Building Utopia: Radical Politics in Modern Europe

Catalog description

How did Europe transition from an old continent of aristocratic monarchies and empires to a region of democratic nation-states boasting some of the most generous welfare regimes in the world? Much of this transformation was fueled by utopian dreamers, from the Chartists in England during the 1830s and 1840s calling for universal suffrage, to trade-unionists inspired by various socialist writings demanding the right to work under the Paris Commune of 1871, to revolutionary nationalists demanding the end of empire and monarchy after 1918 in Ireland and Central Europe, to labor or social-democratic parties demanding the nationalization of basic industries, to land reformers demanding a redistribution of inherited wealth, all the way to more conservative, often Christian or business social reformers who worked for the adoption of health insurance and pensions schemes. Which utopias succeeded, which failed, how, and why? How did the pursuit of these utopian ideas propel and shape the democratization of European society and politics in the age of industrial capitalism? This course charts the radical political history of modern Europe, from the industrial revolution at the dawn of the 19th century all the way to the construction of post-World War II democratic welfare states which still characterize the continent today—even in a post-industrial age. Together, we will come to grips with what democratization has meant historically in Europe: who pushed for it, and under the auspices of which ideas and which institutions did they birth. Ultimately, the course aims to plot the relationship between the history of radical, utopian ideals with the history of real, political reform.