How would you characterize the encounter between Native Americans and Europeans in the century after 1580?

What were the different approaches to European colonization and why did the English colonies thrive?

What were the relative importance of ideas and/or interests in European colonization?

To what extent was early colonization managed by distant imperial authorities and/or driven by those on the ground in the New World?

How secure was the English empire in North America at the end of the seventeenth century?

Were the eighteenth-century British American colonies a land of opportunity?

How did the Native Americans maintain and lose their power in the eighteenth-century and what were the decisive factors and turning points?

How important were notions of class and discontent concerning inequality in eighteenth-century colonial society?

What did deference mean and how did it influence colonial political culture?

Why were the colonists loyal to the empire in the decades up to the Seven Year’s War?

What colonial divisions and conflicts can you see that had the potential to weaken colonial loyalties following the 1763 French defeat?

How did the patriots’ notion of revolution differ from our own?

What was more important to the patriots, home rule or should rule at home?

Why did some remain loyal and how do this choice complicate questions relating to patriot motives?

How did the Americans win the revolutionary war?

How was the meaning and implications of the Revolution different for wealthy merchants, poor farmers in western Massachusetts, slaves in Virginia, and Indians who continued their struggle against settlers moving west?

Was the American Revolution a radical revolution?

Why did Americans have reasons to be optimistic and anxious in 1781?

How did the position of Native Americans in the west change after 1781?

How should we judge the administration of central government under the Articles of Confederation?

How did the European powers regard the new American republic?

How much of a threat was Shays' Rebellion to the new republic?

How did the Founding Father's regard democracy?

Why was the war debt problem also a constitutional challenge for state and federal governments?

Did the Constitution secure or undermine the radicalism of the Revolution?

Why were the Founding Fathers and Americans so readily prepared to compromise on the enslaving of African-Americans in their republic of liberty?

Why did the French Revolution provoke such severe divisions?

How did westward expansion shape the development of the United States in the first half of the nineteenth century?

What caused slavery’s growth and what were the most significant consequences?

What were the causes and the consequences of the War of 1812?

What were the social effects of the market revolution?

Why were Indians removed west of the Mississippi River?

Why did Andrew Jackson polarise political and public opinion?

What were the most important reform movements in the antebellum United States?

To what extent did slavery build a society in the South that was distinctive from the rest of the nation?

What were the major causes of sectional division?

Why did southern states secede following the 1860 presidential election?

Why did it take so long for emancipation to become a war objective?

What factors explain the Union’s victory?

How far do you agree with historian Eric Foner that Reconstruction was an unfinished revolution?

What were the most important consequences of emancipation for black southerners?

How was violence deployed to restore white supremacy during Reconstruction?

What factors account for the defeat of Native American tribes in the West?

What were the most important effects of railroad construction in the second half of the nineteenth century?

How successful was the labour movement in the era of industrialisation?

Were Robber Barons a help or a hindrance to American development in the Gilded Age?

Was the New South characterised by change or continuity?

Why did the Populist movement not have mass appeal?

Which was the most significant reason for US intervention in the Caribbean and Pacific in the 1890s: the search for new trading markets, Anglo-Saxonism and racial concerns, naval aggrandisement, Manifest Destiny, a religiously-defined sense of Christian mission, humanitarianism?

In what ways might gendered ideas about power or masculinity and military prowess shape attitudes toward imperialism and anti-imperialism?

How did Wilson’s racial views shape his decisions to intervene in Latin America but initially pursue neutrality in the early stages of World War I?

Does American rejection of the Treaty of Versailles and League of Nations signal that it was still a novice world power?

Did “Dollar Diplomacy” reach a highpoint in the 1920s?

Did progressive-era reforms address and relieve serious social, economic, and political problems, or were they a means of increasing social control over working-class, immigrant, and non-white residents?

Why would Americans from different regions, backgrounds, and political organisations have differing views about World War One and its impacts on their society?

To what extent could education, the vote, economic prosperity, and typewriter change American women’s lives in the 1910s and 1920s?

What alternatives to “national origins” or numerical quotas might have been used to check immigration in the 1920s?

Could national prohibition have worked with better federal and state regulation of the manufacture, sale, and distribution of alcohol? What kinds of controls and restrictions could have been implemented?

Why do you think marriage, birth and divorce rates all decreased during the Depression decade?

Would it have been possible to run major New Deal programmes such as NRA, AAA, CCC, and WPA as state or local initiatives and without federal government input?

Which workers benefited most from New Deal reforms?

Why was conservation such a core component of so many New Deal programmes?

Why did the Great Depression and the global economic crises affecting nations across the globe mean that Americans resisted any major sanctions against Italian fascism, Japanese militarism, and German Nazism? [needs rewriting as wording is clunky]

Looking at FDR’s foreign policy decisions in the late 1930s, why do you think he wanted to be pushed into WWII?

How important was US civilian mobilisation to Allied successes?

What might have been the implications for the US of a Germany victory in Europe and Japanese victory in the Pacific?

How useful or problematic are the terms “good war” and “greatest generation” in defining Americans’ experiences during WWII?

Why is the post-war confrontation between the USA and the Soviet Union called the “cold war”? What other phrases would be appropriate?

How did Truman contribute to the cold war? What was Stalin’s role?

Was America’s adoption of the containment doctrine justified?

Why was the Berlin crisis so dangerous?

How did the USA profit from the Marshall Plan?

What was the impact of the Korean War?

What were the domestic ramifications of the cold war and specifically the Korean War?

What factors contributed to the economic prosperity of the 1950s?

What were the most important benefits of consumer society?

What were some of the downsides of suburban living?

Why did most mainstream politicians ignore civil rights problems?

What was the liberal consensus?

What were the consequences of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion for American foreign policy in the 1960s?

Why did some of Kennedy’s New Frontier programs succeed while others failed?

What were the most important differences between Kennedy and Johnson as Presidents?

What were the major achievements and failures of Johnson’s Great Society reforms?

What were the differences of the civil rights movement and the Black Power movement?

Why did many Americans oppose the Vietnam War?

What was the relationship between feminism and other social movements of the 1960s?

Why was 1968 a crisis year in American history?

What were the most important causes of the economic crisis of the seventies?

How did the administration of Nixon, Carter, and Reagan respond to the economic crisis?

What was the relationship between the economic crisis of the seventies and social developments of the period?

Why did Nixon have to resign from office?

How did defeat in Vietnam impact American foreign policy in the seventies and eighties?

Was Reagan a strong leader?

How did middle-class life change during the seventies and eighties?

Why was Reagan not impeached in the Iran-Contra scandal?

Why do many conservatives have positive memories of the Reagan years? Why do many liberals dislike him?

Do you agree or disagree with the concept of a conservative triumph?

Why did the Cold War end?

What were neoliberalism’s effects on the U.S economy and society?

How did the attacks of September 11, 2001 affect U.S. foreign policy?

What were the similarities of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama Presidencies?

Who or what was responsible for the Great Recession?

Which short- and long-term developments contributed to the election of Donald Trump as President?