Course Details in 2024/25 Session

Module Title	LI Option: Before Globalization?: Afro-Eurasian World History 500-1800
School	History and Cultures
Department	History
Module Code	09 38258
Module Lead	Simon Yarrow
Level	Intermediate Level
Credits	20
Semester	Semester 2
Pre-requisites
Co-requisites
Restrictions	None
Contact Hours	Lecture-10 hours Seminar-20 hours Guided independent study-170 hours Total: 200 hours
Exclusions
Description	This module puts European history in its place. An abiding theme of European world histories written between the eighteenth and the late twentieth century has been the West's unique rise to global preeminence through a range of diverse but interlinked processes that might collectively be called modernization. The world's assumption of a peculiarly 'European' modernity, and the dominant concepts and frameworks within which historians have traced this development, has left two significant areas of human history – medieval Europe and the non-West - out in the cold, the former seen as backward and contributing little to the story, the latter seen in terms of passive subjection to Western political and economic dynamism or as the exoticized 'Other'.The 'globalization' of the world over the last few decades, has exposed the brittleness of 'European modernity' as an overarching theme in world history. Complex global trends are happening more quickly than historians can invent new frameworks and models to comprehend them. This module contributes to these new interpretive conditions by inviting students to consider the dynamics of human interaction across the Afro-Eurasian world system from 500 to 1800, before 'European modernity'. An important aim of this module is critically to confront Eurocentric grand narratives that have inhibited the understanding of our own European past and prevented our better appreciation of historical agency in other parts of the world. It offers a comparative synchronic study of religious and political cultures and formations, economic and technological developments, and cross-cultural contacts and trends from West-Africa and Ireland on the East Atlantic seaboard, to Japan in the Far East.A central problem we will have to ponder is whether we can talk of a global history prior to the rise of the West, and how such a history might be characterized.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of the module students should be able to: Analyse and explain key events and historical processes relevant to the subject under scrutiny. Analyse and explain reasons for and implications of these events and processes. Identify the main scholarly views on the subject under investigation. Work with an appropriate degree of learner independence to explain and analyse the material under scrutiny. Communicate explanation and analysis of the subject clearly and effectively in writing.
Assessment
Assessment Methods & Exceptions	Assessment: S1 = 1 x 3,000 word essay (100%)
Other
Reading List