Professor Margaret Lavinia Anderson History Lectures from UC Berkeley

Lecture 1: The Boundaries of the West: Endings and Beginnings 

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Introduces requirements, TAs who will lead sections, the "uses" of history. Then the broadest background of the region we today called Europe, beginning with the division of the Roman empire between East & West under Constantine (c. 272-337); the second split, between North and South, and the shrinking of Christendom under the Arab-Moslem conquests (c. 633 f); the fall of Constantinople to the Turks (1453) and the ensuing cultural divide between Latin & Greek Christendom. Three paradoxes are the course's themes: Political Power: it grows as it becomes concentrated in states, but so do the controls over it; Public and Private spheres: become increasingly distinct, but also stronger; the breakup of Latin Christendom and then rising secularization – while Christianity becomes a global religion. 

Lecture 2: The Rise of the State in the Age of Machiavelli 

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

The problem of sovereignty ( = "the monopoly on legitimate violence" Max Weber); the Roman and feudal background to state sovereignty, including the fragmentation of jurisdiction and limited resources for "princes;" the cultural and practical obstacles to the development of a fully sovereign state;  why Italian polities were first to show the characteristics of "modern" state power – and its consequences; the military revolution in the Renaissance, the sack of Rome, and the end of the Italian city-states' independence.  

Lecture 3: New States and New Worlds: 1492 and Beyond

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Golden Age –and Repression: the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabella and the triple significance of 1492: defeat of Muslim Grenada, expulsion of Iberian Jews, discovery of the Americas. Portugal and Christian geo-politics. The technology of the Voyages of Discovery. Other "Might-Have-Beens," poised to beat Spain to the draw: the Ming Chinese (in 1405, 1433); the Danes (in 1477); the English (in 1488). Discoverers and desperados: Columbus, Cortez, Balboa, and the Pizarro boys. Slavery: a prerequisite for conquest; the new African diaspora. Explanations for the ease of the Spanish conquests. Consequences: the "Columbian Exchange." 

Lecture 4: A Common Culture

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

The Three "P's" of the Renaissance: Printing, Perspective, Portraiture. The European "family pattern" west of the Roman/Cyrillic alphabetic frontier – and its multiple implications for European culture. Explanations for this pattern (a realm of High Speculation) and the demographic situation of Europe today. Culture with a capital "C": Classical (Greco-Roman) continuities; Christian (was the Renaissance a secular society? not yet); the Church and Respublica christiana, with built-in conflicts (secular, spiritual), compromises (with custom and vice), and exceptions (e.g., Jews: vulnerable, but preserved to accord with Biblical prophesy). 

Lecture 5: Salvation at Stake:  The Reformation Begins

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Introduction: The era of Machiavelli is also the Era of Sir Thomas More. Beginning at the end: the multiple consequences of the Reformation in culture and identity; in peace and war; for state power. What was the big deal about indulgences? Pre-reformation theology and society: original sin; the Atonement; purgatory; penance. Martin Luther, monk of Wittenberg. 

Lecture 6: The Institutionalization of the Reformation

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Explanations for Luther's survival and success (in contrast, e.g., to the Czech Jan Hus in Bohemia, burnt at the stake in 1415, and Savonarola of Florence, hanged & burnt at the stake in 1498): cultural shifts; the profits of religious controversy (and the birth of censorship); local politics (thus Spain stays Catholic; England, going back and forth, invents a national church); geo-politics (German poly-centrism and the power of two emperors: the Habsburg Charles V and the Ottoman sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent). Old "others" (Jews, who experience rising animosity ) and new (the Society of Jesus is founded, and becomes the target of three and half centuries of conspiracy theories).

Lecture 7: Things Fall Apart:  Persecutions, Plague, and War

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

The witchcraft craze: 100-200,000 trials & 40-60,000 executions between 1450-1730. (Example: the trial of Catalina Matheo.) The stereotype of the witch. What we know: urban as well as rural; Protestant as well as Catholic; wide geographical variation (least prosecutions and executions in Spain and none in Ireland); believed by scientists, not just the simple folk. Gender of the accused? overwhelmingly women in England – and men in Russia. Why now? what stopped it? (another realm of High Speculation). The context: an age of anxiety (e.g., Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah); an age of plague (last bouts in Marseilles in 1720, Sicily in 1743); an age when states were nearly undone by religious wars and rival clans: France and the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre (1472). Enter Henry IV of Navarre (1593: "Paris is worth a mass") and his Edict of Nantes (1593).

