Introductory description

This is a core module for the Early Modern History MA degree. It addresses key themes and historiographies, drawing on the expertise of a wide range of the early modernists at Warwick. Each session will be led by a different expert, ensuring that students are exposed to as many different viewpoints and approaches as possible. The module will cover the period c.1450-c.1800, and although much of it will focus on Britain and European countries it will also seek to place them in their wider global and colonial context.The module will help to prepare students for term 2 modules, which take a more thematic approach.

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1: Introduction
Week 2: The State Government and Politics
Week 3: Global Trade and Empire
Week 4: Cultural Turns
Week 5: The Law
Week 6: Reading week
Week 7: The Reformations and Religious Change
Week 8: The Public Sphere and Communicative Practices
Week 9: Gender and Sexuality
Week 10: Conceptualising Early Modernity: A Recapitulation

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• Demonstrate a conceptual and practical understanding of the skills of an historian of the early modern era.
• Demonstrate the ability to formulate and achieve a piece of critical and reflective historiographical writing.
• Demonstrate the ability to undertake critical analysis.
• Demonstrate the ability to formulate and test concepts and hypotheses.

Indicative reading list

• P. Burke, What is Cultural History? (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2008)
• Bernard Capp, England’s Culture Wars: Puritan Reformation and its Enemies in the Interregnum, 1649-1660 (2012)
• Giancarlo Casale, The Ottoman Age of Exploration (Oxford UP, 2010).
• William Doyle, The Oxford Handbook of the Ancien Regime (Oxford, 2012)
• Josef Ehmer, ‘Quantifying mobility in early modern Europe: the challenge of concepts and data’, Journal of Global History 6: (2011), 327-338.
• Rebecca Earle, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America, 1492-1700 (2012).
• Mary Floyd-Wilson, English Ethnicity and Race in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge, 2003).
• Laurence Fontaine, The Moral Economy: Poverty, Credit and Trust in Early Modern Europe (2014)
• John-Paul Ghobrial, “Stories Never Told: The First Arabic History of the New World,” Journal of Ottoman Studies 40 (2012), 259-82.
• Jack Goldstone, “The Problem of the Early Modern World,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 41 (1998), 249-84.
• M. Greengrass, Christendom Destroyed: Europe 1517-1648 (London, 2014)
• Joanna Innes and Mark Philp, Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750-1850 (2013)
• D. Jütte, The Strait Gate: Thresholds and Power in Western History (New Haven, 2015)
• Steve Hindle, Alexandra Shepard and John Walter, eds., Remaking English Society: social relations and social change in early modern England (2013)
• B. Kaplan, Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge MA, 2010)
• Mark Knights, The Devil in Disguise: Deception, Delusion and Fanaticism in the Early English Enlightenment (2011)
• Beat Kümin (ed.), A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (Oxford: Berg, 2012)
• Noah Millstone, ‘Seeing Like a Statesman in Early Stuart England’ Past and Present (2014) 223 (1): 77-127.
• Douglas North, John Joseph Wallis and Barry Weingast, Violence and Social Orders A Conceptual Framework for Interpreting Recorded Human History (2013)
• David Parker, Class and State in Early Modern France (2014)
• Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (2010)
• Penny Roberts, Peace and Authority During the French Religious Wars c.1560-1600 (2013)
• Giorgio Riello, Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World ( 2013)
• Massimo Rospocher (ed) Beyond the Public Sphere. Opinions, Publics, Spaces in Early Modern Europe (2012)
• Baki Tezcan, The Second Ottoman Empire: Political and Social Transformation in the Early Modern World (Cambridge UP, 2012).
• Jan de Vries, The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behavior and the Household Economy, 1650 to the Present (Cambridge, 2008).
• Charles Walton, Policing Public Opinion in the French Revolution: The Culture of Calumny and the Problem of Free Speech (Oxford, 2009).
• Phil Withington, Society in Early Modern England: The Vernacular Origins of Some Powerful Ideas (2010)

View reading list on Talis Aspire

Subject specific skills

See learning outcomes.

Transferable skills

See learning outcomes.