Handbook

How did the modern world happen? How did a few small countries in Europe (and later the United States) come to dominate so much of the world’s wealth and power by 1900? How did they displace the great empires of the Middle East, South Asia and China? Between 1400 and the beginning of the twentieth century, an astonishing, global revolution took place. We call it ‘modernity’. Human beings moved from villages to cities, from face-to-face communities to vast and bewilderingly complex societies. Nations and nation-states replaced the great empires and grand monarchies. Political ideologies and racism had become as deeply ingrained in people’s minds as the traditional religions. Towards the end, electricity and fossil fuels replaced human and animal muscle power, and machines drove peoples and things across the seas, over land and into the air. ARTS1270 Global History explains the making of the modern world to 1900. In addition, as a gateway to the history major, it provides the basis (in terms of both concepts and skills) for further studies in the history curriculum. You will learn how to interpret primary and secondary sources, compose historical arguments, and engage with key historical concepts and theories in the process.