Hist 143 Schedule for Europe and the Modern World

History 143 Spring Semester 2025 History 143 Spring Semester 2025 History 143

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Class Schedule

For a given day, the readings listed should be read in full by the class time. All readings are potentially the subject of reading quizzes, but the quizzes for the outside readings (such as Martin Guerre) are worth three regular reading quizzes.

Unit One: Europe from 1500 to 1800

Jan 29--Introduction
In class and for review: short film by Ollie Bye on the expansion and decline of the House of Habsburg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4tlWHDYKej0

Jan 31--Long Ago and Far Away: The World of 1500
Read the Wikipedia entry of "The House of Tudor," but only down through the sub-heading "Rebellions Against the Tudors"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Tudor
Also, read an interesting modern medical history of Henry VIII
https://cvhf.org.uk/history-hub/mad-bad-and-dangerous-to-know-henry-viiis-medical-history-2/
And, finally, Chapter XVII from Nicolo Machiavelli's The Prince (published 1532)
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1232/1232-h/1232-h.htm#link2HCH0017

Feb 3--The State Emerges: Ottomans, Venetians,  Habsburgs, Tudors/Stuarts, Romanovs.
Read the Wikipedia entry on Russian History, but only down to and not including "Russian Empire (1721–1917)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Russia
And read from the Wikipedia entry on "Ireland"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ireland
BUT only the sections under "History" called "Norman and English Invasions" and "Kingdom of Ireland"
AND
A Habsburg Primer, short essay by Hunt Tooley!

Feb 5--Material Life in Europe in the 1500s: Food, Work, Disease, Crisis, Witches!
For background to Copernicus's own writings, read:
   the introduction to the Copernicus entry in Wikipedia, and just skim through the rest of the article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicolaus_Copernicus
Then read the Intro to Nicolas Copernicus's great work at http://www.bartleby.com/39/12.html
    (Read carefully: Copernicus was not Galileo. Whom does he thank?)
Also, here is the class powerpoint for reference. You don't need to look at this before class.
Witches!

Feb 7--Technology, Economy, State, Discovery, and the Columbian Exchange
Wealth and the new states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debasement
Read from Columbus's log book on the discovery:
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/columbus1.asp
On Jakob Fugger (!) From "History Bites":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og-yA0Vd8Kc&t=13s
and on the Columbian Exchange
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
And watch this video by John Green of Crash Courses on the Spanish Empire and more:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjhIzemLdos

Feb 10--Religion and State.
Read the History.com short history of the Protestant Reformation
http://www.k-state.edu/english/baker/english233/Luther-Diet_of_Worms.htm
And watch an excerpt from the superb 2003 film, Luther: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5P7QkHCfaI

Feb 12--The Reformation (Cont.) and the Thirty Years War
Read this short biography of John Calvin:
https://www.notablebiographies.com/Ca-Ch/Calvin-John.html
and
The History Guide lecture on the Catholic Reformation:
http://www.historyguide.org/earlymod/lecture5c.html
and
Wikipedia on the Thirty Years War: INTRO to the article only (in other words, only up to but not including "Contents")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
and
and read carefully this very brief primary account of the Siege of Magdeburg during the Thirty Years War and the little intro
http://ghdi.ghi-dc.org/sub_document.cfm?document_id=4396
And read:
Set of primary accounts of the war:
http://germanhistorydocs.ghi-dc.org/pdf/eng/Doc.7-ENG-Heberle_en.pdf

Feb 14--Class discussion of The Return of Martin Guerre. For class, a quadruple-value reading quiz on the book, with special emphasis on: the SOURCES of the Martin Guerre episode in particular (meaning, what kinds of evidence does Davis use in reconstructing the story or narrative).

Feb 17--Absolutism.
Read the Wikipedia entry on Bossuet (Intro of the article only): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques-B%C3%A9nigne_Bossuet
and the Wikipedia entry on Colbertism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colbertism
(in the Colbertism article, read only to, and not including, "Industry Reforms"
    Bossuet on kingship:
https://history.hanover.edu/texts/bossuet.html
accounts of Louis XIV:
http://history.hanover.edu/texts/louisxiv.html

Feb 19--Responses to Absolutism: Tax Revolt and Other Rebellions
Read Etienne de la Boëtie, Discourse of Voluntary Servitude. This is the whole book in pdf form: http://mises.org/rothbard/boetie.pdf. You need read only pp. 7-12 of Rothbard's intro and pp. 39-45 of the text itself.
    John Locke, Second Treatise: Of Civil Government. Sections related to rebellion and tyranny, from paragraph 220 to the end:
http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch3s2.html
    Peasant and regional protest:
    The seventeenth-century "croquants" in southern France: http://mises.org/daily/4572

Feb 21--The Age of Reason: The Scientific Revolution
Read the Wikipedia entries on Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Vesalius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Harvey

Feb 24--The Enlightenment
Watch the CrashCourse video on the Enlightenment (16 min.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NnoFj2cMRLY
And Read:
From Lady Wortley Montagu's letters, 1717: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/montagu-smallpox.asp
From the Italian philosophe Cesare Beccaria, on crime an punishment: http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/18beccaria.asp
Voltaire on Sir Isaac Newton, etc., 1778: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1778voltaire-newton.asp
Wikipedia on the Scottish Enlightenment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Enlightenment
(read down to, and not including, the subsection "Significance."

