Open Educational Resources
Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
7-7-2024
Abstract
The syllabus offers meaningful, open-access academic texts, art expositions, interactive maps, timelines and conferences that introduce students to the study of the 16th-century birth of globalization. This was a period in which for the first time after A.D. 1492, trade connected Europe, the Americas, Africa, and Asia, creating dynamic and enduring change everywhere. The Columbian Exchange took off and Spain became a global superpower. Europe spread 'Western civilization' to the rest of the world, carrying xenophobia, wars, and economic exploitation everywhere it went. Military conquests and crusading campaigns against aboriginal peoples of the Americas and religious and ethnic minorities gave Spain the upper hand until a series of economic crises forced Spain to confront the dilemmas of global power. Exhausted by war against European rivals, internal rebellions, treason and debt, the Spanish Empire began its decline in A.D. 1650s. The rise and fall of this mighty superpower, the dynamic changes it set in motion, and the global economy it unleashed, are the central themes of this course.
The purpose of the course is to provide students with theoretical, methodological, and conceptual tools for the study of world history from a Political Science perspective; the study of connections between development and underdevelopment on a world scale; and the study of connections between 16th-century globalization and 21st-century global economy. The course seeks to teach students to think critically about their human experience in relation to large-scale, inter-continental dynamics of historical change still in the making.
Open-access course materials include academic textbooks and articles; primary sources provided by National Humanities Center; and Digital Humanities Sources such as open-access art expositions, interactive maps, timelines, and conferences.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Comments
This OER was created under the CUNY/SUNY Scale Up Initiative grant, 2023-2024, sponsored by the CUNY Office of Library Services.