course surveys the modern world from
the 18th to the 20th century. Its aim is not just to provide a summary of the events of
modern times, though these are important and not slighted. It tries to raise
questions about what “modern” meant and how “modernity” relates to the
present. For as the historian William H. McNeill already noted a generation
ago, we need to do much rethinking about the past:
American (and world) public badly need new visions, new generalizations, new
myths, global in scope, to help navigate in our tightly interactive world.
If historians fail to advance suitably bold hypotheses and interpretations,
then politicians, journalists, and other public figures will continue as now
to use unexamined clichés to simplify choices that must be made (New
York Times, December 27, 1981).
keeping with McNeill's advice, this course adopts a global
perspective. It focuses upon the historical processes through which a distinct
set of "modern" ideas, values, institutions, and problems first
emerged in Western Europe and then spread world-wide, engendering not only a
new mentality associated with modernity but a new,
interdependent world system that
centered around the North Atlantic. This
is the "modern world" the course attempts to reveal.