HIST210: Partisans and Collaborators: World War II in Occupied Europe

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

After a brief survey of the main events leading to the declaration of war and the invasion of Poland, this module allows you to explore resistance and collaboration in countries that were first occupied in 1940, namely, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and the Netherlands. The transition between active collaboration to increasing resistance is next traced through Vichy France. The module then moves to the Eastern and Mediterranean fronts where the resistance was more effectively organized. The countries studied in this segment include Yugoslavia, Greece, and the USSR (Belarus, Russia, Baltics and Ukraine).

Lastly, you’ll examine countries that were first part of the Axis and eventually switched sides from 1943 onwards (Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania). Special attention will be given to the treatment of Jews, the Holocaust and the difficulties of coming to terms with what remains a contested past. Besides political documents, you will engage with photography, posters, films, documentaries and personal memoirs.

Educational Aims

This module aims to:

• Introduce the different layers of opposition to fascism as it developed in the years prior to and during WWII
• Introduce the most important groups in the European left and their development throughout World War II
• Familiarise students with events underlying the development of World War II in occupied countries
• Scrutinise attitudes of individuals and groups when subject to a military occupation and living in a climate of civil war and internal strife
• Understand developments and contradictory forces pulling peoples’ alliances in different directions throughout World War II
• Acquaint students with the use of memoirs, testimonies, court cases, films or photography as historical sources
• Explore how historians use primary sources, and the relationship between primary and secondary sources
• Introduce the nature and practice of comparative history

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework:40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST212: On the Edge of Empire: Being Roman in Britain

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

What does it mean to be Roman on the edge of the Roman Empire? How can we write the history of people who have left very little written trace of themselves? This module explores these questions through an in-depth look at the history from the 1st century BCE to the 5th century CE of a single Roman province: Britain. You will learn to use a wide range of evidence, including not only Roman historians like Tacitus, but also archaeological evidence, stone inscriptions, and wooden documents like the Vindolanda Tablets, to reconstruct the nature of Romano-British society. How can we use pottery evidence to reconstruct Britain’s economic connections to the continent? How can Iron Age coins give us insight into the political machinations that led to Britain’s 1st century CE conquest by the Romans? Broader topics will include the effects of Roman imperialism on conquered peoples, the place of migration and ethnic diversity in Roman Britain, and the role historical trends such as post-colonialism and globalization have played in our understanding of life in the Roman provinces. The module may also include field trips to Roman sites and museum collections.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST213: Europe and the World, 1450-1650: Bodies, Cultures, and Environments

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

During the 16th century, Europe witnessed some of the most important developments in the shaping of the modern world. Although you will learn about these events, the module will focus on the broader historical processes through which you can understand them. At the same time, you will engage with the methodologies and debates that historians of the present-day find most interesting, critically appraising their strategies for assessing patterns of historical change and continuity.

You will therefore examine the work of environmental historians, asking whether transformations in society and the economy can be explained by changes in climate. The module will also ask whether colonial expansion led people to develop new ideas about racial and cultural difference, while at the same time trying to understand how newly colonized people tried to navigate their way through new hierarchies and relationships.

In addition, it will ask whether long-standing questions about transformations in religious life, popular culture, and the centralization of government can be enriched by approaching them through the prism of new approaches. When you study the body, health, and disease, for instance, you’ll discuss the unexpected role of medical expertise in the development of a renewed form of Catholicism at the end of the 16th century. Meanwhile, focusing on the history of printed news may enable you to understand why rumours and religious bigotry spread so rapidly during the Reformation and Wars of Religion.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework 100%

HIST235: Making Modern Britain, 1660-1720

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

Perhaps more formative for the modern British state than any before or since, the years 1660 to 1720 saw Britain’s territorial boundaries and infrastructure forged; with constitutional monarchy, expanding state bureaucracy, and political parties as its principal tenets. During the same period, political power in England changed hands; new political personnel operated within novel political institutions and voiced innovative political economies. Making of Modern Britain will also challenge participants to analyse and debate formative changes to British literature, commerce, art, and architecture, as well as to discuss the changed relationship between Britain and the world during this period. Participants will therefore receive a broad understanding of late seventeenth and early eighteenth century British history; they will also develop expertise in the following subfields: cultural, art, political, parliamentary, global, economic, constitutional, gender, and business history.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST259: Inventing Human Rights, 1776-2001

