Tuesday, September 7, 2010

What is the Modern World?


Lecture 2: What is the Modern World?


I. Introduction:
“We are at the dawn of a new era.”
Martin Luther
“I see the whole world reviving.”
Beatus Rhenansus
“Novus Ordo Seculorum”
Found on U.S. money

II. The Threefold Division of History
a. Ancient
b. Medieval
c. Modern

III. Key Events of Modern History[1]
a. The Renaissance (c. 1450)
Art; Michaelangelo; Leonardo da Vinci

b. The Reformation (1517)
Religion; Martin Luther; John Calvin

c. The Age of Exploration (c. 1492)
Columbus; New World; Spain

d. The Scientific Revolution (c. 1550)
Copernicus; Galileo; Newton

e. The Rise of Nation-States (c. 1558)
Queen Elizabeth; the Netherlands; Hapsburgs of Spain

f. Absolute Monarchies: France, Russia, Austria, and Prussia (c. 1618)
Thirty Years War; Louis XIV of France; Peter the Great of Russia

g. The Enlightenment (c. 1700)
John Locke; Rousseau; Adam Smith

h. The French Revolution (1789)
The Bastille; Robespierre; Marie Antoinette

i. The Napoleonic Era (1799-1815)
Napoleon; Waterloo; Wellington

j. The Industrial Revolution (<1800>)
Steam power; textiles; Karl Marx

k. Reaction, Romanticism, and Revolution (1815-1867)
Holy Alliance; Potato Famine in Ireland; Walter Scott

l. Nationalism (1848)
Revolutions of 1848; Bismarck; Franco-Prussian War

m. 19th Century Social and Political Change (<1850>)
Gladstone; Disraeli; Queen Victoria

n. The Age of Imperialism (<1850>)
British Empire; Boer War; Rudyard Kipling

o. The Fin De Siecle: Modernization or Decadence (c. 1890)
Fabian Societies; new inventions; Nietzsche

p. World War I (1914-1918)
Germany; Western Front; Lawrence of Arabia

q. The Russian Revolution (1917)
Czar Nicholas; Bosheviks; Civil War

r. Totalitarian Societies (1920s—1930s)
Lenin; Mussolini; Hitler

s. World War II (1939-1945)
Churchill; Roosevelt; Stalin

t. The Cold War (1945-1991)
Truman; Iron Curtain; NATO

u. The End of Imperialism: Africa and Asia (1945-1970s)
Ghandi; Zionism; Suez Crisis

v. The Demise of the Soviet Union (1985-1991)
Reagan; Gorbachev; Pope John Paul II

w. Modern Challenges and Issues
9-11; Faith; Freedom



[1] List heavily borrowed from AP European History by Joan Levy, Norman Levy, and Richard Weisberg. (New York: MacMillan, 1993).

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