Undergraduate Course: Global Connections since 1450 (HIST08041)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Humanities and Social Science |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 8 (Year 2 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | This course explores the past history of global connections and disconnections from c. 1450 to the present day. The course builds on the foundations established in the first year history courses which explore the makings of the medieval, early modern and modern worlds. In this course, we drill down into key themes in global history to provide a foundation for honours courses in global history and in regional histories beyond Europe and North America. |
| Course description |
The course explores the global history of three themes ¿ goods, peoples and ideas. We interrogate the new forms of power which sought to reshape global connections in the period from c. 1450 and explore the ways in which polities and societies in Asia, Africa and Latin America engaged with and resisted the rise of European power and produced alternative imagined geographies, leading to the creation both of new connections and new forms of disconnection. This enables us to engage critically with linear narratives of globalization. At the same time, the course also provides an opportunity to reflect critically on the writing of global history and to consider how we best make sense of the intersections of the local and the global in this period.
Goods
(six/seven themes from the following indicative list of topics, depending on staff availability in any given year):
1. From the Silk Road to the New World
2. Trading Companies
3. Spices
4. Gold, Silver, and Diamonds
5. Ceramics
6. Coffee and Tea
7. Tobacco and Potatoes
8. Opium
9. Sugar
10. Arms and weapons
11. Loot
12. Art
13. Rubber and Oil
14. Silk, Cotton and Jute
15. Cars
People:
(six/seven themes from the following indicative list of topics, depending on staff availability in any given year):
1. The Indian Ocean world
2. The Atlantic world
3. Slave trade
4. Indentured labour
5. Germs and DNA: disease in global history
6. Refugees in History
7. Pilgrimage
8. Revolutionaries
9. Missionaries
10. Soldiers
Ideas:
(six/seven themes from the following indicative list of topics, depending on staff availability in any given year):
1. Time
2. Religion: Christianity¿global religion, local practice?
3. Religion: Buddhism and Islam in Asia
4. Religion: Neo-Confucianism, Neo-Buddhism, and Pentecostalism
5. Secularism and Atheism
6. Law and legality
7. Orientalism
8. Racial thought
9. Feminism/Gender
10. Paradigms of health and healing
11. Political ideologies
12. Pan-Asianism/Pan-Africanism
13. Technology
14. Railways and Canals
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass in any first level course achieved no later than August of the previous academic year. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students should usually have at least 1 introductory level History course at grade B or above (or be predicted to obtain this) for entry to this course. We will only consider University/College level courses. |
Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- 1. demonstrate command of a substantial body of historical knowledge
- 2. demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain historical arguments in a variety of literary forms, formulating appropriate questions and utilizing evidence.
- 3. demonstrate an understanding of the varieties of approaches to understanding, constructing, and interpreting the past; and where relevant, knowledge of concepts and theories derived from the humanities and the social sciences.
- 4. demonstrate the ability to address historical problems in depth, involving the use of contemporary sources and advanced secondary literature.
- 5. demonstrate clarity, fluency, and coherence in written and oral expression.
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Reading List
C.A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World: Global Connections and Comparisons, 1780-1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004)
James Belich et.al., The Prospect of Global History (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016)
Sugata Bose, A Hundred Horizons: the Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire, 2006
John Coatsworth et al., Global Connections: Politics, Exchange and Social Life in World History (Cambridge: CUP, 2015).
John Darwin, After Tamerlane: the global history of empire since 1405 (London: Bloomsbury, 2008).
A.G. Hopkins, Globalisation in World History,
Akira Iriye, ed., Global Interdependence: the World after 1945 (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 2014).
Wolfgang Reinhard, ed., Empires and Encounters: 1350-1750 (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 2015).
Emily Rosenberg, ed., A World Connecting: 1879-1945 (Cambridge, MA: HUP, 2012).
Edward Said, Orientalism (1978) ,
Megan Vaughan, ¿Africa and the Birth of the Modern World¿, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 16 (2006), 143-62
Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, A Concise History of the World (Cambridge: CUP, 2015).
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Special Arrangements |
As standard for Subject Area |
| Keywords | Global Connections |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Emma Hunter
Tel: (0131 6)50 4034
Email: |
Course secretary | Miss Alexandra Adam
Tel: (0131 6)50 3767
Email: |
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