Contact, Conflict, New Worlds: 1450-1750

This subject is not offered in 2012.

8.5 hours per week: total time commitment 102 hours

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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 a history of the encounters, conflicts, and colonisation that produced the 'modern world' of the late eighteenth century. With a focus that is global rather than local, and lectures that emphasize transnational similarities as well as regional singularities, the subject begins in the great age of exploration. It concludes when the fifth continent of Australia was colonised by Europeans, and, together with the Pacific, Asia, Africa and the Americas, became part of a globalised world. It traces urban cultures and courts in places such as Europe, Ming-Qing China, and the Ottoman Empire; the material cultures of consumption that they produced; and the contribution of technology and guns to their success. It examines travel and exploration as a key to the development of maritime trade through such figures as Vasco da Gama and Columbus; and explores the significance of religious ideology, law and technology in the conflict between European states and other imperial powers, and in the often violent encounters between Europeans and great Amerindian empires such as the Aztecs and Incas. It explores religious conflicts that tore Europe apart, and the interconnected waves of witch-hunts that fractured communities and spread out in waves to colonies. It also examines the role of the great Atlantic slave trade and early European colonialism in the development of an increasingly world-wide system of knowledge, consumption, communication and exchange in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

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 fifteenth through to the eighteenth centuries;
• demonstrate an ability to analyse primary and secondary material in writing about the past.

A document analysis, 1000 words 30% (due early semester), a research essay 2,500 words 55% (due mid semester) and a tutorial journal 500 words 15% (due end of semester).

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.

A reader will be available

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.