Lecture 8: Hobbes's World and the Rise of Parliament

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

The age of religious terrorism: Ravaillac and Henry IV (1610); Guy Fawkes and the Gunpowder Plot (1605). Looking at the Leviathan (1651). The Calvinist explosion (1/2 million in 1554; 10 million in 1600) and the continent's century of war: in France – mostly latent – between the Huguenot nobility and the Catholic state; in Central Europe, the 30 Years' War (1618-1648), reducing the population by 6-8 million. Three Calvinist migrations (Pilgrims to Massachusetts; Boers to South Africa; Puritans to Northern Ireland). Uprisings in the west, in Catalonia, Naples, Sicily; in the east, by Cossacks (Khmelnytzsky 1658; Stenka Razin 1667-71). England: from monarchy to military dictatorship: unpopular Stuart monarchs; taxpayers' revolt; rebellions on the periphery (Scotland 1638-40; Ireland 1641), leading to civil war (1641-46), mass death, and regicide (1649). Oliver Cromwell's Commonwealth.

Lecture 9: Absolutism and the Sun King 

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Monarchy is restored in England (1660), but the unpopularity of the Stuarts and their religious toleration spark the "Glorious Revolution of 1688," with parliament ousting the Stuarts via the army of William of Orange and establishing its own sovereignty (control of the military), a two-party system, a Bill of Rights, a (truncated) Toleration Act, and the Bank of England. England's "glorious" revolution included the inglorious subjection of Ireland and the Scottish highlands (now "cleared" of Scots), as both were forced to join a now-"United Kingdom." In France, Louis XIV (r. 1661- 1715), styled the "Sun King," subdued and seduced rival loci of authority at his palace of Versailles. Opposing views of Louis XIV; sources of his prestige; his domestic, economic, and cultural politics. Assessing absolutism and sovereignty's unfinished agenda. 

Lecture 10: The New Science

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Demonstrating that "Europe" was more than a geographical name for a region, we see the cosmology described by Aristotle and Ptolemy of Alexander still dominant throughout that region in the 16th century, and follow the subsequent discoveries of the Polish cathedral canon Nikolaj Kopernik; the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe; the German astrologer and clergyman manqué, Johannes Kepler; the charismatic Italian professor, Galileo Galilei; the French mathematician and philosopher René Descartes; the English numerologist and Biblicist Isaac Newton, and his countryman, a vivisectionist at loose in the royal deer park, William Harvey. How much was "discovery" owed to the empirical observations, as demanded by Sir Francis Bacon, how much to resolving mathematical inconsistencies, how much to religious quests?  

Lecture 11: The 18th Century and the Enlightenment

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Our "picture" of the Enlightenment as a period of progress – and what's "outside the frame." Geo-political and commercial bases for the Enlightenment: an economy of optimism, consolidation of sovereignty, a sudden end of the Ottoman threat (with changing images of "the Turk"). The growth of a Public. Enlightenment as organization and "attitude." Liberty, "libelles," & the publishing underground – including the market in pornography. France's philosophes: Voltaire's cry "Écrasez l'infame" (Extirpate the monster! –  i.e., Christianity); Rousseau's attack on inequality, progress – and the Enlightenment. "Enlightened absolutists":  Prussia's Frederick the Great: the monarch not as the state, but as "First Servant of the State." Russia's Peter the Great and Catherine the Great: Westernization and military power. Outside the frame: growing enserfment; Pugachev's Rebellion (1773).

