 2015 - 2016 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| 0621-1180-01 | Empires: West East and Power in the Modern Age 1700-2016 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| FACULTY OF HUMANITIES | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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University credit hours: 2.0
Course description
Empires are neither western nor modern entities. But the new western oversize empires that evolved between the 18th century and the present have been characterized not only by their technological and military power, but also in that they were present in the everyday life, the experience and the imagination of modern people—both the ruled and those who ruled them. Modern empires shaped states, economies, national identities, classes, cultures and genders. Thinking about these empires and the exchanges between “West” and “East”, enables us to understand and rewrite modern history. The course looks at major topics in the history of these empires, such as the fascination with the “Orient” in the Enlightenment; the 18th century consumption revolution and the material empires of goods like tea, coffee and porcelain, empires; slavery and religion; empires and nationalism across the world; the economies of empires—from the age of the Industrial Revolution to the era of oil; imperialism and its forms of power; imperialism and internationalism , and the relationship between past empires after de-colonization and globalization