Modern World History MA

Institution Brunel University
Method At the institution
Location Uxbridge
Type Masters
Course fee By request

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Modern World History MA

Objectives This course examines the transnational influences, connections and conflicts that intersect in world history. It seeks to foster a holistic approach to historical problems that had cross-cultural effects on people in many parts of the globe. This means that World History will be offered with the combined elements of political, economic, social, cultural, demographic and intellectual history; and these historical underpinnings of World History will be presented in an interdisciplinary manner. Among the historians at Brunel University are experts on the history of the United States, the Caribbean, Australia, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom whose scholarship will be an integral part of this offering at master's level.
Entry requirements Entry Requirements A good first degree - usually at upper second level or equivalent. It is expected that students for this programme will have a degree in a relevant subject although in exceptional circumstances students with qualifications in non-related subjects can be considered.
Academic title Modern World History MA
Course description Course Summary

This course examines the transnational influences, connections and conflicts that intersect in world history. It seeks to foster a holistic approach to historical problems that had cross-cultural effects on people in many parts of the globe. This means that World History will be offered with the combined elements of political, economic, social, cultural, demographic and intellectual history; and these historical underpinnings of World History will be presented in an interdisciplinary manner. Among the historians at Brunel University are experts on the history of the United States, the Caribbean, Australia, China, Russia, and the United Kingdom whose scholarship will be an integral part of this offering at master's level.

Course Details

Modules

Core

    * The Emergence of the Transnational World

    * Approaches to Modem World History

    * Migration in Modem World History

    * Dissertation
      Topics will reflect the personal interest and subject relevance of the student’s MA/MSc programme.

Electives

    * China in the World
      The IR theory legacy; the Traditional China legacy; the Western legacy; the Communist (Maoist) legacy; the Modernisation legacy; current Chinese goals, interests and imperatives; China's relationship with Russia; China's relationship with Japan; China's relationship with America; China's relationship with Europe/EU; China's relationship with India; China and world structures.

    * India in the World

    * Australia and the Modem World

    * Slavery and Abolition in the Atlantic World

    * The US in the Modem World

    * Arab Israeli Conflict
      The birth of three nationalisms: Turkish, Arab and Jewish; the Middle East and the First World War; Britain’s 'moment' in the Middle East; the historiography on the Arab-Israeli conflict and problems with methodology; the formation of Israel: the Palestinian refugee crisis, collusion across the Jordan, the first Arab-Israeli War; who started the 1956 war; the 1967 war; the 1973 war; Lebanon; Israeli-Egyptian peace; Israeli-Palestinian peace.

    * First World War
      Military planning and the origins of the war; he Fritz Fischer debate; the July Crisis; 1914: the war of movement; 1915: deadlock; 1916: Verdun and the Somme; 1917: Passchendale; British war strategy; home fronts: entente powers; home fronts; other theatres of War: Africa and Asia, Italian and Russian fronts; America and the war; the War at sea; soldiers’ experience of war; German war strategy: the Ludendorff Offensives; how was the war won: the hundred days' offensive, new technologies, new thinking; consequences of the war: political, cultural.

    * The Rise of the National Security State Intelligence: Key Concepts and Approaches
      The breakdown of the Grand Alliance and the Yalta system; threat evaluations in the early Cold War; bureaucratic politics and the rise of the national security state; the debate in the US on 'the garrison state'; the British defence dilemma and the genesis of NATO; the Soviet defence dilemma and the creation of the Warsaw Pact; the United States National Security Act 1947 and the creation of the national security bureaucracy; the military-industrial complex.

    * War in Theory
      War and the natural law tradition; war and the liberal conscience; war as politics, politics as war; Marxism and war; Soviet military doctrine; guerrilla warfare; war, modernity and the rationalization of slaughter; fascism and war; just war theory; virtual war in the postmodern era; new wars and the 'war on terror'.

    * Soviet Foreign Policy
      Marxism and international relations; the comintern, 1919-1924; Lenin and the West; Lenin and the East; foreign policy during the Inner-Party struggle, 1924-1929; the comintern, 1929-1933; the Soviet Union and Hitler’s Challenge, 1924-1929; Soviet diplomacy and World War II; cold war Europe, 1945-1953; Khrushchev’s Foreign Policy: West, Eastern Europe, China; Brezhnev’s foreign Policy: détente, Eastern Europe, China; foreign policy in the Late Brezhnev Era: Afghanistan and Poland; Gorbachev’s foreign policy: West, Eastern Europe, Asia; Soviet foreign policy.

    * Women and War
      Contact with Native Americans: women's place in the battles; the American Revolution and its aftermath; women and the Civil War (abolitionist; women on the battlefield and as nurses, women as fundraisers and on the home front; emancipation and Reconstruction; the long term impact in the north; in the south; Jingoism; WWI in the UK.

    * Empire, Imperialism and Hegemony
      Empire and hegemony: conceptual introduction and historical overview; early-modern imperial and hegemonic powers: case studies; European imperialism; theories of imperialism; US foreign policy: historical overview; the USA in the world economy; theorising US hegemony/empire.

    * Fascism in the World
      The politics of cultural despair; rise of fascism as a political ideology and movement; blood, biology and race; national socialism as a form of fascism; generic fascism; fascism, capital and the working class; the leader and the people; fascism and ecology; fascism and contemporary Europe.