Modern France: Renaissance to Revolution

4 credits · Undergraduate

This is an upper-division survey of French History from the Renaissance through the French Revolution (1500-1800). The course explores the economic, political and cultural factors that allowed France to emerge as the most powerful nation and global actor in Europe from the end of the middle ages to the reign of Louis XIV. We examine the extent of the kingdom's military, political and cultural influence and the realities of everyday life in 16th and 17th century France. We then turn to the key developments of the eighteenth century—capitalism, colonialism, global conflict and Enlightenment—that led to the collapse of French monarchy in 1789 and the unfolding of the first democratic revolution in the West.