**This class will be taught In-Person**
Our modern globalized world was built in the 19th Century. This course will examine those foundations: the international relationships—formal and informal, imperial and diplomatic, political, economic, military, and cultural—from the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars up through World War I. We will consider the changes flowing from the “industrial revolution,” the rise of nationalism, the spread of empires, an increased focus on trade and economics, and an adaptation to a global scale of thinking. And we will look at the choices made by the individuals and countries involved and how they affected (and were affected by) strategy, personalities, popular interests, and contingency. Our primary subjects are states, empires, nations and those that would become such. We won’t be focused on one particular national history, but considering the system as a whole. We will take a global view, but European developments will receive substantial attention.
We will use several inter-related themes to maintain our bearings through the swirling complexity of events and personalities:
• How peoples and countries thought of themselves and other states, empires, and colonies
• How countries moved from politics to war and back
• The tension between apparent longer-term historical developments and the effects of apparent random or chance events
• The relationship between Europe and the wider world
• The changing nature of power over the period
Week 1—Introduction; the World of the 18th Century; the French Revolution and its Impact; the Congress of Vienna
Week 2—Industrialization and a globalizing economy
Week 3—Nations and States in mid-century
Week 4—Evolving nature of war and peace
Week 5—The nature and practice of empires
Week 6—MultiPaths to World War I; Versailles and the world system of 1919; Conclusion
