This introductory survey will present a comparative overview of world history from 1700 to the 1990s. It will examine and explore the origins and impacts of major political, social, economic, cultural, and technological trends on Western and non-Western people and societies. This course is structured chronologically and thematically, with each unit focusing on a significant historical subject. Topics will include state building and societies in the early modern world, the 18th Century Industrial Revolution, the Ottoman empire, the age of European Enlightenment, revolutions, political consolidation in 19th Century Europe, Latin America from independence to the 1990s, India, the challenge of modernity, modern China, global conflicts and changes in the 20th Century, postcolonialism, and the world in recent decades. Furthermore, we will also pay attention to the ethics (i.e., values and morals) of world history that have shaped both individual and socially-held beliefs. We will explore the formal and informal systems of belief from multiple viewpoints, including historical viewpoints by marginalized groups of people such as the Romani communities.

We will focus our attention on the following questions during the course:
1.  How did England, Austria, Prussia, and Russia come to dominate 18th Century Europe?
2.  Why was the Ottoman Empire increasingly unable to compete with the European powers?
3.  What were the most important Islamic states?
4.  What was enlightened absolutism?
5.  How did the French Revolution and Napoleon transform France's government and society?
6.  Why did Latin America throw off Spanish and Portuguese rule?
7.  What is nationalism?
8.  What social and legal disabilities did women confront in the past?
9.  What was the economy of dependence?
10. How did Africans react to European colonialism?
11. What were the most serious threats to Manchu rule?
12. What caused the outbreak of World War I? 
13. How did Stalin and Hitler gain and keep power?
14. Why was 1943 the turning point in World War II?
15. What were the causes of the Cold War? 
16. How did South Korean and North Korean postwar development differ?
17. What are the main developments that have occurred in the postcolonial world since 1945?
18. What problems has Europe faced since the fall of Communism?