World History & Cultures

Teaching staff: Professor Richard Drayton
Module code: 7AAH0001
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module addresses the nature of historical practice, ensuring that students can use and critically evaluate a range of theories, methods and approaches. It will raise awareness about history as a discipline and its relationships with other kindred fields. There will be visits, for example, to libraries, archives and museums, and an opportunity for students to discuss their dissertations. Skills to be considered in the module include quantitative approaches, visual and textual analysis and the oral presentation of materials.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH0001.aspx

Module code: 7AAH5001
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 60 credits
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 15,000 word dissertation

The dissertation of 15,000 words provides the opportunity to demonstrate your ability as a historian to conceive and execute a research project and to present your findings in an extended scholarly form. A formal introduction both to archives (including visits) and to the problems of dissertation writing forms part of the module and is normally covered in the first term. Most of the research for and the writing of, your dissertation will then be done in the three months from mid-June.

Recent topics have included:

• Female Missionaries in Madagascar: The London Missionary Society and Conceptions of Gender, 1865-95
• The Administration of Criminal Justice in the Madras Presidency, c 1830-60
• The Consular Courts in Japan, 1859-99: An Aspect of Britain’s ‘Informal Empire’
• Wavell: The Undermining of a Viceroy
• The Coorg Vagabond
• The Hudson’s Bay Company and the French Raid of 1782
• Tropical Academe. The inception and the foundation of the University Colleges of the Gold Coast and Ibadan, Nigeria, c 1943-1953
• British policy towards Quasim’s Iraq, July 1958 – February 1963: a study in defence planning, oil concessions and inter-Arab politics

Teaching staff: Professor Richard Drayton
Module code: 7AAH5002
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module provides a core introductory module for the MA in World History which will equip postgraduates with a variety of approaches to thinking historically beyond the nation state. It offers a broad introduction into the outline of world history since c. 1500, particularly in terms of the teaching range of scholars across the humanities at King's, in order to stimulate students to choose directions of reading and research which they may not previously have considered. The module involves students in the critical examination of the competing approaches to transnational history: comparative vs. connective history, ‘histoires croisées’, Atlantic history and its critics, imperial history and its limits, ‘postcolonialism’ and its discontents.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH5002.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Uta Andrea Balbier
Module code: 7YYA0003
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 5,000 word essay

Sport has been a critical cultural force in U.S. history, and is arguably as definitive for U.S. identities as film or music. However, its significance has often been overlooked. This course will discuss the development of modern sports in the United States from the mid-19th century on. It will focus on the emergence of sports clubs, the role of national sports heroes, the business of sports, and health reform movements. Sport will be discussed as a force of cultural production and social change. Through the prism of sports this course provides a new understanding of Progressivism, consumerism, and race and gender politics in 20th century U.S. history. It will also provide knowledge of a number of methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding the role of sports, the body, and spectacles in the shaping of modern societies and nations.

Teaching staff: Dr Sarah Stockwell
Module code: 7AAH4010
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

In recent years the historiography of the ‘end of empire’ has been one of the most rapidly-developing and exciting aspects of the literature on the history of British imperialism, driven not only by the continued opening up of records relating to the post-war period, but also by new controversies concerning Britain’s response to colonial politics and insurrection, and the impact of decolonisation on Britain itself. The first part of the course provides an introduction to ‘why’ and ‘how’ after the second world war Britain came to experience such a dramatic transformation in its world role, examining debates surrounding the relative importance of international relations, domestic politics and economy, and anti-colonial resistance in bringing about Britain’s post-war retreat from empire. The course then proceeds to focus on country case studies that together illustrate the diverse nature of British decolonisation and the very different processes --from negotiation to armed revolt—by which former colonies attained their independence from Britain. The final part of the course explores the newly-emerging literature on the cultural, social, economic and political consequences for Britain of the transition from empire to Commonwealth. Students will be encouraged throughout to make comparison between British decolonisation and the experience of other European empires.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH4010.aspx

Module code: 7YYH0001
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 5,000 word essay

This course will examine the ways in which the Cold War affected the UK’s foreign, military and domestic policymaking in the broader European context. It will be the aim of this course to demonstrate that the Cold War was not simply a conflict between the two superpowers, with lesser powers like the UK simply acting as their agents, but that in UK’s case the response was based upon the long history of Anglo-Russian and subsequently Anglo-Soviet relations; on the challenges that Britain faced as European power with a declining global Imperial presence; on her position in Europe after the World War II; on her military strength (or weakness); and her determination to remain on the ‘top table’ of world affairs.

