| Students will be expected
to produce TWO pieces of written work: ONE in-class test (in
mid-semester, covering roughly half of the syllabus) and ONE
take-home essay (for the end of the semester, covering the remaining
part of the syllabus). These essays should not exceed 2,000
words in length, should include a proper bibliography (and
footnotes where appropriate) and should not be plagiarized.
Substantially plagiarized essays will receive zero, so be
warned.
Tutorial presentations will not be formally graded, but will
nevertheless be informally assessed.
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| The French Revolution
has for long been a conventional starting-point for courses
on ‘Modern’ Europe. It brought to an end the ‘Early
Modern’ period and the ‘Old Regime’ in Continental
Europe (and this is primarily a course on Continental European
history, with little attention paid to developments in Britain),
and ushered in a new century of profound political, economic,
and social change. A good knowledge of the French Revolution
(Part I) is therefore a pre-condition for a proper understanding
of the remainder of the course, and the mid-semester in-class
test will be based primarily on this topic. Little was the same
again in Continental Europe after the Revolution, and we shall
be concerned with the impact it had on political systems, economic
growth, and social structure. Nevertheless, it is all too easy
to exaggerate the extent to which the Revolution brought about
radical change, and stress will also be laid on the elements
of continuity between the Ancien Regime and the nineteenth century,
particularly with respect to the more undeveloped and under-developed
parts of central and eastern Europe.
In speeding up the disintegration of the feudal system, of
governmental systems of absolute monarchy and of aristocratic
domination of society, the Revolution created the conditions
under which industrialization was possible, and it is the
process of industrialization and its associated social and
political consequences which constitute the focus of Parts
II and III of the course. Following on from the French Revolution,
the Industrial Revolution provoked radical changes in the
structure of society and provoked the emergence not only of
bourgeois liberalism, but of the more profoundly subversive
movements of Utopian socialism, anarchism, and Marxian socialism.
Part IV (Nationalism and national unification) is concerned
with the growth of nationalist movements and the ‘unification’
of Italy and Germany – once again, developments which
can only be understood in the context of the impact of the
French Revolution. The nation-state may not have been a new
concept in the nineteenth century (and several multi-national
states survived in Europe until at least the First World War),
but nationalism certainly was, and was evolving by the early
twentieth century into increasingly aggressive and authoritarian
forms which were to contribute to the rise of Fascism in the
1920s and 1930s.
Part V (Aspects of Modernization) is something of a hotch-potch,
and is concerned with three important developments: the changing
relationship between the Roman Catholic Church and the state
before 1914; the beginnings of state-controlled mass education;
and the evolution of constitutional systems and of the liberal-democratic
state.
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