Imperial Borderlands in Modern Europe

Catalog description

This course provides students with an overview of the processes of constructing borders in a variety of forms, ethnic, religious, trade, and linguistic, in a European imperial context. HIST 525 Imperial Borderlands in Modern Europe (3) This course exposes students to the latest developments in colonial studies and new paradigms for considering European imperial history in terms of its borderlands. Using the methodological tools applied in recent years to the history of Western colonial empires, this course expands the scope of European history to encompass the complex interaction between the conquered peoples and their rulers by broadening imperial history to include the study of ethnic and religious differences that emerged from the European encounter with peoples whose cultures differed profoundly from their own. In particular, the material covered in this course will build an awareness among students of the role of states, and especially imperial states, in confronting the polyethnic/multinational character of populations they sought to rule. The theoretical and historiographical works assigned will focus on how imperial European states crafted or erased cultural differences and how borderlands posed particular challenges in these endeavors. Building on these insights, students will gain an awareness of imperial policies and conceptions of colonial rule and of the impact of imperial domination on colonial peoples. Students will learn to recognize and identify the means by which Imperial rule brought irreversible changes to the way of life of the borderlands peoples, who adapted to and resisted imperial rule by a variety of means that they had at hand. Such an approach will yield an awareness of the methods by which historians formulate questions, choose sources, use theory to interpret the material they collect, and the variety of rhetorical and other means available to historians to present findings. Students will conduct their own analyses of scholarship by reflecting on the assigned readings and presenting their thoughts and evaluations in the form of weekly critiques and a final paper. This will be invaluable in helping students to acquire the necessary methodological and theoretical tools to formulate questions for their own research projects. This course fulfills the requirement of a topical graduate course in History. It is open to students within and outside of the History Department.