Module Code - Title:
HI4132
-
WARFARE AND DIPLOMACY: EUROPE IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
Year Last Offered:
2016/7
Hours Per Week:
Grading Type:
Prerequisite Modules:
Rationale and Purpose of the Module:
This module offers students an overview of the political, social and economic history of continental Europe during the seventeenth century. It is intended as a spring-semester module to compliment the autumn-semester module on sixteenth-century Europe, thus providing first-years with a more gentle introduction to the early modern period than has hitherto been on offer.
Syllabus:
The Thirty Years War and the military revolution - mercenaries and siege warfare; developments in congress diplomacy at Westphalia, the Pyrenees, Nijmegen and Utrecht-Rastatt; the structure of state building - Cardinal Richelieu and fiscal terrorism; rebellion, civil war and Frondes - the general crisis of the mid-seventeenth century; Dutch economic primacy and world trade; credit systems, deficit-finance, the development of state-funded debt and the stock exchange; the emergence of capital cities - Madrid, Vienna and Turin; court society and the world of the minister-favourite; the decline of Spain; France in the age of Louis XIV; the emergence of absolutist states from the 1660s; aristocratic constitutionalism in Sweden, Denmark and Poland-Lithuania; Austrian expansion into the Hungarian plain; the partition of the Spanish Monarchy in 1713-14.
Learning Outcomes:
Cognitive (Knowledge, Understanding, Application, Analysis, Evaluation, Synthesis)
On completion of the module, students will have gained:
An understanding of the economic, cultural and political evolution of the period.
The ability to interpret and cross-reference developments and processes as they occurred in more than one state and over a prolonged period.
An appreciation that history is not just a sequence of facts and events, but a complex system of processes, whose comprehension and analysis makes for a richer understanding of the past.
Students, who have completed this module, will be able to:
Define the key themes in social, political and cultural history with regard to Europe in the seventeenth century.
Clarify the nature and effects of absolutism in France between 1589 and 1715.
Determine the effects of high politics upon the lives of ordinary people.
Explain the causes and effects of the European general crisis of the 1640s and 1650s.
Distinguish between different techniques of state-building.
Affective (Attitudes and Values)
On successful completion of this module students will be filled with a love of early modern European history, and a desire to pursue independent research in this area.
Psychomotor (Physical Skills)
N/A
How the Module will be Taught and what will be the Learning Experiences of the Students:
The module will provide students with second-hand experience of the seventeenth century, and a window into a past age, the examples from which will allow them to act with foresight in their academic, personal and professional lives.
Research Findings Incorporated in to the Syllabus (If Relevant):
The module will provide a basis for future research at Final Year Project and postgraduate level.
Prime Texts:
Sturdy, David (2002)
Fractured Europe 1600-1725
, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell.
Munck, Thomas (1990)
Seventeenth Century Europe: State, Conflict and the Social Order in Europe 1598-1700
, Basingstoke and London, Macmillan.
Upton, Anthony F. (2001)
Europe 1600-1789
, London, Arnold.
Sturdy, David J. (1998)
Louis XIV
, Basingstoke and New York, Palgrave.
Bergin, Joseph (ed.) (2001)
The Seventeenth Century
, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Collins, James B. (2001)
The State in Early Modern France
, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
Richard Bonney (1978)
Political Change in France under Richelieu and Mazarin 1624-1661
, Oxford, Oxford University Press
Other Relevant Texts:
()
A bibliography of secondary and primary sources will be provided at the beginning of the module which includes online sources and materials.
,
Programme(s) in which this Module is Offered:
Semester(s) Module is Offered:
Module Leader:
alistair.malcolm@ul.ie