University of Sheffield s2

University of Sheffield

Department of History

HST112

Paths from Antiquity to Modernity

Level One, Semester One, Session 2009-2010 2

Introduction

Welcome to the Level One, Semester One twenty-credit module: Paths from Antiquity to Modernity. Modernity is all around us, the mental landscape we inhabit. One of its features is a tendency to reject the past. This rejection is sometimes conscious, even aggressive; more often it is unconscious, reflected in the high value our culture places on the new. Some people argue now that the past is what we make it and history is merely a construction that we put upon events and actions in past time.

It remains true, however, that, in order to understand our modernity, we must look back, and not merely to contemporary, or recent, events but to the distant past from which the most fundamental building blocks of our civilisation have emerged. To do so, we must use the historical equivalent of a wide-angle lens. That is no bad thing, because historians tend to develop strong, and rather isolating, senses of period. This semester’s course offers you the opportunity to explore the paths from antiquity to modernity, and to understand what we mean by some of the fundamental periodisation that historians adopt almost as a matter of course – classical, medieval, early-modern, and modern, for example. You will develop a familiarity with some of the fundamental conceptual tools that historians have developed for explaining the past – feudalism, serfdom, capitalism, ancien régime, renaissance, etc. But you will also become more aware of the limitations of these conceptions and the debates that they generated.

Such complexity requires some organising principles. We will be taking ‘Europe’ as our basic frame of reference; however the historical conception of ‘Europe’ as a civilisation is riddled with dilemmas. Europe’s sense of itself as a civilisation is itself a modern notion. Where Europe ends and Asia begins is at the heart of a debate with political and social as well as historical ramifications. Being at the extreme western edge of Europe, we need to be particularly careful not to adopt a very ‘western’ picture of Europe’s paths to modernity.

With the twentieth century just behind us, we may prefer to emphasise the discontinuity, turmoil and division that are fundamental to Europe’s history. Europe’s fault-lines - religious, ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and social - have a long ancestry. They are fundamental both to Europe’s extraordinary and unique dominance in world history for roughly two centuries from 1700 to 1900 and to its rapid eclipse thereafter. Modern European history has been apt to concentrate on its frontiers and its (national) component parts to the exclusion of the study of Europe as an entity. You may well have studied an ‘A’ level history course that reflected (unconsciously) such divisions – a British history (which was really all English history), detached from a ‘European’ history in which the individual national histories inevitably dominated over almost any other broader framework of reference. For all kinds of reasons, not least the politics of our present European community, we are not yet in a position to study an agreed ‘European’ history.

So this course does not lay the emphasis on a history of ‘Europe’, but rather upon the ‘paths’ that led Europe towards ‘modernity’. We shall have to develop some understanding of ‘modernity’. We can begin with a simple notion that it represents a dramatic, in some senses unique, degree of human power: power to order and rule human societies of great complexity and sophistication, power to mobilise resources of all kinds at great distances, power to communicate and trade on a global scale, power to understand, to specialise, to manufacture and to predict, power over nature and the environment to unprecedented degrees. And to a degree that was unique in human history, this civilization came to dominate others, to exercise power over them in a way that has had enduring effects on the world and transforming effects upon itself. 3

Course Materials

This brochure only provides a very brief introduction to the course – your initial bibliography, a conspectus of the lectures and your assignments.

All the essential courseware is contained in a teaching package that is available on the web from any of the campus-networked computers. You need to locate where the clusters of computers are and your introductory pack at registration with the computing services will have included the necessary details. Because the courseware is on the web, it is also available to students who dial in from home to the Sheffield network and across the internet. So you can consult it from home if you have a modem.

