23440 - International History

Learning outcomes

At the end of the course, students will:

• understand the methods of analysis and interpretation of major processes in the evolution of international politics;
• be able to apply these methods critically to selected major themes and issues in the history of international relations over the past 140 years;
• acquire basic knowledge of the use of primary sources in reconstructing international history, as well as familiarity with such sources;
• develop a foundational understanding of the principal historiographical debates surrounding the core topics of the course;
• be able to present a historical case study, with particular reference to the international context.

Course contents

The objective of the course is to provide students with a general and as comprehensive as possible overview of the main developments in international politics and relations in the contemporary era. Particular attention will be devoted to major systemic transformations in political and economic development across different geographical areas and at the global level.

Following an introduction to the history of the discipline, including its various approaches, methodologies, and historiographical trends, the course will briefly examine the relationship between capitalist economic development and the formation of nation-states in Europe, as well as their colonial expansion. It will then move on to the imperial and hegemonic trends of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including the First and Second World Wars.

Mid-term assessment (attending students): Take-home essay based on an open-ended question.

Section B: 36 hours

The second part of the course will focus on several major themes in recent international historiography: the connections between the bipolar rivalry of the Cold War and the simultaneous processes of decolonization and the construction of a post-colonial world; the timing and modalities of modern development in postcolonial countries and their relations with the development of major industrial centers in both Cold War blocs; the crisis and transformations of international political and economic systems between the 1970s and the early 1990s; the development of globalization during the United States’ “unipolar moment” between the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries; and reflections on the emergence of a “multipolar” international system in the twenty-first century.

The structure and content outlined here are indicative and may be subject to change depending on the needs of the instructor and the class. Each week will consist of six hours of lectures. Below is an outline of the main topics to be covered.

SECTION A (24 hours)

• Week I: Introduction to international history: origins, approaches, and historiographical trends; relations between state and imperial political units and capitalist economic development.
• Week II: The global apogee of the British Empire; colonial expansion and resistance; diplomacy and conflict in Europe.
• Week III: Rivalries and power politics from Europe to the colonial world; the First World War.
• Week IV: Versailles, the League of Nations, and the search for a new world order; Nazi-Fascist and Japanese revisionism; the Second World War.

Mid-term assessment (attending students): take-home literature review essay.

SECTION B (36 hours)

• Week I: Historiographies and connections shaping the postwar international order: Bretton Woods (1944), US–Europe relations, the Cold War, decolonization.
• Week II: The Cold War, nuclear proliferation, phases of the Cold War (1946–1972).
• Week III: Decolonization, neutrality, and non-alignment (1945–1960s).
• Week IV: The “shock” of the 1970s: European integration; détente in Europe; USSR–China–USA relations; energy crises; economic development and the NIEO.
• Week V: The Second Cold War; the debt crisis and the crisis of postcolonial solidarity; crisis and collapse of the socialist bloc.
• Week VI: The 1990 Gulf War and the U.S. “moment”; neoliberal globalization and China; the post-Soviet space; reflections on cooperation, rivalry, and “multipolarity.”

Readings/Bibliography

Required readings: 1 + 2 + 3 for attending students

Required readings: 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 for non-attending students

1. G. Formigoni, Storia della politica internazionale nell' eta'contemporanea, Il Mulino, 2006 e successive edizioni, capitoli da 1 a 5

2. A. Varsori, Storia internazionale. Dal 1919 ad oggi, il Mulino, 2020, dal capitolo IV in poi.

3. Studenti Frequentanti: UNA delle monografie a scelta riportate qui di seguito, organizzate per nuclei tematici.

Studenti NON-Frequentanti: DUE delle monografie a scelta riportate qui di seguito, organizzate per nuclei tematici

Thematic Groups:

A. The "Long durée" and the "History of the Present"

Ennio Di Nolfo, Dalla fine della guerra fredda a oggi, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2016

Giovanni Arrighi, Beverly Silver, eds. Caos e governo del mondo. Come cambiano le egemonie e gli equilibri planetari, Milano, 2006

Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations, A People's History of the Third World, New York, 2007

B. Focus on Areas:

Marc Gilbert, Storia politica dell'integrazione europea, Roma-Bari, Laterza, edizioni più recenti.

