History 104-410
World History: 1648-Present
Fall Term 2000, T 6:00-9:00

Brian Caton
office hours: T 4:00-5:00 or via email
email: bcaton@copland.udel.edu

Course Description from catalogue: The principal political, economic, cultural, and social
developments in world history from 1648 to the present, relating the past to the present. Course
gives equal weight to the history of Asia, Africa, the Americas, and Europe.

Themes for Fall 2000: This course introduces students to the narratives of the history of the
modern world. The focus on themes, such as violence, colonization, economic production, social
reproduction, and nationalism, helps students to integrate narratives of apparently distant people
and places into their own understandings of the present. With this end in mind, students will apply
critical thinking skills to current news sources in addition to historians¹ more traditional modes of
reading and writing.

Assignments and Grading: Grades are based on your performance in the following assignments:
	1. Essay: Who benefited from the colonization of the new world? <4pp. Due 9.26. 10%
	2. Debate: Prepare a Minute to be read before the House of Commons in a debate in 1757
over whether to abolish slavery and whether to expand the British Empire. <4pp. Due 10.10. 10%
	3. Essay: Compare the effects of the current world economy on 'southern' workers with
those of the imperial world economy. 6-8pp. Due 11.14. 15%
	4. Debate: Represent the views of a nationalist leader or party in a 1932 coffee shop debate
in Paris regarding how best to achieve independence and how best to advance the newly free
society. <4pp. Due 11.28. 10%
	5. Weekly news headlines: Students form groups of two and choose the week for which
they are responsible for delivering the week¹s most important news stories (no fewer than six) at
the beginning of the class meeting. Presentations shall not last longer than ten minutes, and your
copy should be turned in, following the usual style guidelines for writing. Theme music not
provided. 10%
	6. Attendance and participation: Absence is excusable only with documentation; lame
excuses will not be accepted. You are expected to read or otherwise present your own work during
the two class meetings devoted to debate (assignments #2 and #4), and participation in those
debates will figure into the grade for that assignment and not the overall participation grade. 20%
	7. Final exam: This will consist of an essay and a map section. The essay question will be
distributed at the end of the last class meeting, and your 6-8pp answer will be due in my mailbox in
the History Department no later than 12:00pm on 15th December. Late exams will result in an
incomplete and will be graded no sooner than 10th February. 25%
	General guidelines for style and formatting will be distributed during the first week of class
meetings, unless otherwise announced in class. 

Lectures and Reading Assignments:

8.29	Conceptualizing world history. Course overview. Maps.

9.5	The world, 1300-1500.
		read: Eaton [in Adas].
		sources: 13, 24.

9.12	World systems.
		read: Abu-Lughod [in Adas], Frank [on-line, URL TBA].
		sources: 9.

9.19	The Columbian exchange.
		read: Crosby [in Adas], Flynn and Girįldez.
		sources: 4, 5, 17, 18.

9.26	The plantation complex.					     Assignment #1 due 9.28
		read: Curtin [in Adas].
		sources: 19, 20.

10.3	Imperial states in Asia.
		read: McNeill [in Adas].
		sources: 21, 25, 26, 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, 50, 51, 52.

10.10	The production of knowledge and the European Enlightenment.	
		read: Diderot, Linne, Porter.
		sources: 36, 38, 40, 64, 65.			      Assignment #2 (debate) 10.12

10.17	Liberalism, trade, and empire.
		read: Enloe, 1-18.
		sources: 39, 41, 42, 53, 57, 58, 71, 79.

10.24	Slavery and labor.
		read: Enloe, 124-94; Tilly [in Adas].
		sources: 48, 49, 62, 63.

10.31	Liberalism and the nation.
		read: Enloe, 19-64; Strobel [in Adas].
		sources: 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 69, 73, 93.

11.14	Nationalism as anti-colonialism.				Assignment #3 due 11.14
		read: Nkrumah
		sources: 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 97, 98, 100, 101, 111.

11.21	Socialism as anti-colonialism.
		sources: 91, 92, 104, 105, 106, 109, 110, 113, 120, 121.

11.28	Identity formation and power.				     Assignment #4 (debate) 11.28
		read: Hobsbawm [last chapter]
		sources: 54, 55, 96, 99, 102, 112, 114.

12.5	Gender and modernity.
		sources: 66, 67, 117, 118, 119.

Books to buy: It is recommended but not required that you purchase a quality world atlas.

Michael Adas, ed. Islamic and European Expansion: The Forging of a Global Order.
	Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.

Alfred Andrea and James H. Overfield. The Human Record: Sources of Global History. Vol. II.
	3d ed. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1998.

Cynthia Enloe. Bananas, Beaches and Bases: Making Feminist Sense of International
	Politics. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990.

Articles to read (via on-line reserve):

Denis Diderot. "Enjoyment and Tahiti." In The Portable Enlightenment Reader, ed. by Isaac
	Kramnick. New York: Penguin Books, 1995. 265-74.

Dennis O. Flynn and Arturo Giraldez. "Born with a 'Silver Spoon': The Origin of World Trade in
	1571." Journal of World History 6 (1995):201-21.

Eric J. Hobsbawm. Nations and Nationalism since 1780: Programme, Myth, Reality. 2d ed.
	Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 163-92.

Carl von Linne. "Homo in The System of Nature." In Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader,
	ed. by Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1997. 10-14.

Kwame Nkrumah. Africa Must Unite. New York: International Publishers, 1970. 173-93.

Roy Porter. "The exotic as erotic: Captain Cook at Tahiti." In Exoticism in the Enlightenment,
	ed. by G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter. Manchester and New York: Manchester University
	Press, 1990. 117-44.