2012-2013 Academic Catalog

Jul 07, 2025

2012-2013 Academic Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]

HIST 140 - Modern Britain

This course provides an introduction to modern British history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Britain experienced an enormous amount of change in these two centuries, raising important questions about progress and decline. It was one of the first countries to industrialize, and it rose to become arguably the world’s greatest imperial power by the end of the nineteenth century. In the twentieth century, Britain coped with imperial decline and two catastrophic world wars while also developing a welfare state and establishing a new role as a middle power within the European Union. Certain themes and issues will be critical throughout the semester: the importance of class and its changing structure; the role of empire; changing ideas about sexual difference and the roles of men and women; and the rise of democracy, expanding suffrage rights and changing definitions of citizenship. We will also follow the evolution of various political ideologies, especially Liberalism, socialism and Labour politics, and Conservatism.