2016-2017
Global History
Code: IS257
Category: Humanities
Level: 5
Credits: 15
Teaching Pattern
Week 1
Week 2
Week 3
Week 4
Seminar
3 x 3hrs
3 x 3hrs
3 x 3hrs
3 x 3hrs
*in addition to the above formal teaching sessions you will be expected to do approximately 114 hours of
independent study over the 4 weeks.
*Additional Field Trip fee of £40.00
Outline
History, what for? What would our lives be without coffee, tea or tomatoes? These answers can be found
only in the global processes of the past.
This module aims to explain the importance of historical processes. For instance, Peru is currently the
largest producer of cocaine. However, why in three centuries has this country shifted its export of potatoes
to cocaine? To answer this question, you need history. One possible solution is to analyse the
consequences and the impact of the Spanish dominion. By examining the birth, rise and fall of the
European Empires you will understand better your own culture and current global trends.
The module offers a thorough analysis of early modern imperialism and globalisation, where quests for
profits triggered social and economic transformation. We look at how the exchanges between the old and
new world shaped society today. Finally, we reflect on globalisation: a modern invention or an old global
fable? This module enables you to grasp the significance of this subject and fosters your critical
engagement.
Week 1: The First Imperial Age
Reading:
The First Imperial Age: European Overseas Expansion c. 1400-1715, Scammell, G. V., London, 1989.
The Rise of Merchant Empires: Long-Distance Trade in the Early Modern World, 1350-1750, Tracy,
James D., Cambridge, 1990.
The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, Tracy, James D., Cambridge, 1991.
‘World Trade 1650-1780: The Age of Mercantilism’ in Power and Plenty, Trade, War, and the World
Economy in the Second Millennium, Findlay R., O’ Rourke K.H., Princeton, 2007. 228-262.
Further Reading:
The Mind and Method of the Historian, ‘A concept: The Unification of the Globe by Disease,
(Fourteenth to Seventeenth Centuries)’, Reynolds S., Le Roy, L. E., Chicago, 1981.
Guns, Sails and Empires: Technological Innovation and the Early Phases of European Expansion,
1400-1700, Cipolla, C. M., New York, 1985.
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SUMMER Session 1
‘Syphilis and the Shepherd of Atlantis’ in I Have Landed: Splashes and Reflections in Natural History,
Gould S. J., Vintage, 2003, 192-207.
Guns, Germ and Steel, The Fates of Human Societies, New York, Diamond J., London, 1997.
The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Crosby A., Westport, 2003.
Week 2 Between the Old and the New World. The Spanish, the Portuguese and the Dutch.
Reading:
A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion, 1400-1668, Newitt, M, 2005.
The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825, Boxer, C.R. 1969.
Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe, Stanley J., Stein, B.
H., Baltimore, 2000.
Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America, 1492-1830, Elliott, J. H. 2006.
Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil, Lockhart, J., Schwartz, S. B.,
1983.
Spain's Empire in the New World: the Role of Ideas in Institutional and Social Change, MacLachlan,
C. M., Berkley, 1988.
The Dutch Seaborne Empire, 1600-1800, Boxer, C. R., London, 1973.
Dutch Primacy in World Trade 1585-1740, Israel, J. I., Oxford, 1989.
Further reading:
The Lure of Peru: Maritime Intrusion into the South Sea, 1598-1701, Bradley, Peter T., New York,
1989.
The Spanish Conquest of the Inca Empire, Koch, Peter O. 2008.
The Conquest of the last Maya Kingdom, Jones, Grant D., Stanford, 1998.
Week 3 Imperial Expansion, The French and the British.
Reading:
The French Overseas Empire, Quinn, F., Westport, 2000.
The Great Frontier War: Britain, France, and the Imperial Struggle for North America, 1607-1755,
Nester, W. R. 2000.
The Global Seven Years War, 1754-1763: Britain and France in a Great Power Contest, Baugh, Daniel
A., New York, 2011.
The British Atlantic World, 1500-1800, Armitage D., Braddick M. J., London, 2002.
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850, Mokyl, J.,Yale, 2012.
A Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain, Dickinson H. T., Oxford, 2002.
Trade, Plunder and Settlement, Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire 14801630, Andrews K.R., Cambridge, 1984.
Further Reading:
The Black Urban Atlantic in the Age of the Slave Trade, Jorge C. E., Matt D. Childs, J. Sidbury, 2013.
The Oxford History of the British Empire: vol. 3, The Nineteenth Century, Porter A., Oxford, 1999.
“Britain without America. A Second Empire?” in The Oxford History of the British Empire: Vol. 2,
The Eighteenth Century, eds. Marshall, Louis, Low, and Canny, Oxford, 1998. 576-595
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SUMMER Session 1
'The first age of Global Imperialism, c. 1760-1830', Bayly C. A., Journal of Imperial and
Commonwealth History 26 (1998), 28-47
In the Wake of Cook, ‘Introduction: Exploration, Science and Empire in the Late Eighteenth Century’.
Mackay D., London 1985, 3-25.
Week 4: The Merchants: Entrepreneurs who Built the Modern World
Reading:
‘People trust and information’ in Haggerty Sheryllynne, The British Atlantic Community, 1760-1810,
Men Women and the Distribution of Goods, Boston, 2006. 109-141.
‘Markets and trade circuits’ in Braudel Fernand, The Wheels of Commerce, Civilization and
Capitalism 15th-18th Century, vol II, London, 1982. 138-167.
Citizens of the World, London merchants and the integration of the British Atlantic Community,
1735-1785, Hancock D., New York,1995.
‘In Pursuit of luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century’, Berg M.,
Past and Present, 182, 2004.
The Potato, From the Andes in the Sixteenth Century to fish and Chips, the Story of how a
Vegetable Changed History. Zuckerman L. London, 1999.
‘Shopping for Britain: British Products in the Eighteenth Century’ History Today, Berg M., 2005.
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (ed) Trentmann F. Oxford, 2012.
Students are not expected to purchase any books beforehand.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of the module students will be able to:
Identify and communicate the political, cultural and social dynamics of Global History
Source and analyse relevant secondary or primary documents
Estimate the impact of imperialism
Evaluate how modern society is culturally and economically produced
Contacts
Giada Pizzoni
University Library
The Library,
University of Sussex,
Brighton
BN1 9QL
Phone: 01273 678163
[email protected]
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SUMMER Session 1
[email protected]