Studying at York
Political Communities in World History - HIS00084C
Module summary
The Political Communities in World History core module challenges students to understand political history through its most important concepts, such as states, power, identity, and conflict. Taught by means of two lectures and one discussion group a week, the module proceeds on a broad chronological basis, introducing students to some crucial structures in the history of political formations – from the complex early states of medieval Europe to the persistence of monarchy across the modern world – and to moments of decisive change in the form of rebellions, revolutions, and wars.
Module will run
| Occurrence | Teaching period |
|---|---|
| A | Semester 1 2024-25 |
Module aims
The aims of this module are:
- To help students understand a broad sweep of political history over the past 1500 years;
- To encourage students to explore a wide range of chronologies and approaches to political history, both Western and non-Western, across time and place;
- To familiarize students with the ways in which historians understand political developments in past societies;
- To introduce students to many of the different areas of study available to them in Stages 2 and 3.
Module learning outcomes
Students who complete this module successfully will have:
- Acquired a broad knowledge of, and some of the scholarship relating to, political history in Western and non-Western societies;
- Demonstrated an ability to analyse critically, and make connections between, focussed studies from across time and place;
- Practised core skills necessary to a history degree, notably note-taking, critical analysis, and the ability to form arguments orally and in writing, through effective contributions to discussion group activities, essay-writing, and group work
- Demonstrated understanding of, and the ability to construct arguments about, political changes and continuities.
Module content
Students will attend a 1-hour briefing in week 1, then two lectures and a 1-hour discussion group in each of weeks 2-4, 6-8 and 10-11. Weeks 5 & 9 are Reading and Writing Weeks (RAW). Students prepare for and participate in sixteen lectures and eight discussion groups in all.
Lecture and discussion group topics are subject to variation, but are likely to include the following:
Block 1. Cities, kingdoms, and empires
Lectures:
Political Organization in the Medieval World
Political Organization in the Early Modern World
The Age of Revolutions?
Power in the Modern City
Discussion groups:
What made the state different from other forms of political organisation?
How has “the political” been defined?
Block 2. Power and legitimacy
Lectures:
Political Ideals in the Medieval World
Kingship and Government in the Early-Modern World
Encountering the Nation State
Democracy and Authoritarianism
Discussion groups:
How has power been legitimized?
How should states interact with each other?
Block 3. Nations, communities and identities
Lectures:
Political Identities in the medieval world
Political identities in the early modern world
The birth of mass nationalism
Community beyond the nation
Discussion groups;
How have race, ethnicity, and religion become political identities?
How useful is "nationality" as a category of historical analysis?
Block 4. Conflict and change
Lectures:
Lecture 1: Conflict and change in the medieval world
Lecture 2: Rebellion and revolution in the early modern world
Lecture 3: Revolutions and turning-points
Lecture 4: War and the modern public
Discussion groups:
What counts as a war?
Revolutions and continuities
Indicative assessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Online Exam -less than 24hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 100 |
Special assessment rules
None
Additional assessment information
For formative assessment work, students will produce a 1500-word essay in week 9.
For summative assessment, students will complete an Open Exam in the assessment period.
Indicative reassessment
| Task | % of module mark |
|---|---|
| Online Exam -less than 24hrs (Centrally scheduled) | 100 |
Module feedback
Following their formative assessment task, students will receive written feedback that will include comments and a mark within 10 working days of submission.
Work will be returned to students in their Discussion groups and may be supplemented by the tutor giving some oral feedback to the whole group. All students are encouraged, if they wish, to discuss the feedback on their procedural work during their lecturers’ student hours. For more information, see the Statement on Feedback.
For summative assessment tasks, students will receive their provisional mark and written feedback within 25 working days of the submission deadline. The lecturer will then be available during student hours for follow-up guidance if required. For more information, see the Statement of Assessment.
Indicative reading
For semester-time reading, please refer to the module VLE site. Before the course starts, we encourage you to look at the following items of preliminary reading:
- Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
- Azar Gat, War in Human in Civilization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).