Module code: 7YYH0002
Credit level: 7
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 5,000 word essay

The course will examine the ways in which the Cold War affected the UK’s foreign, military and domestic policymaking in the extra-European world. It will be the aim of this course to demonstrate that the Cold War was not simply a conflict between the two superpowers, with lesser powers like the UK simply acting as their agents, but that in UK’s case the response was based upon the long history of Anglo-Russian and subsequently Anglo-Soviet relations; on the challenges that Britain faced as European power with a declining global Imperial presence; on her position in Europe after the World War II; on her military strength (or weakness); and her determination to remain on the ‘top table’ of world affairs.

Teaching staff: Professor Carl Bridge
Module code: 7AAH5006
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The colonies of settlement have been neglected in studies of British imperialism in recent decades. This module will focus attention on the shared histories of Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa since the early-nineteenth century as part of a larger ‘British World’. These societies’ evolution from colonies to self-governing dominions and independent nations, as well as their common dispossession and marginalisation of Indigenous peoples, will be examined not only comparatively but also by exploring the sense of belonging that developed among them, based on shared origins, culture, experience and identity. The module will examine factors such as those which brought these various communities together – cultural, political, economic, constitutional and military – as well as the forces that eventually drove them apart from one another, and from Great Britain itself.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH5016.aspx

Module code: 7SSWM006
Credit level: 7

This option explores the origins of the Second World War in Europe, Asia and the Pacific in the period 1931-41. This tragic decade of international upheaval, crisis and war provides historians with a rich source for the study of international politics. Was appeasement, for example, a cowardly policy selected by na?ve politicians or a strategy of containment? Was Japan provoked into war by the imperial and economic policies of the western powers? Was the European war of 1939 Hitler's war or was the German dictator propelled into war by a 'domestic crisis'? What role did intelligence and armaments competition play in the coming of war?

Teaching staff: Dr Stephen Lovell & Dr Jim Bjork
Module code: 7AAH3011
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The three keywords in the module title together evoke a particular historical conjuncture. We will look at two empires – the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian – as they contended with the rise of national sentiment at a time of rapid social, economic and cultural change (otherwise known as modernity). There will be a strong emphasis on comparative analysis, both as a way of capturing the historical specificity of these empires and as a means of reflecting more broadly on the nature of empire – a normal, not aberrant form of political organization for nineteenth-century Europe – at a historical moment when it was under interrogation as never before.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH3011.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Stephen Lovell & Dr Jim Bjork
Module code: 7AAH3012
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

In this module (which is designed to follow on from ‘Empire, Nation and Modernity in Eastern Europe, 1848-1914', but can also be free-standing) we will examine two empires – the Russian and the Austro-Hungarian – as they faced the crisis of World War I and fell apart. We then go on to consider their successor states – above all the USSR, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary – with particular reference to the ways in which they contended with national sentiment and ethnic difference at a time of rapid social, economic and cultural change. There will be a strong emphasis on comparative analysis, both as a way of capturing the historical specificity of these regions and as a means of reflecting more broadly on the interwar and postwar conjunctures.