Giuliano Garavini, Dopo gli imperi. L'integrazione europea nello scontro Nord-Sud, Mondadori Education, 2009

James Gelvin, Storia del Medio oriente moderno, Torino, Einaudi, 2021

Guido Samarani, La Cina contemporanea. Dalla fine dell'impero ad oggi, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2017

Mario Del Pero, Libertà e Impero. Gli Stati Uniti nel mondo, 1776-2016, Bari-Roma, Laterza, 2017

Graziosi, Andrea. L’Unione Sovietica, 1914-1991. Bologna, Il Mulino, 2011

Antonio Fiori, Stefano Bianchini, Russia e Cina nel mondo globale, Roma, Carocci, 2018

C.The Topic of Development

Francesco Petrini, Imperi del profitto. Multinazionali petrolifere e governi nel XX secolo, Milano, Franco Angeli, 2015

Sara Lorenzini, Una strana guerra fredda Lo sviluppo e le relazioni Nord-Sud, Bologna, ilMulino, 2017; oppure altra versione in inglese Global development : a Cold War historyGlobal development : a Cold War history, Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2020

Nicolas Barreyre, Nicolas Delalande, eds. A World of Public Debts. A Political History, Palgrave, 2020, open access, at: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-48794-2

Teaching methods

The course will consist of 30 lectures of two hours each, for a total of 60 hours.

During the course, lectures on specific topics will be delivered by faculty members and external experts. These lectures may be conducted either in English or in Italian.

Due to safety protocols, students are required to be punctual in attending both in-person and online classes, and to comply with the utmost care and diligence with the distancing and safety measures established by the University of Bologna.

These safety measures are intended to reconcile, insofar as possible, the constitutional right to high-quality and universal education with the constitutional right to health.

Assessment methods

Students with Specific Learning Disabilities (SLD) or Temporary/Permanent Disabilities

Students are strongly advised to contact the relevant University office in a timely manner (https://site.unibo.it/studenti-con-disabilita-e-dsa/it). The office will be responsible for proposing any necessary accommodations to the students concerned. Such accommodations must, in any case, be submitted for approval to the course instructor at least 15 days in advance, who will assess their appropriateness in relation to the learning objectives of the course.

Attending Students

Students who attend classes are required to complete two written assessments (one for each section).

The mid-term assessment covers the topics of Section A, textbook no. 1, and the readings available on the Virtuale platform.

The mid-term consists of a response, in the form of a short essay (maximum 3 pages), to one open-ended question.

The final assessment concerns the topics of Section B, textbook no. 2, and one selected monograph, and consists of two parts:

1. A response, in the form of a short essay (maximum 3 pages), to one open-ended question based on textbook no. 2.
2. A book review (maximum 4 pages, font size 12, 1.5 line spacing) of a selected monograph, to be compared with the textbook (Varsori). Guidance and detailed instructions on how to write the review will be provided in the class following the mid-term assessment.

Both assessments are conducted in take-home format via the University of Bologna’s EOL platform.

• Mid-term assessment: on the exam date, students access the examination on EOL and must upload a PDF containing their response within 48 hours.
• Final assessment: on the exam date, students access EOL and upload the PDF file of their book review.

Students whose assessments are insufficient, or who refuse the grade, must take the exam as non-attending students.

Non-Attending Students

Non-attending students are required to complete one written assessment in take-home format.

The assessment consists of four parts:

1. A response, in the form of a short essay (maximum 2 pages), to one open-ended question on the topics of Section 1 and textbook no. 1 (Formigoni).
2. A response, in the form of a short essay (maximum 2 pages), to one open-ended question on the topics of Section 2 and textbook no. 2 (Varsori).
3. A review of a first selected monograph, compared with textbook no. 2 (Varsori), maximum 3 pages (font size 12, 1.5 line spacing).
4. A review of a second selected monograph, compared with textbook no. 2 (Varsori), maximum 3 pages (font size 12, 1.5 line spacing).