Lecture 12: The French Revolution

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Guest lecturer Chad Denton (who was ill & unable to finish): Intro: La Marseillaise, the bloodiest national anthem in world history. Why so bloody? Louis XIV's legacy: bankrupt state; continual wars with Britain (incl. our War of independence); need for taxes, but rich don't want to pay. Louis XIV's personality. Economic crisis in 1789, and Estates General convened to resolve budget issue. People send lists (cahiers) of their grievances. Fall of the Bastille shows that the Crown has lost the monopoly of violence. The National Assembly declares war on external enemies (Prussia, Austria, Brunswick) – origin of La Marseillaise. At 40:09 minutes Anderson takes over to answer student questions: Why the Reign of Terror? Would Louis XIV have been executed if the one-vote majority for regicide had gone differently? What was the Civil Constitution of the Clergy, why did the clergy in the Northwest refuse to take the oath to it?  Why was the religion question so toxic? What was the significance of the Battle of Valmy? How did people deal with starvation? What explains the Great Fear & mass hysteria? Why did it take so long for the foreign Powers to come to Louis XVI's defense? 

Lecture 13: Napoleon: Military Dictatorship and Military Revolution

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

 Napoleon's rise from Corsican artillery officer to French general at age 24 (1793). "Bonapartism": Military dictatorship a new "type" of government (alongside existing "types" of monarchy, oligarchy, democracy, etc.). Precondition: revolution creates opportunity, not least by making other types impossible. Elements of "popular sovereignty"? The hero of the age? Lasting influence on economy, administration, law, relation between church and state, French Jews. Three military revolutions: in the Renaissance; in the 18th century; in Revolutionary-and-Napoleonic France. Napoleon's weaknesses. 

Lecture 14: Getting and Spending:  England's Industrial Revolution, 1760-1830

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: The Luddites versus the moral revolution. Jeremy Bentham, exemplar and most systematic exponent of the new moral philosophy, against which your reading this week, Charles Dickens's Hard Times ("Utilitarianism for Dummies") constitutes a frontal attack. Laissez-faire: the slogan of 19th century liberals. Why did the Industrial Revolution begin in England, which was not ahead of other countries in science or technology? England's agricultural revolution: enclosures, investment, the farm as a "firm," responsive to demand. The "market" economy – monetization, risk-taking, consumption, and an "Acre-ocracy."  The unusual English social structure. "Social emulation" (keeping up with the Joneses) a prerequisite for the success of the classic early "industries:" cotton and porcelain. Josiah Wedgewood (Darwin's grandfather) as entrepreneur. 

Lecture 15: Capitalism and Its Critics

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Jean-Charles Sismondi's observation that technology was driving down wages. Liberal economists' defense of low wages as 1) inevitable and 2) producing what most people wanted anyway: cheap goods > thus, the greatest good for the greatest number. John Bright, David Ricardo, Thomas Malthus. The "short run" versus the "long run." The moral critique of capitalism: labor is not a "commodity." The economic critique of capitalism: the business cycle and the immiseration principle. Solutions? Robert Owen, godfather of the British labor movement, New Lanark and New Harmony.  Charles Fourier, maximizing pleasure and phalansteries: Brook Farm and Oneida. Karl Marx: from poetry to Hegel (the structure of history) to "scientific socialism." Assessment: given the population explosion, would you prefer Manchester, with its slums – or Connemara? 

Lecture 16: Romanticism and The Search for Wholeness

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and the reaction against the Enlightenment. New understandings of nature and the individual; the privileging of authenticity over manners, morality, and law; of intuition over reason; of the private over the public. Attempts to escape the Self through "connection" (love affairs). Romanticism's cultural legacies: broader scope for women; new conceptions of love & marriage; the "religion of the heart" in forms of pietism: Hasidism (the Ukrainian Rabbi Ysrael ben Eliezer and his sparks of the divine); the "Awakening" (Count von Zinzendorf and John Wesley) and its offspring, evangelicalism; Ultramontanism (Alphonse de Liguori) and wannabe Catholics. Romanticism in painting: Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Nationalism as remedy for isolation, as the organism replaces the machine as metaphor for society. The wars of national liberation: Philhellenism, the Greek war of independence, and Delacroix's Massacre at Chios (1824). What makes a nation: mystical togetherness or blood and iron?

Lecture 17: Bismarck and the Re-Configuration of Europe

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

The problem of State and Nation: neither is more "natural" than the other. Thought experiment: if German + y (= land of the Germans) why not an Arab + y (land of the Arabs)? Obstacles to the "unification" of German lands. The Crimean War (1854-56) introduces fluidity into the European state system.  The rise of Otto von Bismarck in Prussia – and Prussia's three wars: against Denmark; against the other German states led by Austria; against France, with Napoleon III at the helm. Mammoth consequences. 

