History 151:  Modern and Contemporary European Civilization

Spring 2003

 

Robert Schwartz

rschwart@mtholyoke.edu

 

Office Hours: Mon, Tues, & Thurs: 4-5 and by appt.

206 Skinner

Phone:  x2465

 

            In this course we’ll explore some main themes and events in the history of Europe from roughly 1600 to the present. To survey such a broad and changing landscape in one semester means that we have to make choices. What shall we study? What do we omit? How can we best approach the chosen topics? And what sources shall we use to carry out the investigation? There are many different answers and thus many different conceivable versions of History 151.

 

            In this semester, I want to give more attention than I have in previous versions to Europe in the broader context of world history by exploring some moments in the history European colonialism and imperialism from first encounters with the “New World” in the era of Columbus and Cortez to the global dominance of European empires in the late nineteenth century, and to retreat from empire after World War II. Here we’ll rely on primary sources that document European and indigenous peoples’ viewpoints, which we’ll study and discuss in relation to the bigger picture presented in the text and in my lectures. By way of these examples, therefore, we’ll investigate the connections between Europe and the wider world, trying to see both the ways in which European countries shaped their overseas empires and the ways colonies shaped Europeans.

 

            This complex history of European empires remains very important because it continues to shape the present. Indeed, that history is fundamental to understanding current conflicts in the Middle East, in Latin America, in South Asia and elsewhere. To see this, I encourage everyone to bring what they’re learning in the course to a regular and critical reading of a good newspaper and news broadcasts on television and radio.

 

            The European past is also in the European present and will be there in the European future as well. That past is fundamental to an understanding the European Union, just as it is to an understanding of the French and German opposition to war in Iraq. To grasp this we shall go back to about 1500 and then read history forward. Beginning then we'll follow the development of the early modern state in era when the European empire of the Hapsburg dynasty was the great rival of territorial states such as France.  We shall see how centralizing states became the dominant mode of political organization, how they sought overseas empires to strengthen their positions in Europe, and how in their own territories they later drew on nationalism for the same end. If by 1920, the nation state was triumphant and the Hapsburg empire was dead, two world wars of unparallel destruction caused many Europeans to look for ways to replace national rivalries through institutionalized European cooperation.  Today the European Union is the evolving result of that quest.  And one of the questions we shall consider is this: has the old notion and structure of a confederative empire—resembling the Hapsburg empire in the Germanies and central Europe from 1500 to 1800—returned to build the New Europe? Is this, as Yogi Bera said, “like déjà vu all over again”?

 

Books: available for purchase at the Odyssey

Jackson J. Spielvogel, Western Civilization, Vol. II Since 1500, 5th edition (New York: Wadsworth, 2003

Richard Lim and David K. Smith, eds. The West in the Wider World. Sources and Perspectives. Vol.2 (New York: Bedford, St. Martin’s, 2003)

Françoise de Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman (MLA texts)

Krupabai Satthianadhan, Saguna : The First Autobiographical Novel in English by an Indian Woman, edited by Chandani Lokuge. 1st ed. New Delhi, Oxford University Press. 1998. (pb)

Art Spiegelman, Maus (Pantheon Books, pb.)

 

Course Packet (required reading): available at the History Department, 310 Skinner (designated in the reading assignments by "CP".)

 

Course Requirements and Grading:

20 percent for attendance and class participation via discussions, postings, and brief oral presentations. do a required posting or presentation at the assigned time will (See below under Discussion Groups.)

35 percent for two or three-in class quizzes, announced well in advance.

45 percent for a self scheduled final exam.

 

Discussion Groups

            The class will divide into discussion groups, each of which will collaborate over the semester to prepare materials for the class in the form of 1) short presentations to begin a class discussion, 2) abstracts of key readings, and 3) the framing of questions for discussion. I will meet with each group from time to time to assist them. Much of this collaboration can take place with modest effort via the web forum and WebCT modules for the course. Credit for your participation in this collaboration will be determined by peer evaluation. This part of your course work will form a major part of the 20 percent of your final grade that is defined as attendance, class and group presentations.

 

Internet addresses:

 

Course site: www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151s03/

Course discussion forum : www.mtholyoke.edu/courses/rschwart/hist151s03/forum.html

WebCT site : https://luna.mtholyoke.edu

My email: rschwart@mtholyoke.edu

 

Topic, Lectures, and Readings:

 

 

Topics and Lectures

Readings

Jan. 30

Introduction:  The Past is Another Country

Selections from etiquette books, 15th – 17th centuries.

Feb. 4

Europe at Home and in the World, 1500-1700

The Past in the Present (discussion)

 

Writing Assignment: write a one-page comment on the editorials by Stern and Pfaff, briefly explaining your understanding of the main points. Send me this comment by email no latter than 9 p.m.. on Monday, February 3.  Be sure to save a copy of this comment so that you can read over it near the end of the course. This will graded as credit/no credit: if you don’t submit it, you get “no credit” as part of your 20 percent participation grade.