The software is called ‘MOLE’, and you can access it through the ‘Learning Resources’ button on the Sheffield History Department’s Web page. You should have been introduced to the software in your introduction to computing session in intro week. Once you have entered the courseware, you will find all the details of the course. You will need to spend about an hour finding your way around the courseware and familiarising yourself with its various features. Thereafter, you should expect to consult the MOLE courseware at least twice a week for the remainder of the semester. You should particularly note the following: a) Course Calendar. This contains the times of all your lectures. b) Course Content. A synopsis for each lecture is provided and, very importantly, the reading and preparation necessary for the associated seminar. You can print these off if you wish. c) Bulletin Board. This is divided into ‘urgent messages’ and ‘normal messages’ This is where any changes in time, venue or programme details are posted. Please note that the bulletin board is intended for course-related items only, and will be monitored by members of staff. d) Course Bibliography. This contains an initial bibliography for the course. The full bibliography for each essay assignment on the course can be found within the courseware under ‘Written work – Assessed Essay’. e) Course Team. A list of lecturers, tutors and help-desk advisors relevant to the course. f) Written Work. This provides you with full bibliographies for the essay that you will complete as your final assessed piece of work. It also contains advice for the preparation of the book review, and important information on plagiarism.

A few printed copies of the lecture synopses, exercises and course bibliographies contained in the courseware are deposited in the Information Commons (Off-print collection, ‘HST112 course brochure’). But if you have a medical condition or personal circumstance that absolutely prevents your consulting a computer screen, please see the senior course tutor, Morn Capper, or the course coordinator, Dr. Julie Gottlieb, as soon as possible. 4

Contact Points for Course Tutors and Leaders

Course tutors You will be assigned to a tutorial group in the first week of the semester and your tutor is your first port of call to help you come to grips with the course. You can contact your specific tutor in ways that are indicated in the courseware under ‘course team’.

The Senior Course Tutor, Morn Capper, deals with all questions of registration and tutorial group management. You should see her if you want to register for the course, change your registration for the course, or change the tutorial group to which you are assigned. She will also deal with problems with your username or password. You may want to see her if you need some additional help with getting started with the software. She may also be able to assist you with problems getting hold of books or articles for the course. You may contact her in the following ways:

By calling during her specific office-hours for this course (these are advertised on the courseware). By sending her an email at: [email protected]

The Course Coordinator, Dr. Julie Gottlieb, deals with questions of course content, comprehension and examination. You should see her if you are having problems with the content and comprehension of lectures or tutorials which your tutor has not managed to sort out. Likewise, you should consult her if there are problems relating to course assessment and examination that have not been satisfactorily resolved by tutors, or if you have any other difficulties that have not been resolved elsewhere. You can do so in the following ways:

By telephone: 222 2606 (leaving a message on the audix system if not in the office). By calling during office-hours. By sending an email to: [email protected] 5

Preliminary Reading

There is no single course textbook for this course, but the following list contains examples of books which will provide you with the basic chronological outline of the period covered by the course, or with useful background knowledge.

Peter Reitbergen, Europe: A Cultural History. (London: Routledge, 1998). Norman Davies, Europe. A History. (Oxford, OUP, 1996) – further edition in paperback (London, Pimlico, 1997). John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From the Renaissance to the Present. (New York and London: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996). J.M. Roberts, The Penguin History of Europe. (London, Penguin, 1996). William H. McNeill, The rise of the West: a history of the human community. (Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1970 and reprints). Geoffrey Parker (ed.), The World. An Illustrated History. (London, Times Books for Channel 4, 1986 and reprints). Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: conquest, civilization and cultural change 950- 1350. (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1994). Peter Brown, The World of Late Antiquity. (London, Thames and Hudson, 1971 and reprints). W.H. McNeill, The Pursuit of Power. Technology, Armed Force and Society. (Oxford, Blackwell, 1983). Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers: economic change and military conflict. (London, Unwin Hyman, 1988; reprinted Fontana, 1989 and reprints). E.J. Hobsbawm: - Industry and Empire: from 1750 to the present day. (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1990). - The age of revolution : Europe, 1789-1848. (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1962; and revised editions and reprints). - The age of capital, 1848-1875. (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1975; and revised editions and reprints). - The age of empire, 1875-1914. (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1987; and revised editions and reprints). - Age of extremes : the short twentieth century,1914-1991. (London, Abacus, 1995). Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe’s Twentieth Century. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998). V.J. Kiernan, The lords of human kind : European attitudes towards the outside world . . . (Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1972 and reprints).

