History 70B:
Modern European
History: 1789 – 1914
Instructor: Chris Brooks
Course Description:
This course will cover the history of Europe in the long nineteenth century, beginning with the French Revolution and ending with World War I and its immediate aftermath. We will take a multivalent approach in this course, exploring not only the enormous political changes Europe underwent in the nineteenth century, but economic, cultural, social, and intellectual shifts as well. In the process, we will try to answer the following questions: what were the major changes around the end of the eighteenth century that ushered in the modern era? What were liberalism, romanticism, socialism, and fascism, and why did they emerge when they did?
Course Requirements:
There will be a final exam and one (7 – 10 page) paper. The exam will consist of identifications and a short essay.
Each component, the paper and the exam, will comprise 50% of the final grade. However, we will also hold discussions of the reading and the themes of the course during most of our class meetings, and participation will move the final grade up or down one-half of a grade point (i.e a plus or minus.) In exceptional circumstances, participation, or lack thereof, can affect a grade by a full point. Thus, regular participation is an essential component to insure a high grade.
Attendance at lectures is mandatory. The purpose of the lectures is to provide an overarching narrative that will tie together the various readings and themes we will explore this term. You are responsible for the content of the lectures in the final exam and the essay.
Readings:
The reading load for this course is not particularly demanding. The concomitant demand is that you do all of it; the exam and paper are designed to test your understanding of the reading as well as the lectures.
I have assigned material available from online resources as much as possible to mitigate costs.
One book is assigned in the course and is available at the
Bay Tree Bookstore: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities. Be
sure to get the revised 2006 edition.
Also note that copies are available at the library and there is a free
electronic version available via the library website.
Course Schedule:
Week 1:
1. Tuesday, July 28: The French Revolution and Napoleon.
Readings: Declaration of Rights of Man and Citizen.
http://www.hrcr.org/docs/frenchdec.html
Abb Sieyes, What Is the Third Estate?
http://webs.wofford.edu/racinepn/assgn08.pdf
Olympe de Gouge, Declaration of The Rights of Women.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1791degouge1.html
Topics: The Ancien Rgime. Timeline and highlights of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. Discussion of the ambiguities of revolutionary rhetoric concerning women, blacks in the colonies, and political dissenters.
2. Thursday, July 30: The Industrial Revolution and the
post-Napoleonic reconstruction.
Readings: Edmund Burke III, Energy Regimes in History. (eres)
Readings: Klemens von Metternich, Secret Memorandum to
Czar Alexander I.
http://www.wise.virginia.edu/history/wciv2/metter.html
Klemens von Metternich, Political Confession, 1820.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1820metternich.html
Topics: The Congress of Vienna, the Holy Alliance, and the balance of powers. Industrialism's origins and growth and the importance of understanding the fossil fuel regime.
Week 2:
3. Tuesday, August 4: Liberals, Conservatives, and
Romantics.
Jeremy Bentham, Of the Principle of Utility.
http://www.constitution.org/jb/pml_01.htm
Edmund Burke, excerpts from Reflections on the Revolution
in France
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1791burke.html
Liberalism versus conservatism in their nineteenth-century
variants. Notes on Adam Smith and
Jeremy Bentham. Liberal revolts of
the first half of the century.
4. Thursday, August 6: The Revolutions of 1848, the
Emergence of Socialism, and the Victorian Era.
Reading: Karl Marx, I. Bourgeois and Proletarians and II.
Proletarians and Communists from The Communist Manifesto.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/index.htm
Topics: The revolutions of 1848. Socialism. Victorianism.
Week 3:
5. Tuesday, August 11: Mass-Culture and Nationalism.
Reading: Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities.
Chapters 1 – 3, 5 – 6.
Topics: The idea of nationalism and thoughts on its origins
and spread.
6. Thursday, August 13: The Great Power System and
National Unifications.
Giuseppe Mazzini, On Nationality.
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1852mazzini.html
Otto von Bismarck, excerpts from Memoirs.
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/bis.html
Topics: A political history of Europe in the mid –
late nineteenth century, focusing on the balance of powers system and its
breakdowns in the Crimean War and the Franco-Prussian War. Case studies of the unifications of
Germany and Italy.
Week 4:
7. Tuesday, August 18: Socialism, Feminism, Imperialism:
The Late Nineteenth Century.
Caroline Norton, A Letter to the Queen
http://www.indiana.edu/~letrs/vwwp/norton/letter.html
Emeline Pankhurst, My Own Story
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1914Pankhurst.html
Jules Ferry, On French Colonial
Expansion
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1884ferry.html
Topics: Socialism in the latter half of the nineteenth century. The emergence of the feminist movement and the question of public spaces and roles for women. The explosion of European imperialism, with a case study of the Berlin Congress of 1884.
8. Thursday: August 20: Civilization and Its Discontents:
The fin-de-sicle.
Readings:
Friedrich Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in an Extra-Moral Sense
http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/tls.htm
Topics: The faith in progress and its obstacles at the turn of the century. The emergence of psychology and sociology. The strange legacy of German Romanticism in Nietzsche, Spengler, and Heidegger. Case study of the late Romanov dynasty and the Russian Revolution of 1905.
Week 5:
9. Tuesday, August 25: Total War and Its Consequences: WWI and the Europe of the Versailles Treaty.
Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/spengler-decline.html
F.T. Marinetti, The Futurist Manifesto
http://www.cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/T4PM/futurist-manifesto.html
Readings: Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm
Topics: Causes of World War I. Timeline and highlights of World War I. Military technology and the shock of
total war. The malaise of the
postwar period.
10. Thursday, August 27: Final Exam
PAPER DUE
FINAL EXAM