Lecture 18: What Did Women Want??  Women and Society in the 19th Century

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Catherine Morland's complaint (in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey, 1817). Two images of "woman." The 19th century problematizes women, discovering a "woman question." Whence came separate spheres and the cult of domesticity? The end of the family as a unit of production; growing differentiation between public and private spaces; women as objects of conspicuous consumption; the democratization of "respectability." Inequality persists (e.g., the Napoleonic Code, divorce laws), but political inequality is an issue only in England. The feminization of sanctity. Women's work: the rise of the service sector - new? or a variant of the old "servant" sector? Prostitution and the cultural regulation of the "sexual economy." The significance of economic metaphors transposed to sexuality: "Victorian" prudery as a form of informal social legislation, the equivalent of a "10 Hours Act" intervening in sexual economy to redress real inequalities by placing artificial restrictions upon the strong. 

Lecture 19: The Re-Discovery of the Irrational: Fin-de-Siècle Pessimism and the Birth of Psychoanalysis

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Cultural Developments. Art -  a shift in representations of women and sexuality as we move from England to the continent, with Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt, Munch, Kokoschka. Cult figures in Philosophy (Schopenhauer and Nietzsche) affirm the irrational. Psychiatry and influences on Freud: his post-doc with J.-M. Charcot, Paris, to study hysteria; collaboration with J. Breuer in Vienna: from hypnosis to free association and the "talking cure;" a commitment to neuro-biology with Berlin's W. Fliess and his views about the nose – and Emma Eckstein. Political Developments. Vienna, city of traditions and birthplace of modernism. The revolt against liberalism and new political parties. Ethnic nationalism(s) and the consequences for parliament in a multi-national state. Vienna and its Jews. Freud's crisis and The Interpretation of Dreams. Freud's influence? 

Lecture 20: Europeans All Around:  Globalization and Imperialism in the 19th Century

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Europe's population increase 1830-1930 was double the rate of increase of the entire rest of the world, leading to the most enduring European "imperialism" – the overseas migration  of more than 50 million people, producing "Neo-Europes" around the globe. Four examples of the other kind of European imperialism: in China (the imperialism of Free Trade and the Opium War); the Sultanate of Zanzibar (the imperialism of Humanitarianism and the anti-slavery campaign); Egypt (the imperialism of Investments, Strategic Interests and the Suez Canal); Congo (the Imperialism of Resource Extraction). Disillusion with Empire: South Africa, the Boer War, and the Chinese Labor scandals; South West Africa, the Herero Revolt and the 20th century's first genocide. The consequences of European domination of the globe – and its causes. 

Lecture 21: Shooting an Elephant: Why Europe Went to War in 1914

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: Little Sarajevo does not look like a place where world history is made – but it was. The controversy over responsibility for the First World War: The Treaty of  Versailles and the War Guilt Clause. Two approaches to causation. The first: to see the "Figure in the Carpet," the general patterns that you can detect only from standing back and looking at events from a distance: e.g., Europe's first De-Colonialization (Balkan Christian peoples and their revolts against Ottoman rule); Nationalism – democracy's child and its effect on international relations (especially for Ottoman and Habsburg Empires) leads to the intrusion of public opinion in matters once left to professional diplomats; Industrialization and its effect on the components of strategy and logistics; a (very new) "System" of permanent peace-time alliances. The second approach: "Verstehen" - looking at the same events from the "inside," through the eyes of the participants: e.g., the men at Sarajevo: Archduke Franz Ferdinand's dream of multinationalism and Gavrilo Princip's dream of a (Greater) Serbia; the view from Berlin: "imperatives" of geography and the Schlieffen Plan. How to respond to the assassination of the archduke - a window of opportunity? For whom? Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's "blank check" to Austria. The view from Budapest: "we don't want any more Slavs in the Empire." The August 1914 countdown: the logics of the alliance system, the Schlieffen Plan, instantaneous communications, and the fateful decision for general instead of limited mobilization.  

