Modern Europe: Old Regime and Revolutionary Europe, 1715-1815

4 credits · Undergraduate

The eighteenth century in Europe witnessed a series of "revolutions"--intellectual, political, and to a lesser extent, social and economic--that together constitute the birth rites of modern European society and culture. Historians collectively agree that the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the European expansion of Napoleonic France were events of world-historical significance, yet the causes and precise meaning of these events are the subjects of substantial disagreement. We will study the transformations of the eighteenth century that announced our modern world, and we will also try to make sense of the different ways that historians disagree about the meaning of what happened.