Konichiwa Saitama students! Before listening to the recorded lessons, Download the vocabulary list (click on the Vocabulary Terms icon) for the lesson and review the terms. You should also download the PowerPoint for the lesson (click on Outlines-PowerPoints) and read that before listening to the recording. This will provide context and will make it easier for you to understand the recording.
The recordings provide a shortened version of my Western Civilization 2 course, and will address the following topics:
The photo above is Professor Crawford in front of the house where American movie actor John Wayne was born.
1. Introduction and Themes
We will discuss four main themes - increased secularism (non-religious attitudes) that grew in Western Civilization from the Renaissance to the present, increased reliance on technology in the West, increased self confidence that grew within the West until 1914, and finally, a crisis of confidence that gripped the West after 1914.
2. From the Crusades to the Age of ExplorationThis lecture discusses how Western Europe grew in strength, beginning with the Crusades, which was the first counterattack of Europeans against the Muslims forces who had been attacking them. The lecture then discusses the Renaissance, which reintroduced Greek and Roman learning and humanism - the belief that all people should be able to go as far as their talents would take them. Humanism also increased the secularization of Western society. The Reformation also increased this secularization as kings exploited the religious divisions in the West. Finally, this lecture discusses the Age of Exploration, which gave Western Europe access to the riches of the Americas and would be used to fuel the Industrial Revolution.
3. Kings and AbsolutismDiscusses how kings began to lead their nations out of the chaos that followed the Fall of the Roman Empire in 476 AD. Kings used gunpowder weapons and the results of the Military Revolution to take power away from their nobles and put all power in their hands. Absolutism flourished best in France, but in England, the English Civil War resulted in King Charles I execution. Theories of absolutism included Thomas Hobbes Social Contract theory and Jacques Bossuet's Divine Right of Kings.
4. The Scientific RevolutionDiscusses the paradigm shift from goecentrism (sun, planets, and stars revolve around the earth) to heliocentrism (earth and planets revolve around the sun). This increased secularism in the West as people wondered "If the Catholic Church was wrong about geocentrism, what else are they wrong about?" Considers the major people in the Scientific Revolution, such as Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton. Also considers the Enlightenment, which furthered secularism and self confidence as Westerners began to attempt to discover the natural laws that controlled the universe and political affairs.
5. The American RevolutionDiscusses how and why the American Revolution began. Wars that began in Europe began to affect the colonies, coupled with Enlightenment philosophies - especially John Locke's addition to Hobbes' social contract theory - led the American colonists to rebel against Britain and King George III. Briefly describes the course of the Revolution and how the Americans were able to defeat the British and win their independence.
6. The French Revolution
While helping the Americans win their independence, the French went into debt and when Louis XVI attempted to pay that off, the French people rebelled. Enlightenment philosophy drove the revolutionaries, but the revolution often went out of control with appalling violence. Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette, and thousands of other French men and women were executed using the guillotine before Maximilien Robespierre, the leader of the revolution was himself executed. This represented extreme secularization as the French briefly outlawed Christianity.
7. The Napoleonic Wars and the Concert of Europe
The chaos of the French Revolution was ended by Napoleon Bonaparte, who provided order for France by exporting the chaos and violence outside of his nation. Napoleon's use of the levee en masse (total conscription of all military age men) influenced other nations to build large armies, and feelings of nationalism created by the Napoleonic Wars would trouble Europe in the future. After the Napoleonic Wars, Europe sought to turn the clock back to before the French Revolution and the Concert of Europe provided nearly a century of uneasy peace before the outbreak of World War I.
8. The Industrial Revolution and its Consequences
Europe and the West moves ahead of the rest of the world using machines to replace muscle power in the manufacture of products. Many of those products had military application and the West began to expand into Asia. The Industrial Revolution changed the way that Westerners worked, lived, and interacted with other nations. China would feel the effects first, when they were defeated in the first Opium War, and Japan would also be "opened" to the West after Commodore Perry forced his way into Edo (Tokyo) Harbor in 1853. Unlike China, Japan decided to copy the West, and did so rapidly.
9. The World War (1914-1945)
During the period between 1914 and 1945, the great self confidence of the West, fueled by the Industrial Revolution was challenged by millions of deaths that were the result of the World War. I use the term World War instead of WWI and WWII, because the direct result of WWI was WWII, so they can be seen as one long war. The World War destroyed Western self confidence for many people in the West, but this confidence survived most strongly in the United States, which became the most powerful nation after the war.
10. The West's Crisis of Confidence
Following the World War, Western Civilization faced many challenges, including the Cold War, a international competition between capitalism and communism. Western Europe, weakened by the World War, lost the colonies that they had held since before the 19th century, and many people in the West began to see themselves as the problem facing the world. The Industrial Revolution, which was the source of the West's rise to power, now became a problem as pollution and resource depletion became problems. The Gulf War of 1991 was supposed to be the final victory of Western Civilization, as capitalism and democracy were spread widely around the world, but other forces disagreed and would strike at the West on September 11, 2001.
