HIST 1101: The Shaping of the Modern World: Home

Course Description This course examines broader economic, intellectual, religious, political, and cultural forces that transformed Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas, from before 1500 through the present. Central questions of this course shall include: (1) What is the modern world and how was it created? (2) How did different empires develop in distinct regions of the world and what are their connections to processes of modern phases of “globalization”? (3) How did (and do!) contacts between cultures irrevocably change them and shape the world as we know it today? Through examination of primary documents and secondary sources, we will also consider the roles of regional politics, philosophy, technology, war, religious (in)tolerance, and political instability in the precipitation of global events. We start our inquiry just before periods of religious and political change in Europe and contact between Europe, Africa, and Americas, and consider how demographic instability, transoceanic encounters, dynamics of economic and global imperialism, the industrial revolution, nationalism, decolonization, and globalization have created the world we inhabit today.