Renaissance to Revolution: Europe 1500-1789

HIST 114Renaissance to Revolution: Europe, 1500-1789 surveys the beginnings of the modern world, when the West rose to world cultural and technological domination with the Renaissance, the Scientific Revolution, and the Enlightenment.

This was also a time of dynastic and religious wars among European powers, culminating in the age of Atlantic revolutions over political and religious freedoms that nonetheless witnessed the high point of the African slave trade and the start of European colonization of the world.

114 fulfills Category I requirements for History and the KU Core requirement of Critical Thinking.

Readings:

• One textbook for the whole course: @20 pages/week
• 3 short works of fiction to read during the course for a final paper:

• Thomas More’s Utopia, which invented the word “utopia” and the utopian genre
• Campanella’s utopian City of the Sun, a perfect state based on reason and science
• Denis Diderot’s Supplement to Bougainville’s Voyage, an imaginary description of the sexual and moral mores of Pacific Islanders that defied European Christian beliefs