Robert Bucholz
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
The two undisputed superpowers threaten each other with nuclear arsenals and fight proxy wars for global dominance. Americans use their leadership and wealth to establish democracies in Germany and Italy and to restore Western European economies through the Marshall Plan. This lecture doesn't address the end of the Cold War.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
The disillusionment in Europe with democracy and, later, capitalism following the Great War and the Great Depression make alternatives seem reasonable. Mussolini and Hitler seize power and create states that boast full employment - at a price.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
A series of interlocking treaties devised by Otto von Bismarck to ease conditions in the Balkans prevents nationalistic and economic pressures from exploding into full-scale European war, but new tensions eventually grow to overwhelm it.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
At the dawn of the 21st century, the European legacy of democracy, capitalism, and relative freedom for the individual is challenged by internal and external movements, including the rise of religious fundamentalism, international terrorism, tensions over immigration, and integration into a global economy. Will European ideals survive?
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
Lenin's early experiments with forced collectivization at home and revolution abroad are disastrous for the Soviet Union's domestic and foreign policy and even worse for its people. When Lenin dies, a vicious power struggle results in the rise of Josef Stalin.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
In both the Far East and Europe, aggression brings the world closer to war. Following its earlier invasion of Manchuria with an invasion of the rest of northern China in 1937, Japan has joined the Axis powers, and Hitler marches a rearmed Germany into the Rhineland, Austria, and then Czechoslovakia.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
Thanks to commercial and financial revolutions, the middling orders of merchants and professionals are growing in numbers, wealth, and political savvy - and will be key to the coming revolution in European social and economic relations.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
The "Great Chain of Being" assumed an ordered, hierarchical universe in which humans - like angels, animals, plants, and even stones - were placed in a particular rank by God. As Europe emerges from the Middle Ages, that concept is challenged and strained by forces in politics, society, religion, and culture.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
European thinkers such as Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu, and Rousseau expand the ideas of Locke and others in a movement that comes to be known as the Enlightenment. When even enlightened monarchs fail to change their societies, some Europeans begin to consider an alternative: revolution.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
Despite the rise of nationalism on the continent, the balance of European power remains stable. It is not until the unification of Germany at the end of the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 that this fragile balance is affected for generations to come.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
As the king - urged on by monarchs elsewhere - refuses that new role, the Revolution turns violent, unleashing a Reign of Terror that eventually brings about war with virtually every other monarchy in Europe, a new nationalism, and the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
Following the disasters of the Wars of Religion, the monarchies of Europe experience a crisis of authority. The French response - ultimately perfected by Louis XIV - of an absolutism that makes the king a virtual god on Earth becomes an object of envy and imitation for nearly every monarchy on the continent.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
More than just a history of Western civilization, Foundations of Western Civilization II is a course about the meaning of civilization itself. Taught by Professor Robert Bucholz, it promises profound rewards for students of history at every level, a grand narrative of the past five centuries - of social progress, political evolution, industrialization, and other economic factors.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
The consequences of the first Industrial Revolution do more to create today's world than any other development studied in this course. But its innovations have a dark side that draws multiple responses from European intellectuals - which we examine in the next three lectures.
Publisher
The Great Courses
Pub. Date
2006.
Language
English
Description
The second Industrial Revolution creates, for most people, a cornucopia of opportunities and new products. Internationally, two new industrial giants arise to challenge Great Britain, and tensions with one help to frame World War I.