Mar 28, 2024  
2017-2018 Official General Catalog 
    
2017-2018 Official General Catalog [Archived Catalog]

HIS 155 - War and the Western World


A survey course from 1500 to the present examining the interaction of Western Civilization and warfare.  Major emphasis will be on how warfare/military developments helped to shape Western Civilization as well as a distinctive Western style of warfare.  Specific concern will be given to the role of gunpowder, industrialization, nationalism, as well as economic, social, and cultural factors.  Exploration of how the West used its distinctive style of warfare to dominate the rest of the world and to spread Western influence and institutions will also be considered.

Credits: 3
Hours
3 Class Hours
Course Profile
Learning Outcomes of the Course:

Upon successful completion of this course the student will be able to:

1.  Describe the general nature of warfare in the early modern West, including theories of the “military revolution” of the period.
2.  Identify some of the relationships between warfare and culture, politics, and society in the early modern West.
3.  Discuss the causes and consequences of the Age of Revolution in the West, including the rise of mass armies.
4.  Describe the nature of indurstrialization in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the development of new technologies and strategies of war.
5.  Identify the major belief systems of the nineteenth century West, including Liberalism, Conservatism, Socialism, and Nationalism.
6.  Discuss the nature of imperialism and imperial wars in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
7.  Analyze the political, social, cultural, and military causes and consequences of the two world wars.
8.  Discuss the period since 1945 in the West, including the Cold War, decolonization, and globalization, with a special emphasis on the nature of war in the contemporary world.