History of International Relations

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.

Semester

1st semester

Enrollment based on exam contract

Possible

Grading method

Grading (scale from 0 to 20)

Can retake in second session

Yes

Enrollment Requirements

Students who want to enroll for this course, must have passed ‘Introduction to Political Science’ and must have obtained at least 30 ECTS-credits on bachelor level.

Taught in

English

Partnership Agreement

Under interuniversity agreement for degree program

Faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences & SolvayBusinessSchool

Department

Political Science

Educational team

Jonathan Holslag (course titular)
Sara Van Hoeymissen
Julien Vrydagh
Wannes Johan Verstraete

Activities and contact hours

15 contact hours Lecture
12 contact hours Seminar, Exercises or Practicals
123 contact hours Independent or External Form of Study

Course Content

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.

Course material

Handbook (Required) : A Political History of the World, Three Thousand Years of War and Peace, Holslag, Pelican, 9780241395561, 2019
Digital course material (Required) : Slides
Digital course material (Required) : Additional texts will be made available, Canvas

Additional info

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.

Learning Outcomes

Algemene competenties

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.

Grading

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:

Written Exam with a relative weight of 100 which comprises 80% of the final mark.

Within the Other Exam category, the following assignments need to be completed:

Geography Test with a relative weight of 50 which comprises 10% of the final mark.
Class participation a.o. with a relative weight of 50 which comprises 10% of the final mark.

Note: Class participation, work reports and peer review

Additional info regarding evaluation

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)

Allowed unsatisfactory mark

The supplementary Teaching and Examination Regulations of your faculty stipulate whether an allowed unsatisfactory mark for this programme unit is permitted.

Academic context