88080 - HISTORY OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Conoscenze e abilità da conseguire

The course in History of International Relations is aimed at understanding the evolution of the international scenario from the Congress of Vienna to the breakdown of USSR. Students will be able to manage historical diplomatic case-studies and analyze new crisis for an autonomous comprehension. History of International Relations is a basic course of international studies and for diplomacy.

Contenuti

The course is organized in lectures and seminars, as detailed in the following program. Lectures (26 hours in remote on MS TEAMS) aim to introduce students to the core tenets of the discipline. Seminars aim to provide occasions for in-depth discussions of class materials and exercises. The division into lessons and seminars is specified in the program that follows. For the seminar section, students will be divided into some groups according to their preferences and according to rules concerning the current pandemic emergency: some groups will do the seminar in classroom (12 hours) and other groups will do the seminar remotely on MS TEAMS (12 hours). Therefore, a total of 38 classroom hours are scheduled for each student. Students are required to carefully read the assigned material before the session and - in the case of seminars - active participation through presentations of existing scholarship and case studies will also be expected. Regardless of the health-related conditions and the specific organization of the course, students will be able to follow the lessons of the entire course remotely on MS TEAMS.

Part I (26 hours remotely for everyone)

Introducing History of International Relations

Diplomats and diplomatic affairs

The Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe.

Bismarck's Era.

European colonialism, Imperialism and the emerging of the Extraeuropean actors.

Alliances and First World War

The Paris Peace Conference

Failures of the collective security

Hitler and the appeasement

Second World War

The emerging of the superpowers and the roots of Cold War

The globalization of Cold War: stability and crisis

 

Part II (12 hours groups, in classroom or remotely): Cold War and Beyond

- From détente to European Union

- Cold War and Middle East

- From Bipolarism to the American Unipolarism

- Multipolarism,Globalization,China. The Search of a new World Order.

 

 

Testi/Bibliografia

All the following materials are mandatory for everyone, both attending and non-attending students

Handbook:

- "International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond (Third Edition)", Antony Best, Jussi M. Hanhimäki, Joseph A. Maiolo and Kirsten E. Schulze, Routledge, London and New York 2015, also available with online sources (https://www.routledge.com/International-History-of-the-Twentieth-Century-and-Beyond-3rd-Edition/Best-Hanhimaki-Maiolo-Schulze/p/book/9780415656429).

- Online sources and Teacher's slides available on Virtuale.unibo.it

- A reading chosen from the following books:

- Edward Hallett Carr, What is History? Penguin Books, Harmondsworth 1961

- Tim Chapman, The Congress of Vienna, Routledge, London and New York 1998

- Niall Ferguson, Empire. How Britain made the Modern World, Penguin, London 2003 

- Colin S. Gray, Strategy and History. Essays on theory and practice, Routledge, London and New York 2006

- Walter L. Hixson, American Foreign Relations. A new diplomatic history, Routledge, London and New York 2016

- J. Donald Hughes, Environment and World History, Routledge, London and New York 2000

- Paul Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Vintage Books, New York 1987

- Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, Simon and Schuster, New York 1994

- Marti Koskenniemi, Bo Stråth, Europe 1815-1914: Creating Community and Ordering the World, Routledge, London and New York 2014

- Walter Laqueur, A History of Terrorism, Routledge, London and New York 2001

- Margaret MacMillan, Paris 1919: Six Months that Changed the World. Murray, London 2001

- Johanna Menzel Meskill, Nazy Germany and Imperial Japan. The Hollow Diplomatic Alliance, Routledge, London and New York 2012

- Leos Müller, Neutrality in World History, Routledge, London and New York 2019

- Harold Nicolson, Diplomacy, Oxford University Press, Oxford 1964

- Hugh Ragsdale, The Russian Tragedy. The Burden of History, Routledge, London and New York 2015

- Arthur H. Shaffer, The Politics of History. Writing the History of the American Revolution, 1783-1815, Routledge, London and New York 2017

- Boris Slavinsky, The Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact. A Diplomatic History, 1941-1945, Routledge, Londn and New York 2004

- Anthony D. Smith, The Nation in History. Historiographical Debates about Ethnicity and Nationalism, University Press of New England, Hanover 2000

- Michael Smith, Stephan Keukeleire and Sophie Vanhoonacker, The Diplomatic System of the European Union. Evolution, change and challenges, Routledge, London and New York 2016

- Peter N. Stearns, Human Rights in World History, Routledge, London and New York 2012

- Alan J.P. Taylor, The Course of German History. A survey of the development of German history since 1815, Routledge, London and New York 2005

- John Theobald, The Media and the Making of History, Routledge, London and New York 2016

- Patrick J. Walsh, Echoes Among the Stars. A Short History of the U.S. Space Program, Routledge, London and New York 2015

- Chi Wang, The United States and China Since World War II. A Brief History, Routledge, London and New York 2015

- Odd Arne Westad, The Global Cold War, Cambridge University Press 2005 

Metodi didattici

The first part of the course (26 hours, remotely) will be based on lectures aimed at introducing the students to the main diplomatic international issues from the Congress of Vienna to the Cold War, especially focusing on diplomatic activities and the evolution of the international order.

The second part of the course (12 hours, in classroom or remotely) will be based on more interactive activities and seminars. Some main issues of Cold War and after will be debated and the students, both in the classroom and remotely, will be required to read before specific chapters of the handbook.

 

Modalità di verifica e valutazione dell'apprendimento

Regularly attending students will be evaluated twice with written intermediate tests after both parts of the course. The tests will be held remotely and based on some questions stimulating the students' skills in historical thinking. 

The students are required to pass both tests in order to be admitted at the final oral exam. Tests evaluated less than 18/30 will be recovered orally in the final exam.

Once passed the intermediate tests the final oral exam will be based on some questions of general historical thinking and on the reading. The students are required to choose a reading in the list of books and read it carefully in order to develop a critical thinking.

The exam mark will be determined by the arithmetic mean between the mean of the written intermediate tests and the mark of the oral exam.

 

Strumenti a supporto della didattica

The handbook offers some interactive online sources(https://www.routledge.com/International-History-of-the-Twentieth-Century-and-Beyond/Best-Hanhimaki-Maiolo-Schulze/p/book/9780415656429). The teacher will deliver some sources and slides, available on Virtuale.unibo.it, in order to integrate and summarize the programme.

Orario di ricevimento

Consulta il sito web di Paolo Soave