Guidelines and detailed instructions for writing the reviews are provided in a dedicated document available on the Virtuale platform.

The final grade is based on the combined evaluation of all components.

Procedure

1. Registration for the exam session via Almaesami.
2. During the exam session, students must connect to the Teams meeting for the instructor’s briefing and access the EOL platform to retrieve the examination.
3. Submission within 48 hours of a single PDF file containing response no. 1 and reviews nos. 2 and 3.

Differences Between Attending and Non-Attending Students

The differences include:

1. In-class explanation and discussion of the topics subject to assessment.
2. The possibility of distributing the study workload over the semester.
3. Completion of one monograph review instead of two.

Assessment Criteria

Evaluation of examinations (mid-term + review for attending students, or single assessment for non-attending students) is based on:

• Ability to synthesize and effectively present the major processes of international historical development (50%)
• Ability to analyze in depth the case studies related to the historical processes under consideration (50%)

Teaching tools

The course will make use of ppt and audio-visuals whenever necessary.

Public collections of Primary sources (State and Int. Org. documents):

1.International Organizations

UN and UN Agencies Archives:

https://archives.un.org/content/explore-archives

https://digitallibrary.un.org

https://documents.un.org/prod/ods.nsf/home.xsp

World Bank Group:

http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/160371587056386053/69356-Open-Archives-Brochure-April-2020-update.pdf

https://oralhistory.worldbank.org

International Monetary Fund:

https://www.imf.org/en/About/Archives

2. National and Regional Sources:

European Union

https://www.eui.eu/Research/HistoricalArchivesOfEU

https://ec.europa.eu/historical_archives/index_en.htm

http://www.archivesportaleurope.net/home

Italy:

Foreign Policy and History

http://www.farnesina.ipzs.it/series/

Senato della Repubblica

https://patrimonio.archivio.senato.it

Partito socialista italiano

https://patrimonio.archivio.senato.it/inventario/fondazione-turati/partito-socialista-italiano-psi-direzione-nazionale

Fondazione Lelio Basso e Sezione internazionale

https://www.fondazionebasso.it/2015/archivio-storico/fondi-archivio/archivi-istituzionali/

Fondazione Gramsci - Partito Comunista italiano

https://www.fondazionegramsci.org/archivi/inventari-degli-archivi/

https://www.fondazionegramsci.org/archivi/inventari-degli-archivi/

Istituto Luigi Sturzo - Archivo Storico e Democrazia Cristiana

http://old.sturzo.it

http://old.sturzo.it/archivio-andreotti/l-archivio

United States of America:

Foreign Relations of the United States of America:

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments

National Security Archives of the United States of America

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/

United Kingdom's National Archives:

https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk [https://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/]

Federal Republic of Germany:

https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/aktuelles/themen/akten-zur-auswaertigen-politik/

https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/aktuelles/themen/akten-zur-auswaertigen-politik/open-access/

German Democratic Republic:

https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/aktuelles/themen/akten-zur-auswaertigen-politik/zusatzdokumente-zur-edition-die-einheit/

France:

https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/fr/archives-diplomatiques/

3. Topics and other Sources:

Sources on the Cold War:

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/program/cold-war-international-history-project

Sources on the Contemporary International History:

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blogs/sources-and-methods

Sources and database on Armed Conflicts Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI):

https://www.sipri.org

Sources on International and Social History:

International Institute of Social History

https://iisg.amsterdam/en

Sources on Non Aligned Movement et al.

https://ris.org.in/en/documents-non-aligned-movement

https://www.nam-globe-exchange.org/online-resources

Sources on the Middle East and North Africa:

https://www.unescwa.org

https://hazine.info/

https://merip.org

https://www.jadaliyya.com

Interactive Encyclopedia of the Palestine Question: https://palquest.org

Office hours

See the website of Massimiliano Trentin