Teaching staff: Professor Richard Vinen
Module code: 7AAH3005
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The aim of this module is to look at England (the module includes some reference to Scotland, Ireland and Wales) in European context. It will examine the ways in which the English thought of themselves as being different from their European neighbours, and the ways in which those European neighbours thought of the English as being different. The module is largely historiographical (and indeed will aim to stress that historical writing is itself a product of national culture). It will try to show how some famous interpretations of English history are rooted in comparison. More generally, the module will look at the ways in which England remembers, or forgets, its national history: it will ask, for example, why is it that every French person knows that 18 June 1940 is the date on which de Gaulle issued his ‘call to honour’ while almost no English person knows that this is the day on which Churchill delivered his ‘finest hour speech’ – or, for that matter, that it is the anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo. It will ask why there is a ‘rue Winston Churchill’ in Paris, but no ‘Churchill Avenue’ in central London.

It will focus on the period since 1918, and especially on that between 1918 and 1945, although writers on England almost invariably referred back to earlier periods, and such writers can in turn only be understood by looking at the long-term reception of their work. Attention will be paid to the new context in which ideas of England were discussed (the foundation of the BBC, the growth of English and History as subjects of study at universities). It will look at the inter-relationship of thinking about England with thinking about Europe, the Empire and Britain.

The module is intended to be a means of raising questions as much as of providing answers and it is hoped that it will prove particularly useful to those who are going to go on to do graduate work in British history.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH3005.aspx

Teaching staff: Professor Francisco Bethencourt
Module code: 7AAH2012
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

The purpose of this course is to study the process of European expansion and its impact on the definition of ethnic prejudices, hierarchies of peoples and race relations. We will study the both the reflection in Europe on different peoples of the world resulting from the Oceanic exploration, as well as the practice of colonial societies established in Africa, Asia and America. The tension between ethnic prejudices and civil rights will be at the core of this module. We will include the debates on freedom of the American Indians, on African slavery, on the abolition of the slave trade and slavery, and on the recognition of citizenship for Native Americans and African freedmen.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH2012.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr David Todd
Module code: 7AAH5004
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module will offer an overview of French imperial ventures in the modern era, from France’s American empire in the early modern period to the Napoleonic empires of the nineteenth century and its African and Indochinese empire after 1870. Recent years have seen a reappraisal of both the French contribution to the development of European imperialism and the impact of imperial expansion on France and continental Europe. Comparisons between the French and other European empires, especially Britain’s, have played a significant part in the surge of interest in world and imperial history. The large time span covered by the module will encourage students to analyse the political, economic, and cultural dimensions of empire throughout the modern era. A simultaneously comparative and connective approach will familiarize students with several core concepts of world history, including the striking of the balance between change and continuity in long historical narratives and the complex relations between centres and their peripheries. Special attention will be paid to colonial revolutions in a French imperial context such as in Haiti in the eighteenth century, Germany under Napoleon, and Algeria in the twentieth century. Knowledge of French is not required.

Teaching staff: Dr Jahnavi Phalkey
Module code: 7YYI0005
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay and class particpation

This module is aimed at surveying the history of science, technology and medicine in India from the late 18th to the 20th centuries. The module focuses on mapping the introduction of European science and its continuing practice in India. It will pose three questions through current scholarship: when and how was the cultural authority of European science established in India; how was local pursuit of knowledge of the physical world reconfigured in this process; what did the process of accepting the ontology of European science come to mean in the period under discussion?

The module will examine each of our readings to understand how these questions have been addressed in the current scholarship on history of science, technology and medicine in India, especially in relation to the state. In the process of studying these questions, students will develop: a comprehensive understanding of the structure and development of science in India since the mid C18th; the ability to analyse the relationship between western science and Indian social practice and culture; an understanding of the relationship between science and the state; an appreciation of the centrality of science to Indian politics and culture today.