Lecture 22: The Great War - S1:E22

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: The paradoxes of sovereignty. The Schlieffen Plan – and Belgium as a symbol. Why the military stalemate? The search for new allies. War is democratized and industrialized. “War by Revolution”: Germany sends Lenin to Russia, Roger Casement to Ireland; Britain sends T.E. Lawrence to Arabia. In France, paranoia turns inward, and even talking about the possibility of defeat or a compromise becomes a capital crime; in Russia, ethnic minorities are treated as enemies – producing forced “removals” and six million internal refugees; in the Ottoman Empire, deportations, despoliation, and genocide of Armenians and Assyrian Christians. Propaganda 1914-1945 = advertisements for war.  What made it end? Casualties and Consequences. 

Lecture 23: The Russian Revolution (Clips played during class have been removed)

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Guest Lecture by Jacob Mikanowski, Graduate Student Instructor. Intro: “Aelita Queen of Mars” (1924 Soviet silent film, depicting hero traveling through space to bring Marxism-Leninism to Mars. Clip is on the internet). Russia before 1917:  largest continental state in the world; 80% peasants, poor & backward, relative to European counterparts. Serfdom, ended in 1861, is a living memory; harsh terms of emancipation have left peasants deeply indebted, land hunger growing. Nicholas II, an autocrat in love with tradition. Russian elite a service nobility, thus differing from Europe’s nobility, who usually acted as a counter-weight to the crown. Why Marxism so popular in Russia? 30 years of revolution – each after a military defeat. WWI: the Romanovs lose legitimacy – and throne. “Dual Power”: the Provisional government (Duma members, who run foreign policy) vs. workers and soldiers’ Soviets (committees), who run everything else. Kerensky & Lenin have the same social background. Russia’s tragedy: no parliamentary tradition. Civil War deaths exceed WWI’s. Revolutionary culture = egalitarianism, but the culture of the workplace = competition (Stakhanovites) – plus the use of 100,000 political prisoners. Stalin’s industrialization, collectivization, starvation, purges. Betrayal of Bolshevism or its fulfillment? 

Lecture 24: The War Moves Home: Fascism and the Fall of the Democracies

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: a guy from Predappio, a guy from Linz: two young losers in a new century. What a difference a war makes! What parliamentary government does well - and what it does not. The revolutionary context in which postwar democracies were established. Three forces undermining democracies: the new international order and peace settlements that everywhere are experienced as unjust; political polarization; assaults on sovereignty, and on the state’s monopoly of legitimate violence – from the Left (the Cominterm; see anti-communist posters) and from the Right via party armies and paramilitary organizations. Fashion statements: Black shirts = fascisti; Green shirts = Romanian Iron Guard; Brown shirts = German Storm Troopers. Mussolini: the man and the moment. 

Lecture 25: Interwar: A Broken World

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro:  The Weimar Republic. Crises in 1923: Ruhr Occupation, Communist Uprising, hyper-inflation, and Hitler’s November beerhall putsch. Why was Germany able to withstand the threat from extremism in the early 1920s, when Italy succumbed? The 1929 turning point: referendum against the Young Plan, depression, and massive unemployment. Hitler’s take-over not inevitable; what enabled it? The Italian Fascist and German Nazi regimes compared. Fascism as seen in Cal’s 1936 Yearbook. Why did Europe go to war again? Pre-condition: the breakup of the multinational Romanov and Habsburg empires at the end of World War I and ensuing territorial settlements produce a multitude of “successor states” (e.g., Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), each aspiring to become a (homogenous) nation-state. Yet the concept of the nation-state incompatible with Europe’s entanglement of nationalities, as every boundary creates new minorities, necessitating “minority treaties” and producing grievances and potential allies for any state desiring to overturn the system. 

Lecture 26: Circles of Hell:  1938-1945

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: The era of “Appeasement”:  Hitler’s “Anschluss” of Austria, Mar. 1938; the Munich accord vs. Czechoslovakia, Sept. 1938; German entry into Prague, Mar. 1939; Nazi-Soviet-Pact Aug. 1939; Partition of Poland, Sept. 1939. “Their Finest Hour:” Battle of Britain, 1939-40 and the Blitz. Turning Points: June 1941 Operation Barbarossa - Germany invades Soviet Union; Dec. 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The Air War in the Western Theater. Stalingrad on the Eastern Front. The “Final Solution” to the Jewish “Question:” explanations. The logic of hypernationalism generates complicity: Waffen-SS gets volunteers from every European nationality except Poles. An epidemic of ethnic cleansing: Ukrainians slaughter Poles; Red Army slaughters Ukrainians; Croatian Ustasha and Bosnian Muslims liquidate Serbs and Jews (Jasenovac = Auschwitz for Serbs). 1945: retribution and refugees. 

