History 201-206 seminars are open to history majors only during pre-registration. If the course does not reach its enrollment maximum, it will be open to all students beginning with drop/add on a first-come first-serve basis.
HIST 202 Empires in Eastern European
Ninness
Taught as schedule allows (consult the Course Directory)
CGS Course | SEM
There is some truth to the statement that the disruption of the Austro-Hungarian (Habsburg) Empire led to the two world wars. As for the Ottoman Empire, it was the setting of the most vexing problem in European diplomacy in the nineteenth century. Indeed, the upheavals that took place within these two traditional autocratic, multinational states during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries from the background to what Europe has gone through since. We will begin by examining the rise of these empires in the Middle Ages. We will examine the origin and workings of the two empires that dominated most of east central and southeastern Europe for centuries. Then we will look at the key forces and events that affected these states in the nineteenth century. We will examine the upheavals that brought the eventual disintegration of those states and their legacy. In doing so, we will look at some of the basic forces at work in the modern world: the dynamics of great power politics, the role of political ideology, the transformation of traditional, agrarian societies, and the turmoil caused by modernization. Finally, we will look at how the unraveling and the destruction of these empires at the end of World War I contributed to current problems in the Balkans and the Middle East.
