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Nat Godley
HIST 128: Introduction to World History from 1800 to the Present.
Schedule of readings and discussion topics (subject to modifications).
The textbooks are referred to below as follows:
• “WTWA” means a reading from Robert Tignor et al.’s Worlds Together, Worlds Apart.
• “Reilly” means a reading from Kevin Reilly’s Worlds of History vol. 2.
• “Achebe” means a reading from Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart.
Online articles and documents are usually hyperlinked in the web version of this schedule, as well as in
the “Content” section of the website. These readings, like those from the textbooks, are required
and I expect you to come to class having read them and prepared to discuss them.

Week 1
January 19: Introduction

Week 2
January 24: Enlightenment and revolution
• WTWA 639-651
• John Locke, excerpt from Second Treatise on Government (1690)
• Reilly 753-764 and 766-768:
o David Hume, “On Miracles” (1748)
o Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract” (1762)
o The American Declaration of Independence (1776)
o The French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1789)
January 26: Shortcomings and reimaginings of the Democratic Revolutions
• WTWA 651-659
• Reilly 764-766 and 769-777
o Abigail Adams and John Adams, “Remember the Ladies”
o Toussaint L’Ouverture, “Letter to the Directory”
o Simón Bolívar, “A Constitution for Venezuela”
• Prince Hall’s petition (1777) (read the contextual information and then click to read the
document text itself)
• Olympe de Gouges, Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen (1791)

Week 3
January 31: The first Industrial Revolution and Great Britain’s rise to economic supremacy
• WTWA 659-667
• Reilly 792-798: Adam Smith, from The Wealth of Nations
February 2: The impact of the Atlantic and Industrial Revolutions outside the West
• WTWA 667-682
• Reilly:
o 787-799: Arnold Pacey, “Asia and the Industrial Revolution”
o 809-816: Peter Stearns, “The Industrial Revolution Outside the West”
Document analysis on the Haitian Revolution due via D2L midnight Friday February 4

Week 4
February 7: Resistance to Western “Modernity” in Africa and China
• WTWA 685-698 and 704-715
February 9: The Industrial Revolution and problems with industrialization
• WTWA 698-704 and 715-716
• Reilly 798-802: The Sadler Report of the House of Commons
o 802-809: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, from The Communist Manifesto
o 816-823: Italians in two worlds: An immigrant’s letters from Argentina
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Week 5
February 14: Nationalism, expansion, and the emergence of a world economy
• WTWA 719-739
• Giuseppe Mazzini, “On Nationality” (1852)
• Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “To The German Nation” (1806) and “Address To The German Nation”
(1807)
• Theodor Herzl, “On The Jewish State” (1896)
• Irish Proclamation of Independence (1916)
February 16: Imperialism, expansion, and rivalry
• WTWA 739-760
• Reilly 829-837: George Orwell, from Burmese Days

Week 6
February 21: Resistance to imperialism; Imperialism and literature
• WTWA 763-776
• Reilly 837-847
o Joseph Conrad, from Heart of Darkness
o Chinua Achebe, “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness”
February 23: Midterm review

Week 7
February 28: Imperialism: The view from the colonized
• Reilly 847-864
o Joyce Cary, “Mister Johnson”
o Francis Bebey, “King Albert”
March 2: Mid-semester exam (in class)

Week 8
March 7: The choice between Westernization and nationalism in Japan
• Reilly 868-881
o Fukuzawa Yukichi, “Good-bye Asia”
o Images from Japan: Views of Westernization
o Junichiro Tanazaki, “In Praise of Shadows”
March 9: Embracing and rejecting Westernization in India, Turkey, and the Islamic world
• Reilly 881-902
o Mohandas K. Gandhi, from Hind Swaraj
o Jawaharlal Nehru, “Gandhi”
o Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, “A Turkish Republic for the Civilized World”
o Hassan al-Banna, “The Tyranny of Materialism over the Lands of Islam”

Week 9
SPRING BREAK

Week 10
March 21: The experience of imperialism
• Things Fall Apart part one
March 23: The experience of imperialism
• Things Fall Apart parts two and three
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Week 11
March 28: Changing centuries and changing identities
• WTWA 776-804
March 30: The First World War
• WTWA 809-819
• Reilly 903-930:
o Stephen O’Shea, “Back to the Front”
o Erich Maria Remarque, from All Quiet on the Western Front
o Wilfred Owen, Dulce et Decorum Est
o Memories of Senegalese soldiers

Week 12
April 4: The War’s repercussions
• Reilly 930-941
o V.I. Lenin, War and Revolution
o Woodrow Wilson, Fourteen Points
o Syrian Congress Memorandum
• The Treaty of Versailles (1919)
April 6: Mass culture and mass politics in the interwar period
• WTWA 819-849
Paper on Achebe’s Things Fall Apart due Saturday April 9

Week 13
April 11: World War II
• WTWA 853-860
• Reilly 944-950: Joachim Fest, “The Rise of Hitler”
April 13: Mass killing in World War II
• Reilly 951-980
o Heinrich Himmler, Speech to the SS
o Jean-François Steiner, from Treblinka
o Timothy Snyder, “Holocaust: Ignored Reality”
o Iris Chang, from The Rape of Nanking
o President Truman’s announcement of the dropping of an atomic bomb on Hiroshima
o Akihiro Takahashi, “Memory of Hiroshima”

Week 14
April 18: The Cold War and the end of the “old order”
• WTWA 860-865 and 879-884
• Reilly 981-1005
o Odd Arne Westad, “The Global Cold War”
o X (George F. Kennan), “The Sources of Soviet Conduct”
o Ho Chi Minh, The Vietnamese Declaration of Independence
o Edward Lansdale, Report on CIA operations in Vietnam, 1954-1955
o Time Magazine, Nikita Khrushchev: “We Will Bury You”
April 20: Decolonization and the Cold War
• WTWA 865-879 and 884-896
• Reilly 1005-1018
o Soviet Telegram on Cuba
o Mao Tse Tung, “Imperialism and All Reactionaries are Paper Tigers”
o Telephone Transcript: Soviet Premier and Afghan Prime Minister
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Week 15
April 25: From three worlds to one; but at what cost?
• WTWA 899-919
• Reilly 1050-1079
o Sherif Hetata, “Dollarization”
o Philippe Legrain, “Cultural Globalization Is Not Americanization”
o Miriam Ching Yoon Louie, from Sweatshop Warriors
o Benjamin Barber, from Jihad vs. McWorld
o Kwame Anthony Appiah, “The Case for Contamination”
April 27: The problems of the new global order: Religion, economics, and environment
• WTWA 919-960
Analysis of documents on anti-colonial nationalism due Saturday April 30th

Week 16
May 1: Final review
May 3: Population, resources, and globalization: The case of water
• Reilly 1020-1049
o Lahart, Barta, and Batson, “New Limits to Growth Revive Malthusian Fears”
o Phillip Longman, “Headed Toward Extinction?”
o Alexander Cockburn, “Message in a Bottle”
o Jacques Leslie, “Running Dry”
o Andrew Rice, “Is There Such a Thing as Agro-Imperialism?”

Final Exam: Monday May 9th 5:45-7:45pm in Molinaro 165