History 143 Fall Semester 2025 History 143 Fall
Semester 2025 History
143
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 four
regular reading quizzes, noted below.
Unit One: Europe from 1500 to 1800
Aug 27--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
Aug 29--Long Ago and Far Away: The World of 1500
Read the Wikipedia entry of
"The House of Tudor," but only the "Intro"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Tudor
Also, read an interesting modern medical history of Henry VIII
https://history-hub.chalkefestival.com/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
Sep 1--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!
Sep 3--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
(Be careful: 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!
Sep 5--Technology,
Economy, State, Discovery, and the Columbian Exchange
Wealth and the new states:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Debasement
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
Sep 8--Religion and State.
Read the History.com
short history of the Protestant Reformation
And watch an excerpt from the superb 2003 film, Luther: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I1YS5JuVGUA
Sep 10--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
Sep 12--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).
Sep 15--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
Sep 17--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
Sep
19--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
Sep 22--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."
Sep 24--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
Sep 26--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.html
Sep 29--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")
Oct 1--More on the Revolution and Napoleon.
no reading
Oct 3--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
Oct 6--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
Oct 8--Read all of Dickens, Hard Times.
And please read carefully. The reading quiz for this will
count as four regular reading quizzes. Be ready for class
discussion.
Oct 10--No Class. Fall Break Day
Oct 13--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
Oct 15--Midterm Exam
Oct 17--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 from the 1879 comic
opera Pirates of Penzance, by the famous British writing team,
Arthur S. Sullivan and W.S. Gilbert.
https://genius.com/Gilbert-and-sullivan-for-he-is-an-englishman-annotated
Oct 20--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.
Oct 22--The Origins of the Great
War
Tooley, The
Great War (read chapter one on the origins of the war)
Oct 24--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.
Oct 27--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
Oct 29--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
Oct 31--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
Nov 3--The Interwar Period: Stalin, the Spanish Civil
War, and the Coming of World War II
Read:
https://spartacus-educational.com/RUSstalin.htm
Nov 5--War
Reading:
look carefully at Tooley Info sheet:
InfoTotalitarians
and the info sheet on WWII:
WORLD WAR II: CHRONOLOGY AND PHASES
Nov 7--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.
Nov 10---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
Nov 12--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.
Nov 14--Decolonization
read the US State Department's short history of this vast subject:
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/asia-and-africa
Nov 17--The West: Migration: Gastarbeiter, Asylum, and More
AN INFORMAL CHRONOLOGY OF
EUROPE SINCE 1945
Nov 19---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
Nov 21--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
Thanksgiving Break
Dec 1--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
Dec 3--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.
Dec 5--Wrapping Up: Some review and some special issues
no reading