Students will receive an introduction to the course aims, structure and methods of evaluation. History as academic discipline will be discussed. Instructor will divide the class into groups for the seminars and group presentations.

Seminar Session: This module looks 15th- and 16th-century- Europe, beginning by considering what is meant by concepts like ‘state’, ‘order’, ‘commonwealth’ and ‘nation’ during these centuries. We will then have discussion of the Italian Renaissance, based on the Merriman chapter, including considerations of how to define the Renaissance, humanism and the concept of the individual.

Seminar Session: This is the first part of an intensive examination of the religious crises in Europe of the early modern period: the Reformation. The aim is to highlight the diverse responses of early modern states, societies and individuals to the theological disputes which threatened the fabric of European civilization from the 16th to the mid-17th centuries. This session will also consider the consequences of the European exploration and discovery of the “New World”; Columbian exchange is introduced.

Lecture Session: This session is devoted to discussing the era of religious war which rocked Europe from the late sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries. It will also consider the consequences of the “Little Ice Age” in Europe. In the second part, session will introduce the Scientific Revolution of the 17th Century.

Seminar Session: The unit looks at the rise of the absolutist state in much of Europe and the alternative forms of governments. We will consider the ramifications of all this for the state in Europe, particularly in France, which lurched from being a ‘failed state’ to an effective ‘absolutist’ one; but we will also introduce absolutism in Russia, Prussia and contrast this particular forms of early ‘modernity’ with the Dutch Republic, Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the limited monarchy of Great Britain.

Seminar Session: The intellectual revolution known as the Enlightenment is introduced. Afterwards, this module looks at how a political reform movement in France turned that country into creative, idealistic and bloody turmoil, and before long influenced the rest of continent with passionate ideas of liberalism, nationalism, socialism and conservatism.

Lecture Session: The first half of the session is a lecture on the Industrial Revolution – among the most formative processes in European history. And it was a process: a series of largely uncoordinated social, economic and technological changes which transformed much of the world we live in. This is followed by Group B’s presentation.

Lecture Session: The first half of the session is a lecture on post-Napoleonic Europe. In many ways, this period was about a fundamental clash between the liberal heirs of the Enlightenment and French Revolution and the ‘reactionary’ authorities entrenched across much of the continent. Liberalism – the quest for constitutional government and individual rights – was also closely connected to nationalism. Tensions reached fever-pitch in the 1848 ‘spring of nations’.

Seminar Session: The First World War was a decisive watershed in the history of European civilization. In its wake, revolutions of the Left and the Right took place; four empires fell; new nations rose in their place, and old nations reappeared on the map. The session looks at the major causes and the course of the First World War.

Seminar Session: Discussion of the outcomes and legacies of the First World War, including international attempts at ensuring that World- War I was the ‘war to end all wars’. The reading focuses particularly on how the Great War helped stimulate the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and surveys the implications the revolution had for Russia and the world. Early optional submission date for Essay.

Lecture Session: This module looks at the extremism which came to dominate European political, economic and social life in the 1920s and 1930s, and considers the chief reasons for the breakdown of the Versailles System by 1939.

Seminar Session: This discussion looks at the causes, course and consequences of the most devastating conflict in human, including a consideration of the Holocaust and the morality of Allied victory.

Lecture Session: The Cold War was the single greatest fact of life in Europe after World War II. This session looks at the establishment of Communist regimes and on contrasting conditions between East and West Europe. Yet we should not be blind to some commonalities between both sides of the Iron Curtain, such as youth movements and a culture of protest and dissent. Eventually, dissent helped to bring down Communist rule in the East.

A final session will explore the major themes addressed in the course, and suggest ways of approaching contemporary European history.