Political History of Foreign Countries

Bachelor 2024/2025

Type: Compulsory course (Political Science and World Politics)

Area of studies: Political Science

Delivered by: Department of History

Where: Saint-Petersburg School of Social Sciences

When: 1 year, 1, 2 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Раков Тимофей Николаевич, Mikhail Belan, Maria Starun

Language: English

ECTS credits: 6

Full Syllabus Ask Question

Abstract

This is a general course introducing fundamental political processes in the world from the early modern time to 1991. The course will outline historical contexts of such issues as formation of modern state and governmental practices; emergence of nation-states; social and political revolutions; mass politics and new forms of political movements. The course is aimed at developing comparative thinking and deepening the understanding of any political phenomenon in its historical dimension.

Learning Objectives

To familiarize students with main events and phenomena of political history of foreign countries in the 16-20th centuries
To familiarize students with main concepts of political history
To develop students' comparative thinking

Expected Learning Outcomes

The student can comprehend primary sources effectively
The student consistently uses terminology of political history and knows main facts of political history of Russia and foreign countries (16th-20th centuries).
The student can solve scholarly issue in collaboration with groupmates.
The student can identify main thesis and issues raised in scholarly literature.
The student can comprehend primary sources effectively.
The student can participate in the debates on the issues under consideration.
The student can communicate information and ideas in a style that is completely appropriate to discussions of scholarly literature.

Course Contents

Introduction: What is political history?
European politics in the XVIII century: Ancien regime and Enlightenment absolutisms
The politics of early modern colonial empires
American War of Independence and the French Revolution
Age of nationalism: the issue of the emergence of the nation states
European Imperialism and colonial rule in the 19th century
Modernization of East Asia in the 19th century
Politics in the First World War
Restructuring the world order after the First World War
Liberal democracies in crisis and totalitarian regimes in Italy and Germany
World politics in the Second World War
The Cold War, 1946–1991
Decolonization in Asia and Africa. Resistance, revolutions, wars and global international organizations
Communist policies in global history and the “Global Sixties”: new political movements across the world
The anti-communist revolutions of 1989–1991 The political crisis and the dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia

Assessment Elements

Seminar activity
Debates
Historiographical essay
This essay will be written based on the research literature after a seminar discussion of a number of sources on the same topic. The aim is to record how the seminar discussion, as well as the student's personal opinion based on the sources, differed fundamentally from the position presented by the authors in their research.
Exam
Our exam is a written assignment which includes 2 questions based on the issues discussed during the seminars and lectures: 1) an open question; 2) a task which requires you to find evidence for and against the statement.

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 2nd module
0.25 * Debates + 0.3 * Exam + 0.15 * Historiographical essay + 0.3 * Seminar activity

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Banner, J. M. (2012). Being a Historian : An Introduction to the Professional World of History. New York: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=438567
Berger, S. (2006). A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Europe, 1789 - 1914. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=147363
Elliott, J. H. (2006). Empires of the Atlantic World : Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830. New Haven: Yale University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=188044
Hobsbawm, E. J. (2012). Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 : Programme, Myth, Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=909520
James, H. (2014). Europe Reborn : A History, 1914-2000. Hoboken: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=812600
Jan C. Jansen, & Jürgen Osterhammel. (2017). Decolonization : A Short History. Princeton University Press.
Klimke, M., Pekelder, J., & Scharloth, J. (2011). Between Prague Spring and French May : Opposition and Revolt in Europe, 1960-1980. New York: Berghahn Books. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=416085
Morgan, P. (2003). Fascism in Europe, 1919-1945. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=94858
Wilson, P. H. (2000). Absolutism in Central Europe. London: Routledge. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=79626

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Besier, G., & Stokłosa, K. (2013). European Dictatorships : A Comparative History of the Twentieth Century. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=685806
Burbank, J. (DE-588)141712732, (DE-576)164382186. (2010). Empires in world history : power and the politics of difference / Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper. Princeton, NJ [u.a.]: Princeton University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edswao&AN=edswao.321297032
Gordon, A. (2003). A Modern History of Japan : From Tokugawa Times to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=120926
Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau. (2004). From Slave Trade to Empire : European Colonisation of Black Africa 1780s-1880s. Routledge.
Zubok, V. M. (2007). A Failed Empire : The Soviet Union in the Cold War From Stalin to Gorbachev. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=edsebk&AN=301081

Authors

STARUN Maria IGOREVNA
LEVIN FELIKS EVGENEVICH
Султанова Алия Илдаровна

Course Syllabus