This tutorial deals with the early and classic stages of industrial society, out of which our world arose. The focus is on Europe, especially Britain, France, Germany, and Russia, from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century. The background is the challenge that industrialization, "modernization" and new ideas posed to traditional European society and politics, including the pressures that were exerted on people’s daily lives. We consider how people understood the processes of change and how they tried to preserve or remodel their world. In particular, we look at some characteristic political outcomes of this whole process over the past two centuries: revolutions, the slow growth of liberal and democratic orders, and the authoritarian, fascist and communist challenges to representative popular government. In the final week we look at the emergence of today’s Europe after the Second World War.

The tutorial is also concerned with how we understand the past. You are asked to reflect on how we reconstruct knowledge of previous times; on issues such as causation and inevitability; on different kinds of historical stories (political, economic, social, and others); and on large shaping ideas about history like "national character" and "totalitarianism".

William Doyle, The Oxford History of the French Revolution (1989), chs. 1-13
J. M. Roberts, The French Revolution, 2nd ed. (1997), whole book
§Lynn Hunt, Politics, Culture, and Class in the French Revolution (1984), Introduction,
     ch. 1, and Conclusion

Materials on the course website:
     Major Dates in Modern European History
     The Course of the French Revolution
     Preparing Papers

The French Revolution did not reach stability under the moderate system of government it tried in its early years, a system much like the successful system in England at that time. Can you explain this?  What accounts for the Revolution's increasing radicalization up to 1794?

David Landes, The Unbound Prometheus (1969), chs. 1-4
Eric Hobsbawm, Industry and Empire (1968), chs. 1-5
§Phyllis Deane, The First Industrial Revolution, 2nd ed. (1979), chs. 14 and 15
§E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963), Preface and ch. VI

Materials on the course website:
     Monarchs and Political Systems
     Population of the Major European Countries
     Gross National Product of the Major European Countries

After centuries of very gradual economic and social change, Europe between roughly 1780 and roughly 1850 experienced an accelerating wave of changes that revolutionized the continent. The process started in England, then spread to France and other countries. In explaining the coming of the Industrial Revolution, and why it started in England, would you place more weight on economic factors or on institutional and cultural factors?

Asa Briggs, The Age of Improvement 1783-1867 (1952), chs. 4-10
Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times, 5th ed. (1985), part II plus ch. 18

In the first three-quarters of the nineteenth century, Britain and France experienced the most rapid social change and "modernization" in Europe, but these changes were accompanied by strikingly different styles of politics: gradualism and continuity in Britain, recurrent revolution and abrupt change in France. How far would you explain this contrast by differences in historical experience and traditions between the two countries? How far would you draw on other kinds of explanations, such as differences in their social structures or their economies?

William Carr, A History of Germany, 1814-1990, 4th ed. (1991), chs. 1-8
David Blackbourn and Geoff Eley, The Peculiarities of German History (1984), whole book

Materials on the course website:
     Landmarks in German History to 1871
     The Constitutions of Germany and Prussia

On the surface, at least, Germany’s path into the modern age was sharply different from the path of France or England. In the German Empire, founded in 1871, a strong authoritarian monarchy and aristocracy (rather than a liberal parliamentary order) presided over the very rapid growth of an industrial society. The standard evaluation is that this was a distorted development, fateful for the future, but Blackbourn and Eley are not so sure. What is your evaluation?

L. C. B. Seaman, From Vienna to Versailles (1956), chs. XI-XV
James Joll, The Origins of the First World War, 2nd ed. (1992), whole book
§Hajo Holborn, The Political Collapse of Europe (1951), chs. II and III

The First World War was a long and terribly destructive war; most Europeans had not wanted war, certainly not this sort of war, and they found it very hard to explain in retrospect. What features of Europe’s international system before 1914 seem to you to be most important in explaining the origins of this war? Would you give a large or a small role to particular decisions or miscalculations in bringing on the war?

Theodore H. von Laue, Why Lenin? Why Stalin? Why Gorbachev? (1993), read through the 1930's
Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution, 3rd ed. (2001), whole book
§Stephen F. Cohen, "Bolshevism and Stalinism," Stalinism:  Essays in Historical Interpretation,
     ed. by Robert C. Tucker (1977)

In dealing with Russian history from around 1905 to around 1935, historians often write as though the Russian Empire was doomed to fall to the attack of "revolutionary modernizers", whether Bolsheviks or others; and as though the Bolshevik regime was fated by its very nature to evolve into an individual tyranny like Stalin's. Show that you understand these evaluations of the probabilities of Russian history, and indicate how far you find them convincing.

Landes, Unbound Prometheus, ch. 6
Peter Clarke, Hope and Glory: Britain 1900-1990 (1996), chs. 3-6
Wright, France in Modern Times, chs. 27-31
Carr, History of Germany, chs. 9-12
§Holborn, Political Collapse, chs. IV and V

Materials on the course website:
     Chronology of Major International Events, 1919-1939
     The Weimar Republic and the Third Reich

The Western Allies in the First World War fought to "make the world safe for democracy," but the world that emerged from the war was nothing of the kind. In France the democracy of the Third Republic was threatened in the 1930’s; Germany’s new democracy, the Weimar Republic, failed catastrophically; and even British democracy seemed enfeebled. Compare and contrast these three democracies and explain their different fates, being sure you give due weight to the times in which all this happened.

Jackson Spielvogel, Hitler and Nazi Germany, 4th ed. (2000), Jan. 1933 to end
Sebastian Haffner, The Meaning of Hitler (1978), whole book
§Ian Kershaw, The Nazi Dictatorship, 3rd ed. (1993), chs. 4-6

Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of both the "structuralist interpretation" and the "intentionalist interpretation" of the Third Reich (as set forth in Kershaw), and give your reasons for preferring one to the other. Use evidence from all your reading, and be sure to treat both sides of the issue.

Walter Laqueur, Europe in Our Time: A History, 1945-1992 (1992), parts One to Four
§Charles S. Maier, "The Two Postwar Eras and the Conditions for Stability in Twentieth-
     Century Western Europe," American Historical Review, April 1981

Design your own essay topic on Europe in the period 1945 to 1970. Choose a topic that highlights and explains important elements of continuity and/or difference between postwar Europe and earlier times we have studied, using some of the major themes that recur in our tutorial.