A good historical atlas will be of benefit to you not only for this course, but for other courses as well. There are a few of these available at reasonable prices and you should consider purchasing one which you could use throughout your degree programme in history. One good example which can be found in paperback is: Hermann Kinder and Werner Hilgemann, eds., The Penguin Atlas of World History. Volume 1: From Prehistory to the eve of the French Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1978) and Volume 2: From the French Revolution to the Present second edition (London: Penguin Books, 1995). 6

Lecture List and Teaching Schedule

Lectures take place either in the Medical School Lecture Theatre 1 or in The Auditorium, Students’ Union at the following times:

Mondays: 13.00, Medical School, Lecture Theatre One Tuesdays: 15.00, The Auditorium, Students’ Union Thursdays: 13.00, The Auditorium, Students’ Union

Tutorial Group meetings will be announced in the MOLE courseware in the first week of the semester. A list of lecturers and course tutors and a brief indication of their special interests is provided in the MOLE courseware.

Week One 1. Introduction (Julie Gottlieb) 2. Rome and Her Empire (Simon Loseby) 3. The Fall of Rome (Simon Loseby) Week Two 4. Barbarian Kingdoms (Simon Loseby) 5. Conversion to Christianity (Amanda Power) 6. From the Mediterranean to the North Sea (Simon Loseby) Week Three 7. Charlemagne and the Making of Europe (Amanda Power) 8. The first Millennium (Amanda Power) 9. Western Christendom: a persecuting society? (Amanda Power) Week Four 10. The Black Death: the crisis of medieval society? (Martial Staub) 11. The Expansion of Europe: from the Crusades to Columbus (Amanda Power) 12. The Holy Roman Empire (Martial Staub) Week Five 13. 1500: a year of modest significance (Martial Staub) 14. Renaissance and discoveries (Mike Braddick) 15. Reformation (Tom Leng) Week Six 16. War Empire and State (Mike Braddick) 17. Poverty and Progress (James Shaw) 18. Scientific Revolution, Enlightenment and the South Seas Discoveries (Karen Harvey) Week Seven Reading week No lectures or tutorial groups Week Eight 19. Early Modern Revolutions: America and France (Karen Harvey) 20. Europe in 1800 (Bob Shoemaker) 21. The Industrial Revolution (Tim Baycroft) Week Nine 22. The Springtime of the People (Tim Baycroft) 23. Nationalism (Tim Baycroft) 24. Nineteenth-Century Empires (Tim Baycroft) 7

Week Ten 25. The Fin-de-siècle (Tim Baycroft) 26.1914 (Tim Baycroft) 27. Revolution and War in Europe (Miriam Dobson) Week Eleven 28. The Great Depression (Miriam Dobson) 29. The Civil War in Europe 1936-1949 (Julie Gottlieb) 30. Decolonisation (Miles Larmer) Week Twelve 31. The Politics of Prosperity What Happened to Radicalism? (Miriam Dobson) 32. Modernity (Julie Gottlieb) 33. Concluding Lecture (Julie Gottlieb)

Tutorial Groups You will be assigned to one of about 30 tutorial groups, each named after a distinguished historian whom you will probably encounter during the course (Fisher, Burckhardt, Taylor, etc).

Tutorial group lists will be posted on the level one notice-board in the department of history on the Thursday of week one. They will also appear in the courseware by Monday of week two. You should consult either of these places and turn up at the place and time appointed for your first tutorial group in week two. Your tutorial group will meet for ten sessions throughout the semester. Each group will have a different programme after the first tutorial group meeting as indicated by your tutor, and the readings will either be available electronically, or supplied by the tutor, to avoid congestion in the library.

You will find the description of the lecture associated to the seminar topic, as well as the title of the reading and the nature of the preparation you are to do for your tutorial group in the courseware under the ‘course content’ icon. Your tutor will direct you to the relevant number for each week.

Assessment

Assessed coursework counts for 50% of your total mark for the module, with the remaining 50% coming from the written examination. But remember that you have to pass both parts of the assessment in order to pass overall. The passmark is 40% (see the Level One Handbook or the History Department Website for more details on marking criteria).

The examination is ‘seen’, which means that you will receive the questions ahead of time, in the final lecture in week 12. You will then sit the examination in normal conditions (in an exam hall without the aid of notes) in the examination period, which begins 19 January 2009.