Feb 26--The Enlightenment and Enlightened Monarchies. Map Quiz 1 at the beginning of class.
From Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations (1776): http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1776asmith-mercsys.asp
a selection of passages pertaining to the great French "salons" of the Enlightenment: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/18salons.asp
Wikipedia on Thomas Jefferson and religion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Jefferson_and_religion
Wikipedia on Enlightened Absolutists: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlightened_absolutism

Feb 28--The Origins of the French Revolution.
--Short "lecture" on the origins of the FR: youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5Z4SZ6ESM
And read:
--Tooley Info sheet: http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/history/htooley/Hist143FrenchRevHdt.html
--Cahier de doléances from Carcasonne: http://history.hanover.edu/texts/cahier.htm l

Mar 3--The French Revolution from Outbreak to Napoleon
Listen to a short lecture piece which might help set the stage:
Presentation with sound: Rousseau and the Late Enlightenment
CHECK for sound etc.
(to play the sound and automatic timing, go to the TAB Slideshow and then bit the button "Play from Start")
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1793levee.asp
-- Edmund Burke (1729-1797) on the execution of Marie Antoinette: https://www.historyplace.com/speeches/burke.htm
Read all of the Wikipedia entry Napoleon Bonaparte: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napoleon
(From the Napoleon entry, read the Intro (down to table of contents) and then skip down to read the section called "Reforms" and also read the section call "Memory and Evaluation")

Mar 5--More on the Revolution and Napoleon.
no reading

Mar 7--No Class

SPRING BREAK

Mar 17--Romanticism and Post-revolutionary Europe.
Short powerpoint, no sound, mostly informational.
See also the Info Sheet
THE SHORT NINETEENTH CENTURY: LIBERALISM. REFORM, and NATIONALISM
And read the lyrics of Schiller's/Beethoven's "Ode to Joy"
http://classicalmusic.about.com/od/romanticperiodsymphonies/qt/Beethovenjoytxt.htm
and William Wordsworth's poem "We Are Seven"
http://www.bartleby.com/145/ww124.html

Mar 19----The Industrial Revolution:
Wikipedia on the Industrial Revolution: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
(on this one, just read the INTRO and then skip down to "The Factory System" and "Standards of Living"
Also read the first section of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto, just the section including the short preface and "Preamble" and the first “chapter” called “Bourgeoises and Proletarians” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/
Watch and Listen: Short ppt on the Marx and Historical Materialism: Hist143MarxistDialectic
Also, watch John Green of Crash Courses on the Industrial Revolution
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhL5DCizj5c

Mar 21--Read all of Dickens, Hard Times. And please read carefully. The reading quiz for this will count as four regular reading quizzes.

Mar 24--Liberal Europe: Economics and Culture
about classical liberals, foreign policy, John Bright, John Stewart Mill, the Gold Standard, the standard of living, anti-imperialism
Read the first chapter of British liberal John Stuart Mill's 1859 book, On Liberty:
https://www.econlib.org/library/Mill/mlLbty.html

Mar 26--Midterm Exam

Mar 28--Nations, Peoples, and Nationalisms, 1815-1900. Tooley Info sheet: http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/history/htooley/Hist143NatHdt.html
Arndt, "Where is the German Fatherland?": http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/arndt-vaterland.asp
Proclamation of the Irish Republic, Easter 1916: http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1916proc.jpg
Read the Gilbert and Sullivan song lyrics:
http://www.lyricsbook.net/Gilbert%20And%20Sullivan-For%20He%20Is%20an%20Englishman-46384.html

Mar 31--The New Imperialism--At Home and Abroad.
Listen to this CrashCourse lecture by John Green on "the New Imperialism." (about 13 min.)
Read through this Tooley Info sheet:
http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/history/htooley/NewImperialismHadt%20%281%29.pdf
If this link doesn't work, the lecture is also here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=alJaltUmrGo
AND
Also read two brief letters from British missionary folks, urging extension of empire. http://www.fordham.edu/Halsall/mod/1883hebrides.asp
Map Quiz 2 at the beginning of class.

Apr 2--The Origins of the Great War
Tooley, The Great War (read chapter one on the origins of the war)

Apr 4--World War I. Read parts of the Wikipedia entry on World War I: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I
Read the intro. Then skip down to "Progress of the War" and read down to but not including section 5 "Aftermath."
This is the equivalent of about 20 pages in a book or journal, so be sure to allot plenty of time.

