Age of Empires, 1720 - 1914

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2012:

A total of 8.5 hours per week.

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For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Students Experiencing Academic Disadvantage Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Description, Subject Objectives, Generic Skills and Assessment Requirements of this entry.The University is dedicated to provide support to those with special requirements. Further details on the disability support scheme can be found at the Disability Liaison Unit website: http://www.services.unimelb.edu.au/disability/

This subject is about empires and the change from a world dominated by imperial forms to one of independent sovereign nation states. It covers the crucial period between the 18th and early 20th centuries in which the modern world was made. It is a global subject, about connections and interactions between all parts of the world in the aftermath of the early modern period of discovery. We will study transnational forms of interaction in the Eurasian, Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific worlds, paying particular attention to Europe (including Russia), the Ottoman Empire and South and East Asia in order to see how these powerful regions imposed themselves on the rest of the world and were in turn transformed by their encounters with a globalising world culture. We will also study the intensely contested encounters between colonisers and the colonised. The subject begins with the global crisis of the ancient regime empires in the eighteenth century, then moves through the age of Atlantic revolutions in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and finishes with the period of nation building in the nineteenth century. It concludes with a new global crisis beginning in 1914 with World War One, in which empires were dealt an almost terminal blow.

On completion of this subject students should be able to:

• reflect critically on the complexities of periodization in History;
• demonstrate familiarity with the major social, political and cultural developments of the period from the eighteenth through to the twentieth centuries;
• demonstrate an ability to analyse primary and secondary material in writing about the past.

Tutorial journal 500 words (10%) due at the end of week 5; document analysis 1,000 Words (30%) due at the end of week 8; research essay 2,500 Words (60%) due at the end of week 12.

Hurdle requirement: students must attend a minimum of 75% of tutorials in order to pass this subject. Assessment submitted late without an approved extension will be penalised at 10% per day; after five working days, no late assessment will be marked. In-class tasks missed without approval will not be marked. All pieces of written work must be submitted to pass this subject.

Miles Ogborn, Global Lives: Britain and the World 1550–1800 (Cambridge Series in Historical Geography 41). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008

Subject readings will be available online

This subject potentially can be taken as a breadth subject component for the following courses:

• Bachelor of Biomedicine
• Bachelor of Commerce
• Bachelor of Environments
• Bachelor of Science
• Bachelor of Engineering

You should visit learn more about breadth subjects and read the breadth requirements for your degree, and should discuss your choice with your student adviser, before deciding on your subjects.

On completion of this subject students should be able to:

• demonstrate research skills through competent use of the library and other information sources;
• show critical thinking and analysis through recommended reading, essay writing and tutorial discussion, and by determining the strength of an argument;
• demonstrate understanding of social, ethical and cultural context through the contextualisation of judgements, developing a critical self-awareness, being open to new ideas and possibilities, and constructing an argument.