His 3110, Spring 2012, Newton Key
TR 12:30 am–1:45 pm, EIU, Coleman Hall 2691
Syllabus as pdf (brief version)
back

 

  

History of Britain and the British Empire, 1688-Present (enhanced syllabus)
18th-century Britain
from J. Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 1688-1793 (1996)

week 1. Restoration Un-settlements, 1660-1689

William enters London, 1690, Dutchfrom W.A. Maguire, ed., Kings in Conflict (Belfast, 1990).
week 2. Revolution Settlement(s), 1688-1715
  • Jan. 17. Roberts, Roberts and Bisson, ch. 16
  • Jan. 19. Robert Bucholz and Newton Key, “Augustan Polity, Society, and Culture, ca. 1714," in Early Modern England, 1485-1714: A Narrative History, 2nd ed. (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009), 353-91. (Booth Library, eReserve)
Sacheverell Riots, 1710 from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 120 (Daniel Burgess's Presbyterian meeting-house in Carey Street, London, is wrecked by the mob.)
week 3. Making of a Ruling Class, 1714-1760
Hogarth, Cutler's FeastHogarth, "The Industrious 'Prentice grown rich & Sheriff of London" (1747)

week 4. Britain and America in the Revolutionary Age, 1760-1780s
from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 196 (Robert Clive returned from India as victor of Plessey, 1757, and bought an estate in Shropshire. Sat as MP for Shrewsbury. Election jugs were part of the process of "treating" the constituents.)

week 5. Britain and Europe in the Revolutionary Age, 1780s-1815

  • Feb. 7 & 9. Roberts, Roberts and Bisson, chs. 20-21
.)James Gillray, "Fashion before Ease" (2 Jan. 1793)Thomas Paine and Britannia, from W. Glyn and J. Ramsden, Ruling Britainnia: A Political History of Britain, 1688-1988 (1990)

week 6.  Industrial Britain: The First Modern Society

  • Feb. 14. MID-TERM EXAM I [note date change]
  • Feb. 16. . Roberts, Roberts and Bisson, ch. 18; Dickens, Hard Times, Book 1 “Sowing”
"The Fellow Prentices at their Looms" by William Hogarth, 1747from Black, An Illustrated History of Eighteenth-Century Britain, 35 (Mid-18th century machines were still dependent on human energy. Note the broadside song or poem of D. Defoe's Moll Flanders hung upon the idle apprentice's loom).

week 7. Industrial Britain and Modernity

Lord Ashley's report on children in mining 1842from Lord Ashley's report on children in mining from 1842

week 8. Reformers and Victorian Social Consensus
"Work," Ford Madox Brown, c. 1863
week 9.  Victorian Empire (begun)

week 10. Victorian Empire (cont'd.); Liberalism versus Socialism, 1890s-1914
Cat and Mouse Act, 1913
week 11. The Killing Front, 1914-1918
  • March 27. MID-TERM EXAM II
  • March 29. Graves, Good-Bye, chs. I-XII; Roberts, Roberts and Bisson, ch. 27
Trench warfare, WWIfrom Roberts, A History of England,2:703 (from Imperial War Museum)
week 12. The Long-Weekend and the Slump, 1919-1935
 

week 13. Britain's War, 1935-1945

Evacuation of Dunkirk, June 1940Dunkirk

week 14. The People's Peace and I'm all Right Jack, 1945-1960s
National Health Service (NHS) Hospitalfrom Roberts, A History of England, 2: 788

week 15. Northern Ireland and Devolution
 

Issued by Textbook Rental:

  • Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Broadview Press, 1854, 1996) [24.772]
  • Robert Graves, Good-Bye to All That: An Autobiography, 2nd ed. (Anchor, 1958) [16.252]
  • Clayton Roberts, David Roberts, and Douglas R. Bisson, History Of England, Volume 2 (1688 To The Present) (Prentice Hall, 2009) [14.905]
  • Sandra Koa Wing, Our Longest Days: a People's History of the 2nd World War (Profile Books, 2009) [11.145]
  
His 3110 (33507) provides a narrative of British history from the Revolution of 1688-89 through the upheavals of the late 20th century. It stresses the social, economic, and even religious bases of struggles about parliamentary democracy and imperial domination. It also provides a chance to understand the contemporary issues in Britain from the seventeenth to the twenty-first centuries by using primary documents.
Goals:
  1. Develop an understanding of the basic narrative of modern British history (esp. 1689-1989)
  2. Compare/contrast the British basic narrative to periods and concepts of modern European/World history:
    • political revolution,
    • industrial revolution,
    • political revolution and stability,
    • party,
    • urbanization,
    • social class,
    • war,
    • decolonialism
  3. Discuss and write about the relation between ideas and action, between the intellectual elite and socio-economic realities
  4. Understand and use some interesting primary sources and secondary works on modern British history
  5. Three themes:
    a. Industrious Britain and Social Class
    b. Rise and Fall of Imperial Britain
    c. Experience of War (between the home front and the trenches)
  

British History Links | Course Requirements | Office Hours

last updated on April 17, 2012