UC Berkeley - HIST 186 - 2012 Spring - Sargent - International and Global History Since 1945 - Lecture 01 - History of the Present - 01h 11m 39s

Preliminaries

[0:00]

Morning. It's about ten past the half hour so it's time to begin.

Welcome to History 186.

Let me just start with a quick note on the audio. You've managed to catch me at the end of a nasty cold. The end of a bad cold is better than the beginning, but by consequence the audio is going to be a little scratchier today than it will ordinarily be.

[0:21]

A more consequential issue with the audio that I wanted to be all aware of at the beginning is that this semester's lectures are being podcast which means that they're available for distribution via iTunes. Probably most of you know what podcasting lectures involves.

This is really good insofar and makes what we're doing in the classroom available to anybody outside of the classroom who's interested to listen in. The only downside of podcasting as I see it is that it makes it easy for all of you who ought to be in the classroom to sit at home on a cold morning like this and listen to the lecture remotely.

I would really prefer if you didn't. I don't have any mechanism enforce your attendance in the lectures. But I hope that you will not use the podcasting as a you know opportunity to avoid coming to lectures tempting as that might be when the weather is at frigid as it is today. It's all of what 50 degrees outside which is much colder than were accustomed to even in northern California.

Introductory Anecdote: Nixon and Zhou Enlai

[1:18]

This is a history class. It's a class in contemporary history↗. But it is a history class. I'm a historian and as such I would like to start the class with an historical anecdote

So I'm going to take you back to May 1972. Richard Nixon↗ has landed in China the first American president ever to visit the People's Republic.

He meets, besides meeting with Chairman Mao↗, with Premier Zhou Enlai↗ the effective Prime Minister of China.

Nixon, as those of you know anything about him may know, was a really socially awkward and inept personality in some respects. He found it very difficult to make small talk. But he had been told by his advisors that Zhou Enlai was really interested in French history. So Nixon said, as you might in that situation, what do you think about the French Revolution↗? Zhou famously replied, "it's too soon to tell".

This anecdote is a suitable place to begin a history of recent world affairs. Zhou Enlai's reply might warn us against passing premature historical judgments. It's too soon to tell.

The episode I would suggest is cautionary in a different direction. It ought to caution us to get our facts right. Because Zhou Enlai was not referring to the French Revolution which you think of when we talk about the French Revolution (the Revolution of 1789) he was, according to Nixon's translator, referring to the revolution of 1968↗.

So, besides cautioning us to avoid premature historical judgments, this episode might also remind us that when we do history it's important to get the history correct.

Why Study History?

[3:08]

Nonetheless, the question that Zhou Enlai raised, when is it too soon to tell, is an important one. Should historians study recent events? What business do we have studying the history of contemporary world politics, or world economics? Why not favor alternative disciplinary approaches? What do historians have to tell us? What do you have to learn from me that you might not learn about it in some other disciplinary context?

Why not takes a class in economics or sociology or political science? Are these disciplines that not offer some superior insight into the workings of the contemporary world? What might history offer that these approaches do not?

To answer this question we're going to have to raise some really fundamental questions? What is history, and what is the historian's role? And perhaps most important for all of you what do we learn from history?

Is there any point in studying it? Is it just a random succession of facts and personalities? Or is there some larger purpose to the study of the past?

You know many philosophers and thinkers and historians have posed this question in the past. What is history? We might turn to some of the great canonical figures for answers.

Elbert Hubbard

[4:24]

Let's start first of all with Elbert Hubbard↗, an American radical and writer, famously described history as just one damn thing after another.

This is one perspective on the past. It's just stuff that happens. Without any rhyme or reason or connection among events.

Karl Marx

[4:44]

Karl Marx↗, one of the most celebrated and influential philosophers of history of all time, had a perspective on history which is about the exact opposite of Elbert Hubbard's. For Marx history had a very clear logic. You all know what that logic is, right? What's the logic of history for Marx?

That's right. The logic of history for Marx is a logic of class struggle leading ultimately to the creation of a communist↗ society -- a profoundly influential historical concept.

Thomas Macaulay

[5:17]

But there have been other influential historical concepts. Perhaps articulated somewhat less forthrightly than Marx.