The 50% coursework mark will be derived from three components.

1) Seminar Preparation and Participation (20%) 8

Your tutor will assign you with a mark out of 20 for seminar preparation and participation, measuring the extent to which you have done the reading, and which you participate orally in the seminars. This may involve some short pieces of written work, at the tutors’ discretion. The details of what is expected will be given by each tutor in the initial session.

2) Book Review of 1500 words (10%)

You must choose a book (not an article or extract) from the reading list for the course on STAR, or from any listed on individual lecture sheets or from any bibliographies attached to any essay question (in the courseware). If you wish or need to make a substitution, let your tutor know the author, title and date of publication of the book you would like to review. Make sure you opt for something worthy of your time. If you go ahead without obtaining your tutor’s approval, and the book proves to be unacceptable, the review will be returned unmarked and you will have to submit another. Make sure you do not choose an extremely long book, or something more like a pamphlet. Nor should it be too old: although it may not have been superseded, something published before 1975, for instance, is unlikely to interconnect usefully with other things you are reading.

A good review (obviously written after you have read the book right through) will give a summary of the book’s scope, and its argument. Avoid using up more than about 700 of your 1500 words on this element of the exercise. You need additionally to evaluate what has been said: does the author convince you? Is the evidence adduced well-chosen, well set out? How (if at all) does the book fit into an existing pattern of historical interpretation? Does the author seem to have any particular axe to grind? It is acceptable to record your own excitement or amazement, but briefly: the exercise is not designed to tell the reader about you, but about the book. If you need a clearer sense of what is required, look at the book review section of scholarly periodicals, like History or American Historical Review.

3) Essay (20%)

You will also be required to write an essay answering one of the questions set out in the courseware under the heading ‘Assessed Essay’ (on the page ‘Written Work’). There you will find the list of questions as well as a reading list for each one. The essay will be no more than 1500 to 2000 words (including footnotes), and should be word-processed.

For further guidance, see the section on essay-writing in the History Department level One Handbook.

Hand in procedure

Your tutor will give you clear notice of the deadlines for submitted coursework. (You should take particular care, should you have to miss a class, to check whether this information has been given out).

You should bring 1 copy of your essay to Jessop West and put it in the History

Essay metal basket, situated on the ground floor Visitor Centre. You should note that essay deadlines set for assessed work are for 12 noon on the day in question. No work will be accepted via email or fax. All written work must be 9 word-processed to the standards set out on the Department’s web pages.

Coursework for all Level 1 modules must be submitted online, through the

‘Turnitin’ plagiarism detection service which you can access through the TurnitinUK website, following the instructions on the Departmental website.

Late submission

The following penalties for late submission apply to all coursework submitted for assessment.

Each working day late will result in 5% being deducted from the mark awarded to your piece of work. After five days the essay will be awarded a mark of 0. So, for instance, an essay worth 60 would lose 3 marks a day, while one worth 68 would lose 3.4 and one worth 52 would lose 2.6. The eventual mark would be rounded up, and a whole number returned, but each step would be arithmetically precise. A ‘working day’ excludes weekends and Bank Holidays, but includes Monday to Fridays throughout vacations.

If you find that you have to submit a piece of work after the deadline, this should be agreed in advance where possible. Extensions are not lightly granted: your course co-ordinator needs to know (in writing, by email) why your work will be arriving late. She will respond within two working days, sympathetically to significant illness or injury, or to serious problems at home. Otherwise, the safest thing is to get your work in on time. Book problems, clashing deadlines and computer or printer difficulties are not grounds for an extension. If you encounter printing problems on the handing-in day, hand in a disk with the work on, to be held hostage against the submission of the hard copy. Your course coordinator can and will check to make sure the extra hours have not been used to improve or correct the text. So long as this is the case, the hard copy can arrive without penalty one working day late. All decisions, and the grounds for them, are recorded; if you want to challenge a penalty that has been imposed, you may appeal to the Level One tutor (David Martin), who will take the matter to the Undergraduate Committee.

Be aware, however, that a reconsidered case may result in an increased penalty.

You should be aware that procedures for granting extensions may be different in other departments.