Course Description

Welcome! This site is for students, parents, teachers and anyone else interested in the tenth-grade World History 2 Course at Santa Fe Prep.

The overall course covers the history of the world from roughly 1500 to the present. The first quarter opens with the time when Asia was the center of world affairs, then traces European encounters with Asia and the Americas, and the complex interactions and consequences of the so-called "Columbian Exchange" between Europe, Asia, the Americas and Africa. The first quarter ends with a survey of the European Renaissance and Reformation, in both its local and global dimensions. The second quarter will focus on the rise of absolute monarchies and new ideas and practices, especially with the scientific revolution and Enlightenment. The second quarter ends with assessments of the legacies of the French Revolution, Napoleon and the emergence of the British Empire. The third quarter starts with the implications of the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars in the wake of the Congress of Vienna, i.e., the discourse on rights, reaction, revolution and reform, the rise of new ideologies, in particular, Classical Liberalism, nationalism, and romanticism, and conservative reactions to the changes wrought by the American and French Revolutions. The course then examines the rise of industrialization and social change in 19th-century Europe, and the emergence of middle and working class cultures, followed by new iterations of liberalism and conservatism, the proliferation of more ideologies, e.g., socialism, communism, ultranationalism, social Darwinism, and antisemitism. Then the course examines the unification of the Italian and German nation states, and the creation of the modern welfare state. From there the course traces the rise of a new wave of Western imperialism, followed by the rest of the world's reactions to the rise of European empires and ideas, and in particular, the emergence of industrial Japan and their surprising victory over Russia. The third quarter ends with the outbreak of the First World War. The fourth and final quarter surveys the effects of the First World War, followed by the brief peak of classical liberal nation states and promises for peace, and the rapid rise of authoritarianism, in both communist and fascist variations, with a special focus on the rise of Nazism, the Nazi racial transformation of Germany and the Holocaust and Shoah of modern Europe. The fourth quarter concludes by looking at the causes and effects of the Second World War, the Cold War, the end of European empires in Asia and Africa, the emergence of the Modern Middle East and China, the end of the Cold War, history since 1989, all the way to the present, including current events.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Week 3: The Industrial Revolution

Day 1: Monday, January 14
In-class: Discuss the handout by Yuval Levin, "Burke, Paine and the Great Law of Change," from The Point, Issue 3 (Fall 2010): pp. 121-127. Make sure to know the argument of the author, Levin, as well as who Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine were, what they thought about nature, human nature, society, politics and justice, and how these early debates about the French Revolution helped shape "a new kind of politics."

Read: Roberts, "The Great Acceleration," in A Short History of the World, p. 337-348, and look at the visual sources and maps in Sherman, Western Civilization, pp. 148-151. Consider how and why the world was changing.

Homework: Read the following primary and secondary sources in Sherman, Western Civilization,  and prepare written answers to the accompanying questions.
1. Introduction to Chapter 11, "Industrialization and Social Change," pp. 141-142.

Secondary source:
2. Robert L. Heilbronner, "The Making of Economic Society: England, the First to Industrialize," pp. 151-152.
Prepare a written answer to the Question: Why was England the first to industrialize?

Primary sources:
3. "Testimony for the Factory Act of 1833: Working Conditions in England," pp. 142-143,
4. Benjamin Disraeli, "Sybil, or Two Nations: Mining Towns," pp.143-144,
5. Friedrich Engels, "The Conditions of the Working Classes," pp. 144-145.
Prepare a written answer to the Question: How did industrialization affect England?

Day 2:
In-class: Discuss the causes and effects of industrialization in England.

Homework: Read Charles Mann, "Guano," in 1493, pp. 271-281 (paperback), or pp. 212-220 (hardback). 
Prepare a written answer to the Question: How did guano change the world?

Day 3:
In-class: Discuss how guano changed the world; read Pomeranz and Topik, "World Trade and Industrialization," in The World that Trade Created, pp. 226-237.

Homework: Read the following primary and secondary sources in Sherman, Western Civilization,  and consider whether or not the effects of early industrialization were positive, negative, or somewhere in between.

Primary sources:
1. Samuel Smiles, "Self-Help: Middle-Class Attitudes," p. 145,
2. Honore de Balzac, "Father Goriot: Money and the Middle Class," pp. 146-147,
3. Elizabeth Poole Sandford, "Woman in Her Social and Domestic Character," pp. 147-148,
4. Flora Tristan, "Women and the Working Class," p. 148.

Secondary sources:
1. Peter Stearns and Herrick Chapman, "Early Industrial Society: Progress or Decline?" pp. 153-154,
2. Michael Anderson, "The Family and Industrialization in Western Europe," pp. 154-155. 
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