NES 4675

The First Age of Globalization

Course Description

Course information provided by the Courses of Study 2016-2017.

The period between around 1870 and World War I was an era of unprecedented global interconnectedness. Telegraph wires, steamships, and railways crossed oceans and continental frontiers, fundamentally changing how human beings understood their relationship to each other and to their world. This seminar will explore the period from a variety of vantage points. We will revisit sites on all continents and encounter a diverse cast of characters. Our goal will be to engage worldwide integration, not narrowly in economic terms, but as an array of profound social, political, cultural, and spatial transformations. How was space reordered and governed? What methods were used to mobilize labor? How did global connections shape inequality between and within societies, producing extraordinary prosperity alongside poverty, famine, and war? We will bring these questions to our conversations in a way that would both resonate with current events and enhance our understanding of particular national contexts.

View Enrollment Information