Take another British 19th century historical figure: Thomas Macaulay↗. Macaulay was one of the great Whig↗ historians. His view of history was that history represented an inexorable march of progress -- the steady march of reform even justice.

Determinism and Randomness

[5:47]

The kind of historical determinism that figures like Marx and Macaulay favored, a determinism that sees history as having an ulterior logic, a direction, a purpose, has in some ways fallen out of favor with professional historians. We're much less inclined today to see all history as ultimately being reducible to the history of class struggle or to the history of Whiggish political reform than we might have been several generations ago.

But that doesn't mean that history is just one damn thing after another. We ought to be conscious of the ways in which history shapes us. How does history constrain our choices in the present? This is a question that historians have at some fundamental level to grapple with.

Pólya's urn

[6:33]

To think about this it may be useful to reflect upon a sort of mathematical problem: Pólya's urn↗ problem.

How many of you have encountered Pólya's urn in probability classes?

Okay, just one of you.

That's good because I don't know this very well so please don't correct me if I make any mistakes. You can come and do it quietly after the class.

Pólya's urn is simply an experiment in probability but it's a useful vantage point for thinking about the utility of history as a way of knowing and a mode of learning.

What is Pólya's urn? A big urn. Contains at the beginning of the experiment just two balls. One white, one blue. They can be any color you want this doesn't really matter. But the idea is that we have a big urn with two balls, one of different color, each a different color. Let's say we remove one of those balls at random. We take out a white ball. Then we put it back in the urn adding another ball of the same color. So we take out one white ball we add two white balls back. We take out one blue ball we add two blue balls back.

We keep on repeating the experiment until the urn is full. Because eventually it will get full if we put two balls in for every ball that we remove.

What is the ultimate distribution of colored balls within the urn at the end of the experiment?

I don't have any idea, and nor do you. It's impossible to predict. But what the experiment does tell us if we think about the logic of it is that the early selections, the first balls that are removed and replaced are very consequential for determining the ultimate coloration of the urn at once the experiment has been concluded.

This is a experiment that is suggestive as to the importance of history, right? Early choices have great consequences for determining subsequent outcomes. History in a sense is an iterative process in which early choices or decisions have great consequence for subsequent events.

Institutional Framework of American Politics

[8:39]

Think about the sort of institutional framework of American politics. You know the basic system of government which the founding fathers bequeathed to us in the late 18th century. You know obviously that system has been modified in you know fundamental respects through subsequent Constitutional amendments and political innovations. But nonetheless the legacy of those early choices weighs very, very heavily on the present.

Conclusion: Pólya's Urn

[9:06]

So we can't predict the outcome of history. You know that's not what this experiment is intended to demonstrate. All that it ought to suggest is that early choices have consequences for subsequent outcomes and conditions.

Path Dependence

[9:24]

In a sense this is what economists call path dependence↗. That's sort of a key concept in the social sciences. How are the paths that we are on shaping conditions by prior choices over which we have no control?

Different Approaches to History

[9:39]

What does this have to do with the role of the historian? It depends really on the individual historian because different historians see their roles and their responsibilities in very different terms.

Some historians are fundamentally concerned with experience and meaning. They see the past as another country and they seek to sort of reconstruct even to inhabit the experience of men and women living in circumstance and conditions quite different from our own.

This is profoundly useful. We learn something fundamental about human nature perhaps by thinking about how men and women have lived in circumstances far removed from those that we inhabit today.

But not all historians are fundamentally concerned with meaning. With what you might call hermeneutics to use a fancy word.

Other historians, and I would probably include myself in this latter camp, are more concerned with causation -- with how things came to be the way they are and implicitly why didn't they get to be some other way.

For these historians issues of path dependence are absolutely crucial. When we reconstruct the past we don't simply seek to recreate the past as it existed at some particular moment in history rather we seek to navigate historical transitions. To think about how we got from one past state to another past state. Or indeed how we got from a past state to the state that we inhabit today, which is of course the present.

This class is going to be concerned more with connection than with the pursuit of meaning.

I make no apologies for that. These are simply different approaches to the study of history. What we're going to do this semester is to think about how things came to be the way they are.

And we're concerned not with how things came to be the way they were in 1945 but with how things came to be the way they are today in 2012.

Contemporary History

[11:40]

In that respect this class is an exercise in contemporary history↗. What is contemporary history?