Lecture 27: The Colonization of Europe

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro: August 1944: Paris and Warsaw - divergent fates give different meanings to the “outcome” of  WWII. The division of Europe between the peripherial powers (later dubbed Super Powers), Russia & the U.S., was unintended, but built into the Anglo-American strategy in WWII. The Cold War meant the loss of the sovereignty for Europe’s states, turning them (especially the Eastern, but to some extent also in the Western ones) into “colonies” of the 2 powers on their periphery. Milestones in the Cold War:  the Soviet blockade of Berlin – and the U.S. airlift of July 1948 - May 1949; Berlin workers’ uprising 1953; Polish and Hungarian uprisings 1956 - while NATO looks on; Berlin Wall goes up in 1961, making the “Iron Curtain” more than a metaphor. Berlin – and Germany – now a “tripwire” should the Soviets try to move further West. The nuclear arms race and the shadow of Armagedden. Paradoxes  of nuclear power: you can’t use it. Bernard Brody and the rationale of “deterrance.” 

Lecture 28: Speaking Truth to Power: The 4th Decolonization & the Fall of the Soviet Empire

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro:   

Post-1945: Decolonialization, often accompanied with violence. The most dramatic of these struggles, over Algeria (conquered in 1830, administratively part of France since 1839), so divides France as to threaten its democracy. In 1958, as paratroopers are preparing a coup, a desparate president calls in Gen. Charles de Gaulle, resistance hero of WWII, to draw up a new constitution and manage (somehow) the crisis. Narrowly surviving assassination attempts, De Gaulle maneuvers between the National Liberation Front (FLN), representing c. 4 million “Arabs;” a French majority exhausted from the conflict; and the c. 2 million colons (“white” descendants of French settlers) supported by the French Right. A 1962 referendum finally legitimizes withdrawal.

The last empire to undergo De-Colonization is that Soviets’. How was it possible? We return to the 3 themes with which we began our semester: a strengthening distinction between public & private realms and the growing autonomy of each; the significance of religion; and power concentrated in the State – but now encountering increasing legal and international limits. The significance of Détente. 1968: Prague Spring (Alexander Dubček’s “Socialism with a human face”), student demonstrations West & East. Interest in marxism revives in West and “Eurocommunism” seems fashionable, while in East, faith in communism disappears, even among its leaders. But how did dissenters find mass support? Three important dates: 1978 Karel Wojtyła = Pope John Paul II; 1980 Lech Wałęsa and “Solidarity;” 1985 Mikael Gorbachev becomes General Secretary of the Community Party of the Soviet Union.  

Lecture 29: The Eclipse of Violence? Europe as a Civilian Society

History 5 - Spring 2008: The Making of Modern Europe, 1453 to the Present

Intro:  Marx said ruling classes never give up power peacefully, a maxim borne out in China in June 1989 in Tiananmen Square. But that same year brings regime change to East Germany, the “Velvet” Revolution in Czechoslovakia and throughout Eastern Europe. In 1990-1991 Germany re-unifies and the Soviet Union dissolves. How can we explain such swift, massive, but non-violent, political change? Questions for the future: Europe is a magnate for immigration: can Europeans move from toleration to pluralism? Will support for the welfare state survive? Can independence survive dependence on Russia’s gas (Gazprom)? Is the expansion of NATO and the EU a threat to those left out (Russia; Turkey)? Will Turkey join the EU? [Showing 3 film clips of commercials for Cola Turka: Chevy Chase in “At the Café”; Chevy Chase in “Dinner with the In-Laws;” “Peace at Home, peace in the world”]. One obstacle: Turkish memory culture. The Turkish opposition: the secular newspaper Radikal (Showing film clip of its commercial  “Original Democracy”) The biggest threat to the future of Europe: demographic implosion.