Apr 7--The Bolshevik Revolution. The Bolshevik Revolution and the Rise of Stalin.
Watch and listen to a powerpoint of mine, about 15 min. long.
Powerpoint on the Two Russian Revolutions of 1917
(this is with sound--just play from the beginning. I just realized that close to the beginning of the recording, I called the powers of Britain/France/Russia etc. as the Central Powers. Just a slip of the tongue. These were the Allied or Entente powers. The Germans/Aust-Hung/Ottomans etc. were the Central Powers.)

And read a very short chapter from Bryan Caplan's "Online Museum of Communism" at George Mason University:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/museum/his1g.htm

Apr 9--The Paris Peace, 1919-1920
Read these entries from a blog I wrote a few years back:
http://parispeace1919.blogspot.com/2009/06/framework-of-events-mayjune-at-paris.html
http://parispeace1919.blogspot.com/2009/06/diktat-i.html
http://parispeace1919.blogspot.com/2009/07/diktat-ii.html
http://parispeace1919.blogspot.com/2009/09/when-i-left-off-speaking-of-diktat-i.html

Apr 11--The Rise of Hitler
Read John Simkin's fine short bio of Hitler:
https://spartacus-educational.com/GERhitler.htm
AND--give these time to download. It might take a minute or two.
Comparative Totalitarians. 11 min
The Depression and the Nazis. 6 min
If the sound doesn't work, you can still read through them, I hope. They should help make sense of the twenties and thirties

Apr 14--The Interwar Period: Stalin, the Spanish Civil War, and the Coming of World War II
Read:
https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSstalin.htm

Apr 16--War
Reading:
look carefully at Tooley Info sheet:
InfoTotalitarians
and the info sheet on WWII:
WORLD WAR II: CHRONOLOGY AND PHASES

Apr 18--and Holocaust: ALL of Dry Tears (triple reading quiz) AND
Read Himmler’s “Posen speech”
You should read the carefully documented Nizkor page on how this recording came about:
http://www.nizkor.com/hweb/people/h/himmler-heinrich/posen/oct-04-43/index.html
The translation of the short, particularly gruesome part of the part of the speech that you need to read is in a link that is a little hard to find. It is:
http://www.nizkor.com/hweb/people/h/himmler-heinrich/posen/oct-04-43/ausrottung-transl-nizkor.html
AND you might try listening to some of the audio linked on both pages (one of the files should work for you). The tone of Himmler's voice alone is worth listening to as he discusses the in-progress Holocaust
Be ready for a 4X value reading quiz on Dry Tears.

Apr 21---Origins of the Cold War
Read the Wikipedia entry on the Cold War, but ONLY the "intro" (down to "Contents")
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_War
Also, watch this basically accurate history of the Cold War on Youtube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NF3u8Ju9aAg

Apr 23--Cold War II. Map Quiz 3 at the beginning of class.
Tooley Info sheet: http://artemis.austincollege.edu/acad/history/htooley/ChronEurPost45.html
Watch this pretty good, and brief documentary on the Berlin Airlift. Only 11 minutes, it is pretty accurate for the big picture. The background material is good, too.

And watch the little TedEx documentary on the Berlin Wall, written by historian Konrad Jarausch (6.5 minutes). It is quite accurate. The Wall went up in 1961.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9fQPzZ1-hg
This one is written by historian Konrad Jarausch, an outstanding American historian of Germany at the University of North Carolina.

Apr 25--Decolonization
read the US State Department's short history of this vast subject:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asia-and-africa

Apr 28--The West: Migration: Gastarbeiter, Asylum, and More
AN INFORMAL CHRONOLOGY OF EUROPE SINCE 1945

Apr 30---Eastern Europe: The Soviet Empire in the Seventies and Eighties.
Read this CIA intelligence report from Dec. 1982 (two months after the death of Brezhnev and the beginning of Andropov's short tenure as head of the USSR). The report is aimed at informing officials in the Reagan administration. Think carefully about the conditions it describes and the policy options it lays out.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1981-88v03/d251

May 2--Gorbachev and the world in the late 1980s.
Listen to these two speeches.
The first is Mikhail Gorbachev extending season's greetings to the US on Dec. 31, 1987
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TORzXd5QHXo
The second is Ronald Reagan's famous "Tear Down this Wall" speech. It took place right by the Berlin Wall on Dec. 6, 1987. Please listen at the very least up to 12:10.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MDFX-dNtsM

May 5--The Fall of Communism
Read the US State Department history page on the fall of Communism in Europe, 1989/90:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1989-1992/fall-of-communism
Also read the entire Wikipedia entry on Gorbachev:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorbachev
Tank Man at Tiananmen Square:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrQqDqOx3KY

May 7--Europe in the 2000s
Powerpoint without sound for the last two classes
Please read this powerpoint carefully. This is to give you the general info for the last two classes.