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

Of all intellectual and ideological concepts in the modern world, few are as contested and powerful as human rights. At their most influential, concerns for the protection of human rights have been used to justify international conflict and widespread military intervention in order to save the lives of thousands of people. Yet human rights critics argue that they are a form of cultural imperialism that limits the sovereignty of local populations. How has an ethical and moral concern for individual lives come to be so divisive? Why after years of supporting the establishment of international human rights law do many governments now pledge to scrap their own human rights acts? This module will examine the history of human rights, putting their development into a broad historical context. It will chart the development of rights discourses from the pre-modern era through to the present, assessing the influence that the enlightenment, imperialism and war have had on their construction. It will offer students the opportunity to explore differing aspects of the history of human rights. Indicative topics include: Codifying and Quantifying Rights: 1776, 1789, 1948, The Universality of Human Rights, Human Rights and Humanitarianism, 1807-2001, Decolonisation and Self-Determination, 1945-1991, Gendered rights, Capital punishment in the nineteenth and twentieth century, Responding to Genocide: The Holocaust, Bangladesh, Srebrenica, Amnesty International, 1961-2001, Helsinki Watch/Human Rights Watch, 1975-2001.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST270: The History of the United States, 1789-1865

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• Also Available: Not running in 2015-16
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 8 ECTS credits
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

develop students interest in social and cultural history but will also have the opportunity to learn about more strictly defined political and economic issues.

Educational Aims

On successful completion of this module students will be able to...

Express, in an exam setting, knowledge of the key themes and events in the history of the United States in the nineteenth century.

Demonstrate competence in both written and oral analysis and interpretation of the history of the United States.

Competently undertake historical research. This includes familiarity with the University Library and its cataloguing systems and an ability to critically use on-line and electronic archives.

Outline Syllabus

This module combines a lecture series that offers an overview of the history of the United States in the 19th century with a closely linked set of seminars that focus on the construction of race, class and gender difference over the same period. This combination allows students to explore an important thematic aspect of world history (the construction of race, class and gender difference) while simultaneously providing grounding for further study and research into the history of the United States in the 19th and/or 20th centuries.

The module builds upon skills that you gained in Part I and, in particular, will explore the history of the United States, from the passage and implementation of the US Constitution (1789) to the conclusion of the Civil War (1865). The module is particularly focused on the culture and politics of race, class and gender in the rapidly industrialising and expanding nation.

Seminars meet fortnightly and are structured around primary readings and recommended secondary texts that offer critical and historical insight into the topics under consideration.

Assessment Proportions

Coursework (40% of final assessment):

Examination (60% of final assessment)

HIST271: The History of the United States, 1865-1989

• Terms Taught: Lent / Summer Terms only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

This module combines a lecture series that offers an overview of the history of the United States in the 20th century with a closely linked set of seminars that focus on the construction of race, class and gender difference in over the same period. This combination allows students to explore an important thematic aspect of world history (the construction of race, class and gender difference) while simultaneously providing grounding for further study and research into the history of the United States.

The module builds upon skills that you gained in Part I and, in particular, will explore the history of the United States from the end of the Civil War (1865) to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989). The module is particularly focused on the culture and politics of race, class and gender.

Educational Aims

This module aims to:

• Develop students' knowledge of the broad contours and key events of twentieth-century United States history, beginning with post-Civil War Reconstruction and concluding with the fall of the Berlin Wall.
• Develop students interest in social and cultural history but will also have the opportunity to learn about more strictly defined political and economic issues.
• Familiarise students with the ways that different groups have struggled to extend the promises of democracy defined in the US Declaration of Independence (1776) and the Bill of Rights (adopted 1791), to all Americans, regardless of their race, class or gender.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST279: Gandhi and the End of Empire in India, 1885-1948

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

By what means was Indian independence seized from the British Empire in 1947? This module explores opposition to British rule in India from the end of the nineteenth century until 1947 when colonial India was divided to create the nation states of India and Pakistan. In particular, we will explore the modes of resistance that emerged from the Indian freedom struggle and in particular, the role of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. Gandhi transformed the Indian National Congress, an organization that had been founded in 1885 as a loyal and moderate organization. Gandhi created a mass movement that challenged the colonial state in extraordinary ways. British rule in India gradually lost credibility and struggled to find the means of maintaining control in the face of massive resistance to its right to govern India.

