The Global Age of Revolutions, 1757–1868

Catalog description

Analyzes revolutions from the 1750s to the 1860s, encompassing the East India Company’s takeover of Bengal followed by the American, French, and Haitian revolutions and independence struggles in Latin America. The course situates the European industrial revolution in this context and considers its destabilizing effects in the nineteenth century: in Europe, North America, and East Asia via the Opium Wars and Japan’s Meiji Restoration of 1868. The course considers whether a political crisis of global capitalism could have been what linked these revolutions together. Students will write a research paper on any aspect of this Age of Revolutions.