World History: Empires and Exchanges since 1500

Catalog description

GE-Human Culture: World History/Human Diversity Why was Columbus looking for Asia? Why did more African slaves go to Brazil than to the United States? How could anyone have supported Hitler’s rise to power? Is globalization new? And what do these historical events have to do with you? A British novelist once quipped, “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” But you cannot understand the world that you’ve inherited unless you understand its origins. This course will provide you with a bird’s-eye-view of the last five centuries of human history, tracing the global political, economic, and cultural events that have shaped the contemporary globalized world in which you live.