AHIS 16A00 - A Political History of the 19th-Century Europe

The course presents the history of 19th century a from the Napoleonic Era to the turn of the 20th century. The twelve sessions will analyze the century as an era of profound political, social and economic change that saw the rise of the liberal administrative state and of modern mass politics in Europe and beyond but also that of industrialized warfare and European imperialism. A special emphasis will be given to the Euro-Latin American entanglements as a part of the broader global context of European history. Indeed, the history of Europe and Latin America of the 19th century were closely linked as a result of Spanish and Portuguese colonization in the previous centuries. The history of the “decolonization” of the Americas, the advent of the new independent national states and the difficult stabilization of the political regimes will therefore be an important part of our story.

In this perspective, we will study the successive revolutions and evolutions of political regimes since the Napoleonic times, but also the various practices of political mobilization that emerged throughout the century. Another topic will be the economic and social changes that deeply affected Europe and the world during the century creating the modern industrialized society.

The course will discuss the specific “national” paths and evolutions and contextualize them in the broader picture of Europe’s history, focusing also on broader transregional and/or European dynamics of change. The course draws on the new transnational historiography of Europe that engages both with its internal circulations and its external entanglements. It will present mayor debates that have occurred among historians about the interpretation of 19th century history. By doing this, the course intends to give the participants a first overview about the changing perspectives on a century that laid ground for the deep political frictions and confrontations which characterized the 20th and 21st centuries in Europe and beyond.

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DESCRIPTIF SEANCES DU COURS :

• Introduction: An Entangled History between Europe and Latin America

Intro: Alexander von Humboldt between Europe and Latin America

• Subjects and problems of an Euro-Latin American history of the 19th century
• The difficult periodization of the « 19th century »
• Histories of Europe and Latin America: a mental cartography
• Some remarks about methodology and historical classification
• Plan of the course
• The heritage of the 18th Century: Enlightenment and the absolutist reform movement in a context of the

« Atlantic Revolutions »

I. The Transformation of Empires

• The Napoleonic Transformation of Europe
• The impact of the French Revolution in Europe
• The model of the modern state
• « Wars of liberation » ? The role of the national moment in the struggle against the Napoleonic regime
• The European war – a global conflict
• « Restauration » ? Le system of the Congress of Vienna
• A Century of the « Liberal Bourgeoisie »?
• The constitutional monarchy: the constitution of Cádiz, model for the 19th century
• « Liberalism »: a debate between Europe and the Americas
• Simon Bolivar and the independence movements in Latin America
• The revolutions of the 1820s et 1830s
• Le dawn of the « new world order » (Bayly): The British imperialism of free-trade
• Global Imperial Dynamics in the First Half of the 19th Century
• The European Empires: spaces of global circulation
• The British expansion across the Indian Ocean
• Britain’s imperial competitors: The Russian expansion in Asia et the French conquest of Algeria
• The interventionist humanitarism of the anti-slavery movement
• The slave trade and the Portuguese Empire

II. The Century of Progress: Myths et Realities

• 1848: « Springtime of the people »?
• 1848 : revolutions in a row
• The ambiguities of the national question
• The « nation from below », an European movement
• The social question, the question of the century?
• Napoléon III.: Bonapartism reborn
• The « Industrial Revolution », a Myth?
• Britain, cradle of the European industrialization?
• Towards a regional and sectorized vision of the European industrialization
• The Universal Exhibitions: the staging of a new industrial world
• Industrial dynamics in agriculture between Europe and Latin America
• The industrialization of warfare

III. At the Dawn of the « Century of Extremes » (E. Hobsbawm)

• The « Age of the Nation-State »?
• The dynamics of the 1860s: Italy, Germany, the Balkans
• The staging of an « official nationalism »
• The multiethnic empires and the nation
• A nation of immigrants? Argentina at the end of the 19th Century
• The militarization of European societies
• A new humanism? The Red Cross movement
• Europe’s Imperial Societies at the Turn of the 20th Century
• The geographical movement and the rush towards colonies of the 1870s et 1880s
• The Berlin congress of 1884/85 and its consequences in Africa
• The end of the Spanish Empire? The Spanish-American War of the end of the 19th century
• Media and the revolution of consumption of the 19th Century
• « Masspolitics»? The transformation of public space
• Propaganda, populism and political parties
• The curvy path towards democracy

LECTURES DEMANDEES (5 maximum) :

• Christopher Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World 1780-1914. Global Connections and Comparisons (Oxford: Blackwells, 2004).
• Nicolas Delalande, Blaise Truong-Loï, Histoire politique du XIXe siècle (Paris : Presses de Sciences Po, 2021).
• Robert Gildea, Barricades and Borders. Europe 1800-1914 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
• Eric Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution, 1789-1848 ; The Age of Capital, 1848-1875 ; The Age of Empire, 1875- 1914 (London: Weidenfeld, 1962-1987).
• Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World. A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2014).
• Pierre Singaravélou, Sylvain Venayre (eds.), Histoire du monde au XIXe siècle (Paris, Fayard, 2017). Rééd. Pluriel, 2019.

Aucun

CM (24h) - CDM (24h)

Continuous assessment (conférences de méthode) – 50% of the final grade/ Final Exam – 50% of the final grade

• Attendance and participation (Presence is mandatory).

The seminar not only requires attendance but calls for active participation. This entails doing the suggested reading and studying well before class, thinking critically about the documents, and coming to class prepared for discussion. You should arrive with a series of questions and observations to share with your classmates and then participate actively in the debates.

To facilitate the latter, and unless the teaching conditions change because of a worsening of the sanitary situation, the use of laptop computers and other electronic devices will not be permitted in class.

Class participation can indeed make the difference in your grade.

• Oral presentations

They will be assigned at the start of the semester to coincide with topics under consideration. The 10- to 15-minutes presentation should provide the class with an in-depth examination of a given subject. It will be based on a prompt or will consist in a text / corpus commentary drawing from documents in the reader. The use of multimedia support is expected, PowerPoint for example.

• Midterm and final written exams

Exams will be based on the lectures, seminar contents and discussions, and on the studying of the other documents provided for reading. Complementary reading by the students will of course be necessary. Unless the teaching conditions change because of a worsening of the sanitary situation, both exams will be timed and tabled, consisting of a written analysis and interpretation of one or several historical documents and or visual sources.

Grades

The grades will be given on a scale of 0 to 20, with a large radius. Less than 10/20 is a failing grade.