World History: Early Modern

HIST 105, By Reuben Zahler

Term: Spring 2023

HIST105-WorldHistoryII-Zahler-Spring2022

Survey of world cultures and civilizations and their actions. Includes study of missionary religions, imperialism, economic and social relations. Early modern.

In this course we study the first truly global historical age, inaugurated by Christopher Columbus’ first journey to the Caribbean in 1492. This was the first time in recorded written history that humans from both hemispheres began to interact on a sustained basis. We end the course around 1800, by which time the West, meaning Europe and its colonies abroad, had become the world’s dominant civilization. “The West vs. the Rest” still structures our sense of the world today, and what we call the ‘modern’ epoch.

In retrospect, we can say that the single most important event in establishing Europe’s global hegemony was the shift from land power to sea power that Columbus and his successors helped bring about. This is the transformation that occupies the first four weeks of class, in which we canvass the entire globe. But we don’t want to assume that this outcome was inevitable, much less the product of Europe’s inherent superiority. Columbus’ discovery of America was, after all, an accidental one, an attempt to connect Europe to the riches of the East.

China, not Europe, was the world’s leading civilization until the very end of our period, with Islam and India not far behind. With this in mind, we spend the bulk of the course–six weeks in total–comparing Chinese and European societies between 1500 and 1800. Politics, war, religion, family, money, literacy, science, and ecology provide the bases for our exploration. Only by the end of the course will we have what we need to explain Western dominance from a nuanced, non-self-congratulatory perspective.

4 credits