6 ECTS credits
150 h study time
Offer 2 with catalog number 1002465BER for all students in the 1st semester at a (B) Bachelor - advanced level.
This course is an exploration through three thousand years of world politics. It is an ambitious venture, no doubt, but there is no shortcut. If theory brings you instantly to abstract suppositions, history allows you to discover its context, to retrieve the origins of these broad ideas, and to judge them more critically on their merits. History is also what allows future leaders to be versatile, to understand what shaped the interests of countries, their sensitivities, and the origins of important diplomatic principles. History matters.
This course takes you to different cradles of civilization, the North-China Plain, Mesopotamia, the plains along the Indus and the Ganges, Europe, yes even Mesoamerica, the Nile, and Sub-Sahara Africa. It will explore with you the causes of major wars, the beginnings of diplomacy, the evolution of international organizations, intellectual approaches towards international relations, and the technological innovation that contributed to shifts in the balance of power. You will make acquaintance with the ambitions of emperors, but equally so with the experience of early ambassadors, with intellectuals like Machiavelli and Sun Tzu, with traders who were plagued by conflict, and even with farmers who dreaded the end of a long peace.
The broad sweep of world politics is laid out for you in a voluminous textbook: three thousand years of events summarized. But you will have to chart yourself a way through these events, the personalities, and the places. The book consists of thirteen chronologically ordered chapters, accompanied by questions. Each week of this semester, you are expected to read a chapter, to answer the questions individually, and then to discuss them in small groups, supervised by myself or an assistant. At the end of the semester, there is an oral exam. This exam will test your factual knowledge, but also the extent to which you can interpret history, establish relations between different regions, periods, and dimensions of world politics.
This course builds on the "Introduction to Political science" and "Introduction to the history of political ideologies". Students political sciences needed to be passed for at least 30 study points in the first year of the bachelor programme. It expects students to have a strong command of English (TOEFL 70+), basic knowledge of history (level Flemish ASO secondary school) and geography. Students should also be able to summarize text into schemes. Students should be able to read academic texts and to have a conversation in English.
It is key that you come to class prepared. Your preparation input in the discussions will be followed by the supervisors. Each week, you will thus have to read about 10,000 words. This course counts for 6 study points, which equals about 150 working hours for a student that meets the prerequisites, or about one day per week plus the exam period.
This course has two principle objectives. On the one hand, I want you, as a student, to have a bird's eye view of world history, to have a general notion of the broad sweep of events throughout the different regions, social domains, and historical periods. The other main objective is to strengthen your capacity to deal with complexity, to independently analyse, interpret, structure, and summarize a large body of information.
The final grade is composed based on the following categories:
Written Exam determines 80% of the final mark.
Other Exam determines 20% of the final mark.
Within the Written Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:
Within the Other Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:
Written closed book exam: 80%
Geography test: 10% (marks transferred to second session)
Class participation, work reports and peer review: 10% (marks transferred to second session)
This offer is part of the following study plans:
Bachelor of Philosophy and Moral Sciences: default (only offered in Dutch)
Bachelor of History: Standaard traject (only offered in Dutch)
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Communication Studies
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Political Sciences
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Sociology
Bachelor of Social Sciences: Startplan
Bachelor of Political Science and Sociology: - afstudeerrichting politieke wetenschappen (only offered in Dutch)
Bachelor of Political Science and Sociology: - afstudeerrichting sociologie, minor politieke wetenschappen (only offered in Dutch)
Bachelor of Political Science and Sociology: Political Science Minor Minor Education (only offered in Dutch)
Master of International and European Law: Standaard traject (only offered in Dutch)