Teaching staff: Dr Jon Wilson
Module code: 7AAH4007
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module introduces students to the history of modern anti-colonial nationalism by examining the emergence of nationalism and nation-states in the region once ruled as Britain's Indian empire. Students will focus in particular on the way the inhabitants of South Asia responded to imperial rule by writing about the history of the communities they belonged to, emphasising the diverse ways in which the nation was imagined in the process. Students will examine the changing documentary form of South Asian nationalism by reading texts by political leaders from Rammohan Roy in the 1820s to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the 1970s, placing them in their social and political contexts and examining how the states of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh emerged in the process. Alongside these primary sources, students will consider a number of recent historical interpretations of South Asian politics and theories of both nationalism and narrativity. In the process, they will consider throughout how far the stories people tell about the history community can be realistic, or if modern nationalist story-telling involves forms of writing necessarily out of joint with the way historical actors lived their lives at the time.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH4007.aspx

Module code: 7SSWM109
Credit level: 7

This module examines the interface between the writing of naval history and development of naval education and national strategy in the period between the outbreak of the French Revolutionary War and the twenty-first century.

Aims:
The aims of the module are to examine the key issues in the development of naval history and strategy, both as case studies in history, and as historiographical and methodological exercises. It works alongside the MA War Studies and History of Warfare Core Programme, especially the History and Strategy components. The methods of historical enquiry that are set out in those elements will be the starting point for the work of this module. The case studies have been selected with reference to the current state of knowledge in the fields covered, and do not form a continuous narrative.

Learning Outcomes:

Students who successfully complete this module will be able to:

• Understand the way in which the writing of history reflects the environment in which it is written, the objects of the historian and the importance of academic or service links in naval history.
• Display a critical understanding of the use of evidence, argument and narrative in history
• Assess the development of national naval strategies, both at a national, and a comparative level.
• Demonstrate a critical approach to historiographical issues, enabling them to analyse both historical issues, and the work of the historians who have written about them.

Teaching staff: Mr AbdoolKarim Vakil
Module code: 7AAP0113
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits

The story and meaning of the twentieth century is shaped by the historical experiences, and hegemonic interpretations of those experiences, of a very few European/Western countries. When, where and what was the Portuguese twentieth century? This course aims to provide post-nationalist and postcolonial approaches to the political, social, economic and cultural history of the peoples of Portugal and its dependent territories in the period 1910-1998. Although informed by a grand narrative of nation building and politicisation, and organised in terms of the periodisation of three political regimes (I Republic; New State; Democratic Portugal), the foci chosen for each session are deliberately transruptive of lazy contextual wholes and unilinear progressive narratives.

Teaching staff: Dr Paul Readman
Module code: 7AAH3006
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 40 credits
Teaching pattern: 20 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
2 x 4,000 word essays

This module explores patriotism and national identities in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Britain. What did contemporaries mean by patriotism? Did patriotic considerations play a major part in policymaking? Or did the political significance of patriotism lie more in the realm of popular appeals? To what extent was the language of patriotism a contested one? A particular concern of this module is the relationship between patriotism, national identity and imperialism. Were British nationalisms typically synonymous or compatible with imperialism, or did patriotic loyalties alien to the imperial spirit often intrude? How powerful was ‘Little Englander’ patriotism?

The module takes a thematic approach. Topics include: the politics and culture of rural ‘Englishness’; the constitution and the English past; Edwardian militarism; Labour, Conservative and Liberal patriotism; the Monarchy; gender and nationhood; Irish, Scottish and Welsh nationalisms; Race; God and nation; British national identities and world war. While the main focus of this module is political, it is more concerned with the intellectual content of political discourse than the details of partisan politicking. In addition, it pays considerable attention to the role of patriotic and nationalistic discourse in British culture. The politics of patriotism cannot be understood without consideration of the wider cultural context in which these politics were situated.

Teaching staff: Dr Uta Andrea Balbier
Module code: 7YYA0002
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 5,000 word essay

The importance and dynamic of religion is one of the most striking features of American society. But it is also surprising in that it contradicts the assumption that modern societies are secularized. The course analyzes the role of religious rhetoric in political discourse, the role of different religious pressure groups and the important Supreme Court decisions that are related to the field of religion such as Roe v. Wade. The course will discuss the concept of civil religion, the meaning of the First Amendment in U.S. constitutional history, and contemporary secularization theories. It will provide knowledge of a number of methodological and theoretical approaches to understanding how religion has influenced images of the nation, civic values, and political campaigns in the 20th century. Examining how religion has been contested provides indispensable insights into twentieth-century U.S. culture and U.S. politics.

