History of the Modern World, 1500-Present

Catalog description

This course is a survey of modern world history, focusing on exploring the political, economic, social, and cultural forces that transformed human societies in the past five centuries. Designed to help students study history with a global perspective, it examines how commercial revolution and nation-building in early modern time made the West the driving force for globalization; how industrialization, imperialism, colonialism, and revolutions inspired by political liberalism, Marxism, and other ideologies changed the Western and the non-Western worlds in the 19th and 20th centuries; and how modern world wars, decolonization movements, and the Cold War redefined the relationship between the West and the rest of the world, and the relationship between humankind and the environment. (F, Sp)