2024-2025 College Catalog

HIST 212 Revolutionary Europe

How did Europe make the transition from a collection of hereditary monarchies ruling over predominantly rural societies to a group of nation-states whose systems of representative government were increasingly controlled by urban middle classes? This course will focus on key political, economic, and social revolutions in nineteenth-century Europe, from the French Revolution of 1789 and its introduction of popular sovereignty to European political institutions, through the economic and social transformations of industrialization, to the emergence of nationalism and the modern nation-state. We will consider how contemporaries grappled with the meaning of "liberty" and "equality," and whether all people were included in these radical new concepts. Attention will also be devoted to the prevailing cultural assumptions about race, class, and gender that defined Europeans' sense of identity and that imperial powers like Great Britain and France used to justify their conquest of peoples in Africa and Asia.

Credits

3