HIS 102World History II

Catalog

World History II is the second in a two-course sequence tracing the rise of world civilizations. It will examine the modern social, political, intellectual, and economic development of civilizations in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas from approximately 1550CE to the present. Main themes include interdependency between the old and the new world, splendor, trade, and power in China, India, the Ottoman Empire, and Africa, the formation of modern citizenship in a global perspective, the great divergence, imperialism and decolonization, and the contemporary integrated world. More broadly the course will expose students to the use of primary and secondary sources and to the identification of change over time, causality, and contingency in historical knowledge.