POL3252W: Revolution, Democracy, and Empire: Modern Political Thought

From the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, Europe and its colonies were wracked by large scale, sweeping changes: from the violent emergence of the sovereign state, to intense religious conflict, to geographic expansions at once transformative and brutal in search of new economic markets. These changes posed extraordinary challenges to usual ways of conceiving of political order and governance. Our course this semester will read these changes through three key concepts – revolution, democracy, and empire. Class discussion will seek to understand different meanings of these concepts, their political stakes, and ways of knowing how to move between political ideals and historical examples. Students will read a range of materials – from primary historical sources, to philosophic texts, political pamphlets and treatises, and travel journals – so as to study the effects on both the European context and beyond. prereq: Suggested prerequisite 1201

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