Teaching staff: Dr Jahnavi Phalkey
Module code: 7YYI0014
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay and class participation

What is India? How can we understand contemporary history and politics of India in the global context? And finally, how and to what extent has science been a part of the process of making India? In this course, we will work with these three questions in Indian history for the period roughly between 1930 and the present. We begin with the impossibility of the idea of India divided under imperial rule in the interwar period, and quickly move on to trace the transformation of this landscape in the post�]war period - shaped by Cold War politics and the converging interests of various international processes. Cautiously drawing a distinction between science and technology, which were relevant to the historical actors in question, the course will begin with projects promoted by the Indian National Congress and the Imperial government, followed by projects under Nehru's administration in independent India and finally work through the effects and aftermath of India's more recent history of market liberalism. An important goal for this course is to understand the landscape of state-led transformation of India through scientific education and research, while simultaneously paying close attention to responses – both critical and favourable - from the citizens of India, as well as the perception of India in the world at large.

Teaching staff: Dr Jahnavi Phalkey
Module code: 7YYI0015
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay and class participation

This course is aimed at thinking broadly about the experiences and meanings of science and technology for the global population during the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We will focus on key themes in twentieth century global history: public health, race, global trade, decolonisation, modernisation, the nuclear age, green revolution and population control. We want to understand the normative and moral aspects of the debates and arguments around the "civilizing mission" under European colonialism through "modernization" during the Cold War under the global leadership of the United States and the Soviet Union, and how this transition of world politics was played out globally with respect to science and technology. We will see that interactions between cultures have often been negotiated through practices concerning the control and regulation of territories and populations. The ideas around civilisation and progress that helped legitimate these practices under colonial rule, continued through the period after World War II, providing the foundations for efforts to develop and modernise the emerging decolonised world. Through close attention to ideas and processes (more than on details of specific cases), we will examine the diversity of the historical actors and the context of their interactions.

Teaching staff: Professor Richard Drayton
Module code: 7AAH5003
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000-word essay

An introduction to the history and historiography of the British Empire from its Tudor origins to decolonization. It aims, first, to give students an introduction to the development of British imperial history as as a discipline, and, second, to prepare them to teach the subject. It moves between the history of the imperial center, and the stories of encounter, settlement, violence, resistance, and of the transformation of lifeways and identity, at the American, Asian, African, and Pacific peripheries of British influence.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH5003.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr John Price
Module code: 7AAH3010
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module examines the nature of heroism. It seeks to answer questions to the following: What is a hero? What is a heroine? Why is heroism such an important historical phenomenon? Is there a distinctively 'modern' form of it? Many of the examples will be British, however students are encouraged to develop a comparative perspective on the subject. They will also be invited to reflect critically upon both the range of relevant sources (medals and monuments, for example, as well as biographies and autobiographies) and the ways in which historians have approached the subject. Those who were publicly celebrated come from a variety of fields, and indeed there is also a history of forms of achievement. Thus the module will also examine certain key zones -- the church, the military, science, medicine, literature, architecture and so on -- in order to assess their changing status. The professions, class and gender, and their representation, will be central issues in the module.

Teaching staff: Professor Patrick Chabal
Module code: 7AAPM140
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Assessment:  coursework 
2 x 3000 word Essays

This module is an exploration of the colonial history of the Portuguese territories in Africa – Angola, Mozambique, Guiné, Cape Verde and São Tomé e Príncipe – by means of a comparative approach. The aim is to study the period between the consolidation of formal colonial rule (Berlin Conference) and the outbreak of the anti-colonial wars (1961) as part of the general process of colonisation, and then decolonisation, of the African continent. This will be achieved in two ways. One is a presentation of the material according to questions or themes that are relevant to the whole of Africa, and not just Lusophone Africa. The other will be a discussion of the Lusophone material in a way that facilitates comparison with other colonial territories.