You will explore Gandhi’s philosophies of personal restraint and political resistance to the injustices of the colonial state. You will also trace the emergence of religious politics in India during this period and the increasing pace of communal conflict, in particular Hindu-Muslim antagonism. What was the role of the colonial state in firing communal anxiety? Did Gandhi’s political ideas allay or encourage the conflation of political action and religious identity? The course ends with the partition of India, the largest migration in history and a process in which over one million people lost their lives, and the event that led, in 1948, to Gandhi’s assassination by a Hindu fundamentalist.

Educational Aims

The aim of this module is to allow students to develop an understanding of the means by which British political authority was resisted in South Asia. Students will gain an insight into the ways in which different social and political orders were affected both by colonialism and the freedom struggle. They should also become familiar with the particular historiographical questions raised by studying anti-colonial resistance. The course will develop an understanding of immediate and longer term affects of constitutional change in colonial governance, and students should also develop an appreciation of the ways in which orders of authority are reflected in the built environment.

Outline Syllabus

This course will begin by considering the relationship between imperialism and nationalism in South Asia. It will go on to explore the inception of political and religious organisations which were formed towards the end of the nineteenth century to challenge British Imperial authority. Students will engage with the various forms of criticism directed at the colonial state as well as the means by which popular support was garnered by nascent nationalist organisations. The course will examine the rise of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi as a political leader, within and outside of the Indian National Congress. The course will culminate with the Quit India movement and the British acceptance of decolonisation.

Topics covered will include:

• Religion, caste and nationalism
• The role of Indian women and the 'woman question' in nationalism
• Gandhi's philosophy of resistance
• Communalism and nationalism
• The constitutional organisation of British withdrawal
• The Partition of India

Lectures will provide introductions and background to the themes of the course. Seminars will develop explorations of visual and textual sources through discussion and assessed group work.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%

HIST286: Restless Nation: Germany in the 20th Century

• Terms Taught: Michaelmas Term only
• US Credits: 4 semester credits
• ECTS Credits: 7.5 ECTS
• Pre-requisites: Has previously taken a History module

Course Description

This module gives a broad thematic overview of the history of Germany in the twentieth century. Few country’s histories have been more tumultuous over the past two centuries than that of Germany. Rapid industrialisation, varied federal traditions, revolutions, the launching of and defeat in two world wars, responsibility for war crimes and genocide on an unparalleled scale, foreign occupation and re-education, and political division for four decades have made German history, and the ways in which Germans have remembered it, contentious and of broad public concern. In few countries have visions of the nation's history been so varied and contested, and few peoples have created and faced such challenges when confronting their 'transient' or 'shattered' past.

In order to provide a thematic focus, this module will examine in particular the reasons for the rise of National Socialism, the character of National Socialism, and the difficulties of the Federal Republic of Germany to deal with its difficult and contentious past, that is the attempt at 'coming to terms with the past' (Vergangenheitsbewltigung).

Educational Aims

The module aims to equip students with an overview knowledge of the key themes and events in German history from the 1890s to the 1990s. Though students will gain an insight into the timing and pace of change, there is also a thematic focus to the module: the rise of National Socialism within a struggling democratic society, the character of National Socialism, and the difficulties of the Federal Republic of Germany to deal with its difficult and contentious past. This is to enable students to understand different political systems, the temptations of fascism, and the challenges to 'come to terms with the past' (Vergangenheitsbewältigung).

The module will thus focus on the 'shattered' past of 20th century Germany as a 'restless nation' and the varied attempts to make sense of this history. The module will also help students to appreciate the politics of history, that is the uses and abuses of history in political and wider cultural debates.

Assessment Proportions

• Coursework: 40%
• Exam: 60%