Ninteenth-Century Political History

(5 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

This course invites students to reflect on the foundations and methods of the advent of political modernity in the 19th Century. It retraces the major stages in the evolution of Europe and its imperial extensions, from the democratic revolutions of the end of the 18th Century to the advent of the era of the masses at the beginning of the 20th Century. Themes covered include the emergence of schools of thought such as liberalism, conservatism and socialism changes in the instruments of mobilisation, violent wars, revolutions or peaceful civil society, electoral processes the affirmation of nation-states and the persistence of empires. Particular attention is paid to the place claimed and obtained by women in political society. Throughout the twelve sessions, the teaching also takes care to question Europe's place in the modern world and to discuss the processes of political modernisation, or their limits, on other continents.