayflower Compact carry in the story of self-government in the English colonies? Take a position on what this one covenant can and cannot tell a historian, use the pinned fragment and the course's distinction between a claim that shows what a source says and a claim that goes beyond it, and name one other kind of evidence you would want before saying more.

Option B: Spain built around missions and mines, France and the Dutch Republic around the fur trade, and England around settler farms and towns. Which pattern do you think reshaped the lives of the Native nations it met most deeply in its first decades, and why? Use the course's definitions of empire, colony, and dispossession and at least one of the week's sources, and state the strongest case for a different pattern as fairly as its best defender would.

There is no single right answer. Historians weigh founding documents differently, and they compare empires by different measures, so a careful reader can defend more than one view. What is not open is the record itself: every one of these colonies sat on Native land. Pick the option you care about, and make your case.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say how much weight the Compact can carry, quote its pinned fragment exactly, sort at least one claim about it as showing or going beyond the source, and name one other kind of evidence you would want; for Option B, name the pattern you think reshaped Native nations' lives most deeply, give at least one reason using empire, colony, or dispossession, and state the strongest case for a different pattern.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (empire, colony, charter, covenant, dispossession, shows, goes beyond the source) correctly.
• Quote only the course's pinned fragments, word for word and in their own spelling, with the document and its date.
• End with one plain sentence that names what your evidence shows and what it does not.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Write from your own reasoning, in your own words, and keep present-day politics out of your examples.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: sort one of the classmate's claims as showing or going beyond the source, state a stronger version of the side the poster argued against, or name a Native nation's view the poster's source leaves out. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A and argue that the Mayflower Compact can carry a small, real weight and no more. The Compact, a covenant signed at Cape Cod in 1620 and read at the Avalon Project, has its signers "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation", so it shows one group agreeing to govern itself. Saying it created American democracy goes beyond the source, because the text says nothing about later governments. A reader who gives it more weight would point to how often later writers cited it; I would want the colony's own later records before agreeing. In one plain sentence: the Compact shows a local agreement among its signers, not the origin of a nation's government.

Notice how it sources the document, quotes only a pinned fragment in its own spelling, sorts a claim as showing or going beyond, names what would change its mind, and ends in one plain sentence. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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