HIST-10200 Global History and Culture 2

This course begins with the Early Modern Period in 1500 when the voyages of discovery linked world trade routes and transformed human encounters and civilizations. A basic question the course explores is how and why the West came to dominate the modern world. The causes are traced to ancient Greek humanism, rationalism, and trust that natural laws governed the universe. Renaissance Europe revived these values and laid the foundation for one of the world's most transformative events - the scientific revolution. the Age of Reason and Enlightenment in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries applied natural law to politics, economics, and social institutions and toppled feudal monarchies and aristocracies and ushered in an era of individual human rights.These movements spawned the creativity of the Industrial Revolution and a capitalist economic system which provided the West with political, economic, and military might to lay the foundation for modern imperialism, racism, and global warfare. Western modernization forced other world civilizations to reckon with these transformations. Old values and modern demands continue to be negotiated on the global stage in a multi-polar world. The course concludes with a return to a theme from Global History 1 - human use and abuse of planet earth and speculations on the future of humanity.

Credits

3