Teaching staff: Mr AbdoolKarim Vakil
Module code: 7AAH3015
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 1 (autumn) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This module offers a historical perspective on the making of the contemporary Muslim question in Europe. Opting for a thematic approach it foregrounds and critically explores different aspects of colonial and postcolonial governance and the emergence of contemporary Muslim subjectivities through detailed discussion of diversely and historically configured spatial contexts and relations of power. Through focused reading of core texts we draw on the lives and experiences of numerous individuals and communities, from colonial subjecthood, and immigration, to postcolonial citizenship, and on the histories, policies and trajectories of a number of European countries from the late nineteenth to the twenty first century.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH3015.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr David Todd
Module code: 7AAH5005
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Semester:  Semester 2 (spring) 
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000-word essay

The module will offer a comprehensive overview of economic systems of imperial governance since 1500 and economic theories about imperialism. Economic motivation has always been a crucial dimension of imperial projects, but it was expressed or interpreted in different ways throughout the modern era. The module will introduce students to the successive strands of economic thinking that shaped imperial expansion, from the mercantilist reliance on slave-manned plantations and tight commercial regulations to obtain a trade surplus to the liberal economic thought that underpinned ‘free trade imperialism’ in the nineteenth century and the early formulations of development policies in the twentieth century. The module will also encourage students to engage with the main historical debates about the economics of European imperialism, including the concept of ‘world-system’, the links between industrialization and overseas expansion, and the neo-imperialist character of modern international economic institutions. No prior knowledge of economics is required, as the module will focus on general concepts and the connections between the economic and the political, social, and cultural dimensions of imperialism.

http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/chs/modules/level7/7AAH5005.aspx

Teaching staff: Dr Jon Wilson
Module code: 7AAH4008
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
2 x 2,000 word essays

This module examines the historical process by which Britain emerged as the dominant governing power in India from the 1750s to 1830s. The transition to colonialism remains one of the most fiercely contested issues in Indian and imperial history, a question which intersects with British and Indian historical identities in important ways. Aware of these present-day contexts throughout, the module introduces students to debates about the nature of both Indian and British society before during and after the colonial encounter, encouraging them to see the transition to colonialism as a process in which all participants – whether Indian or British - were transformed. Students will consider the ways in which the colonial regime produced records about its own activities, engaging with sources available in the India Office Records in the British Library. In particular, they will use both primary and secondary material to explore the changing ideas about politics and power that emerged from the process of colonial state-formation, considering how far historians need to consider the emergence of colonial governance as the creation of an unprecedented form of rule that transformed life in many different spheres.

Teaching staff: Professor Carl Bridge
Module code: 7AAH5007
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 4,000 word essay

This course examines twentieth century Australia through the twin prisms of war and society. Issues of identity, gender, class, race and power are investigated in relation to Australia's major wars: the Great War, the Second World War, and the Cold War, including Vietnam. Among the topics covered are the ANZAC myth, the Conscription referenda of 1916-17, the social impact of the Yanks in 1942-45, women and war, Black Diggers, Cold War culture, Vietnam: Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n Roll, war art, and war and popular memory. Though firmly based on the political and diplomatic documentary record, the course also addresses a wider range range of texts, including autobiographies, film and other appropriate visual material. Particular attention is paid to historiographical and methodological matters.

Teaching staff: Dr Uta Andrea Balbier
Module code: 7YYA0001
Credit level: 7
Credit value: 20 credits
Teaching pattern: 10 x 2-hour weekly seminars
Assessment:  coursework 
1 x 5,000 word essay

This course examines American political culture in the 20th Century. It will provide an inter-disciplinary knowledge of different methods and theories to decode American political culture and a sound understanding of the concept of political culture. In thematic sections it will explore the cultural layers of the presidency, of populist and political protest movements. It examines these in the context of the ongoing processes of nation building and identity construction in the United States, especially in their connections to race, gender, popular culture, and the media. In reading U.S. political history through cultural phenomena like scandals, moral panics, and conspiracies, the course provides original insight into the unique nature of American democracy, society, and nation.