HISTORY
5: LECTURE 1
“The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory
against forgetting”, Milan Kundera, Book of Laughter
and Forgetting.
“Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the
present controls the past”, George Orwell, Nineteen
Eighty-Four
There are FIVE handouts:
1 Lecture/reading schedule
2 Course requirements
3 Map assignment
4 Document assignment
5 This lecture outline
I
Course Requirements
II Aims and contents of the course?
III Why History? Facts, interpretations, reflections
IV Organizing devices
-world historical dates (1492), individuals, events, social/economic change
V Main themes
Boundaries and identities
Changing definitions of politics and nation state
The constituent parts of European civilization (politics, economy, science, society, culture)
Problem of periodization: when and what is “modern” Europe
Note on Sections
It is important to stay in the section you are enrolled in. If you absolutely need to change sections, submit your name and email, along with your assigned section and a list of 3 desired sections on an index card (available with handouts), and a brief but compelling justification of your needs to the Head GSI or to me at the end of the lecture today (Tuesday). Your petition to change sections could jeopardize your place in the course.
II Aims and contents of the course?
III Why History? Facts, interpretations, reflections
IV Organizing devices
-world historical dates (1492), individuals, events, social/economic change
V Main themes
Boundaries and identities
Changing definitions of politics and nation state
The constituent parts of European civilization (politics, economy, science, society, culture)
Problem of periodization: when and what is “modern” Europe
Note on Sections
It is important to stay in the section you are enrolled in. If you absolutely need to change sections, submit your name and email, along with your assigned section and a list of 3 desired sections on an index card (available with handouts), and a brief but compelling justification of your needs to the Head GSI or to me at the end of the lecture today (Tuesday). Your petition to change sections could jeopardize your place in the course.
I some basic dimensions of Europe
a. Population: 1500 about 65 million
b. Political geography: dynasties not territorial states
c. No linguistic unity among or within dynastic kingdoms
II Rural life
a. A peasant society (80%) of population; few cities
b. The peasant eco-system: house+garden; fields; woods
c. Rural institutions: the village, the manor, the church
d. Small commercial farms in West; feudal estates in East
e. Largely oral society
f. Local and regional identities compete with national identity
III Demographic Change
a. Population recovery and expansion at end of 15thc
b.”Price Revolution”
c. Social consequences: neo-Feudalism in east; Enclosure in West. > small peasants
forced off the land>urbanization
IV Urban Renaissance
a. Growth of cities
b. New cities: centers of production as well as consumption, worship and royal
administration.
c. Revolution in urban government>from FeudaL lords to Guild manufacturers
d. rise of trade and industry; the emergence of banking
e. Shift of trade from Southern Europe /Mediterranean to North and Atlantic coast
f. New divisions of labor: the eclipse of the Craft manufacturer by the Capitalist-Merchant and wage –worker.
V Conclusions
a. By 1500 medieval social order bursting at its seams; decline
b. Commercialization of rural agriculture; end of feudalism in West; neo-feudalism in the East
c. Urban renaissance >expansion of industry and trade
d. Guild manufacture eclipsed by capitalist and wage-worker
e. Demographic and economic developments create preconditions for the rise of
new monarchies and age of global expansion.
History
5 -- Professor Adamthwaite -- Spring 2003