International History: Western Civilization since 1500 

                                   A comparative perspective (45 h, 3 credits)

Discussion topics:

The Old Regime, 1500 - 1800

-          Religion in Europe: Reformation vs Counter-Reformation

-          Art and culture: the Renaissance as foundations of the Western  Civilization

-          Capitalism and Calvinism

-          Absolutism and Constitutionalism: comparing Hobbes and Locke

-          The Development of Capitalism

-          The Enlightenment: comparing Rousseau and Montesquieu

The Age of Revolution, 1789-1815

-          The western democracy: civil and political rights

-          The American and French Revolution: comparing the US Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen

-          The Napoleonic Era

The Industrial Age, 1815-1914

-          Restoration and Revolution, 1815-48

-          Industrialization: origins and consequences

-          Marx and the Revolutions of 1848

-          Nationalism and the formation of Nation States. Two case studies: Italy and Germany

-          Imperialism. Two different case studies: UK and Germany

-          The First World War: comparing the German and French perspectives

Democracy and its discontents

-          The Twenties: The Democratic Reconstruction

-          The Thirties: The Totalitarian Alternative. Comparing Italy, Germany, Spain and Portugal

-          After the WWII: Europe in a Bipolar World

-          Decolonization. Two opposite cases: UK vs Portugal

-          The Collapse of Communism: why in USSR and not in China and Cuba?