Key facts

Details for course being taught in current academic year
Level M  -  30 credits  -  autumn term

Resources

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Course description

Course outline

Foundations of World Politics is designed to give you a critical historical perspective on the modern international system. It is impossible to cover the whole of modern international history in ten weeks. Instead we shall be reflecting on three key themes, each of which is in its own way central to historicising the world we live in today.

First there is the theme of origins: when did the modern international system originate? Was it in 1492 with the European discoveries which for the first time linked up all the major civilizations? Was it in 1648, when the Peace of Westphalia, according to many, first established a sovereign states-system? Or was it in the 1780s, when the coinciding industrial and French revolutions set in train the forces of industrialisation, nationalism, republicanism and total war? The three dates are symbolic but the choice between them is not: as Barraclough suggests, which one you choose determines what you think the most significant characteristics of modern international relations are, and even your view of what modern world history has been about.

A second theme considers the expansion of this modern system into the historically unprecedented global system of today. Once again, we cannot do this comprehensively. But by looking at 19th century European imperialism as well as the responses of some countries which escaped direct colonial rule we can identify some key dynamics of what might be called the modern international historical process.

Finally, no attempt to understand international relations today can avoid reflection on the enormous crisis of the 20th century with its world wars, revolutions and global ideological conflicts. Historical controversy continues to rage over all of these: can they be understood primarily at the geopolitical level as a series of great power conflicts over hegemonic succession? Were they the inevitable result of contradictions and dynamics inherent in modern capitalist society?

Or is it rather the international unevenness of industrialisation or modernisation which explains the extended period of crisis which so recently ended (or did it)?

In the end, we cannot fully understand the present as history if only because the story of the present is still being made. But we can try to think historically about the present, to draw conclusions about the nature of the overall historical process in which we are all caught up. And that is what this course is designed to help you to do.

Assessments

Timing

Submission deadlines may vary for different types of assignment/groups of students.

Weighting

Coursework components (if listed) total 100% of the overall coursework weighting value.

Teaching methods

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The numbers indicate the weeks of the term and how many events take place each week.

Contact details

Mr Zdenek Kavan

Assess convenor, Convenor
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/justice/profile1451.html