Fritz Stern, “A Century of Building Blocks for the New Europe”;

William Pfaff, American in History: Realists Don’t Buy the Wilson Line” (class handout).

Spielvogel, chap. 14

 

Feb. 6

From Encounters to Colonization the New World and Crisis in the Old

Lim, 1: “Two World’s Collide: Renaissance Europe and the Americas,” 1-29. Thomas Hobbes, selections from the Leviathan (1651) CP

Feb. 11

Grandeur and Power: Absolutism and Science

Spielvogel, chap. 15, 16; Lim, chap. 4 “European colonization and the Early Modern State,” selection 6. Administrative Correspondence within France; 7: Decrees of Peter the Great.

Feb. 13

Competition for Empire in the 18th century.

Spielvogel, chap. 18, chap. 17 (in that order); John Locke, selections from The Second Treatise on Government (1690) CP

Feb. 18

The New World in the Old

Graffigny, Letters from a Peruvian Woman, introduction, and pp. 1-80

Feb. 20

Sapere Aude: The Enlightenment

Graffigny, Letters¸ complete.

Lim, 5: “Rethinking the World: The Enlightenment, selections 3 Cornelius de Pau, Philosophical Inquiry into the Americas; 4 Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality; Beth Fowkes Tobin, Picturing Imperial Power..

Feb. 25

The Era of the French Revolution

Spielvogel, chap. 19

Lim, 6 “Slavery, Abolitionism, and Revolution,” selections 2 Olaudah Equiano, Interesting Narrative; 4 Abbé Raynal, History of the East and West Indies; 5 Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen; 9 Francois Toussaint-L’Ouverture, Letters

Feb. 27

The French Revolution, the Nation State  and Nationalism

Lim, 7 “Napoleon in Egypt” 157-178

Mar. 4

The Economic Transformation: Industrialization

Spielvogel, chap. 20

Lim, 8 “The Great Transformation: Responses to Industrialization at Home and Away,” selections 1-5, pp. 180-192: John Stuart Mill; Andrew Ure; Testimony for the Factory Act of 1833, Flora Tristan, Workers’Union

Mar. 6

Metternich’s Europe

Spielvogel, chap. 21

Mar. 11

Frankenstein and “Les Miserables” meet Karl Marx: Romanticism and Revolution.

Mary Shelley, Frankenstein selections;

Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, selections;

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The Communist Manifesto CP

Mar. 13

Quiz

 

Break

Mar. 15-Mar. 23

 

Mar. 25

National Unifications: Germany and Italy

Spielvogel, chap. 21

Mar. 27

Liberalism, Nationalism, and Imperialism

Spielvogel, chap. 23;

Krupabai Satthianadhan, Sagun begin

Apr. 1

Imperialism and Civilizing Missions

Spielvogel, chap. 24

Satthianadhan, Sagun, complete.

Lim, 10. Maps of Africa, 234-238.

Apr. 3

The "Great War" and the Russian Revolution

Spielvogel, chap. 25

 

Apr. 8

Europe in Crisis at Home and Abroad

Spielvogel, chap. 26

Paul Valéry, selections from The Intellectual Crisis (1919) and “Extraneous Remarks” (1927) CP

Apr. 10

The Fascist Era: Reason and Freedom Besieged

Philip Gibbs, selections from European Journey(1934) on “Hitler’s Gemrany” and “The Road to Remembrance.” CP

Adolph Hitler, selections from Mein Kampf CP

Apr. 15

World War II

Spielvogel, chap. 27; Spiegelman, Maus, begin

Apr. 17

The Holocaust (Discussion)

Spiegelman, Maus, complete.

Leon Poliakov, selection from Harvest of Hate CP

Apr. 22

Retreat from Overseas Empire

Lim, 11, Mahandas Gandhi, Indian Home Rule (1909), pp. 278-280.

Lim, 13: ´The Call for Liberation in the Era of the Cold War,” selections 1-9.

Apr. 24

Between the Superpowers: Cold War, Recovery, the Quest for Community

Spielvogel, chap. 28

Document on the European Union (to be assigned)

Apr. 29

The Fall of Communism and the Russian Empire

 

Spielvogel, chap. 29

May 1

The European Union. The Revival of Empire ?

Writing Assignment: write a second one-page comment on the editorials by Stern and Pfaff, briefly explaining your understanding of the main points as you now see them and whether your understanding has changed since your first reading and comment. Send me this comment by email no latter than 9 p.m.. on Wednesday, April 30. As before, this will graded as credit/no credit and be part of your 20 percent participation grade.

Lim, 14: “The New Europe,” 357-383

Reread: Fritz Stern, “A Century of Building Blocks for the New Europe”;

William Pfaff, American in History: Realists Don’t Buy the Wilson Line

May 6

Globalization in Historical Perspective