HST 142 - Renaissance and Reformation 1450-1600

Course Units: 1.0

In 1450, Europe was the poor and insignificant western end of the Eurasian landmass. By contrast, the world’s mightiest empires, wealthiest economies, and most innovative and imaginative cultures stretched from the Persian Middle East across the lands of the Mughals to Ming China. The fantastic wealth of ‘the East’ tantalized Europeans as its commodities arrived via the Silk Road along with the stories of travelers. Asia’s phenomenal riches taunted Europeans. Its mighty empires fired Western rulers’ dreams of power at home and wealth abroad. By the early 1600s, European states like the Dutch Republic had laid the foundations for an eighteenth-century revolution in global political and economic power. What happened in Renaissance and Reformation Europe that paved the way for this revolution? This course will examine critical transformations in the social, economic, political, religious, cultural and intellectual, and environmental history of early-modern Europe between 1450 and 1600. Topics include the Italian and northern European Renaissances, the emergence of Humanism, the development of Renaissance monarchies and nation-states, religious reformations and conflicts, and the first stages of European imperialism in the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. CC: SOCS