Contemporary history is sort of the keyword for what we're trying to do in this semester.

Geoffrey Barraclough

[11:53]

Probably the best definition of contemporary history that I've ever come across was offered by Geoffrey Barraclough↗ -- a medieval historian who became later on in his career one of the leading proponents and theorists of contemporary history. For Barraclough the key to contemporary history was the point of departure. Contemporary history for Barraclough is really concerned with the historical origins and constitution of the present. It's not concerned with explaining the origins of the First World War or the origins of the American Revolution rather it's concerned with explaining the origins of the present.

How do things get to be the way they are today?

And for Barraclough contemporary history is the history that seeks the answer to this question. It is the history that aims to clarify the basic structural changes which have shaped the modern world.

When does this history begin? Well, it all depends what the particular problem that you want to comprehend and unpack might be.

Contemporary history begins when the problems which are actual in the world today first take visible shape. It could begin decades ago. It could begin centuries ago. It could begin millennia ago. It all depends what the particular problem on which we fixate might be.

What distinguishes contemporary history than is the vantage point from which it is pursued. Contemporary history is history that looks back from the present to try to search for, explain, and unpack the deep origins of issues on which we fixate in the world today.

Conclusion: Contemporary History

[13:28]

So the appropriate place to begin a course in contemporary history or history of the contemporary world might then be not the past but the present.

Looking back from the present moment what do we see in the past that captivates our attention and calls for a particular explanation?

Current Events

[13:52]

Let's start by thinking about some of the big important events of recent months.

These may be a little outdated now. It's about a week since I put this slideshow together.

But let's just survey the world from the perspective of the present or last month perhaps.

What were the big major headlines of December 2012?

European Fiscal Crisis and Brussels Summit

[14:22]

Well, one of the big important headlines had to do with Europe's fiscal crisis. The European Summit, which took place in sort of early mid-December, aimed to address Europe's ongoing fiscal crisis.

What was really important about the Brussell's Summit, which took place, in I think December 11th, but I could be wrong, is that it produced an agreement amongst all of the member states of the European Union↗ with the exception, the important exception of Great Britain, to seek a fiscal stability pact which will impose sort of stringent budgetary conditions on member states of the European Union.

It's a really important landmark summit in the history of European integration. It's also really consequential episode insofar as it marked Great Britain's estrangement from the European project. It's probably too soon to tell what the eventual consequences will be but a very important episode in the history of Europe.

Moscow Street Protests

[15:22]

There have been other major headlines in the news over the past couple of months. Let's think about the view from Moscow where there have been massive street protests against the Putin↗ Medvedev↗ regime.

What's interesting about the Moscow crisis? Well, a great deal is interesting. We might highlight the role of digital communications in the production of street dissent.

Doing so might help us to link the Moscow protests of last month with the Arab Spring↗ earlier in 2011 or even the Occupy Wall Street↗ movement of the fall for example?

What is the larger significance of the Moscow protests?

Might we see this episode as representing the resurgence of civil society perhaps against what Putin would characterize as Russian's guided democracy.

Another really important episode than with sort of big historical implications perhaps.

Iran Missile Test in Strait of Hormuz

[16:21]

There have been other events. Some more geopolitical in character over the past couple of months. Earlier this month Iran tested a new kind of anti-ship missile in the Straits of Hormuz↗. Moreover the Iranian government has threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz -- a narrow strait at the end of the Persian Gulf↗ through which about one-fifth of the world's oil shipping passes.

This is just one episode in a kind of long running confrontation between the Iranian regime of Ahmadinejad↗ with the West sort of led of course by the United States.

There are a variety of larger perspectives which we might bring to bear on this crisis but it is you know sort of self-evidently an important flash point in world geopolitics today.

Death of Kim Jong-il

[17:16]

Probably no new story got more attention last month than did the death of Kim Jong-il↗ in Pyongyang the capital of North Korea.

This was clearly a major, major turning point in the history of the North Korean regime. It's potentially a point of rupture. The regime of Kim Jong-il does not have such clear and cogent succession plans as did the regime of Kim Il-sung↗ his father.

The transition although it seems to be proceed smoothly enough; nonetheless, raises a whole host of urgent and important questions as regards the future relationship of North Korea to its neighbor South Korea, to the United States, to China, to the larger international community.

The transition within the regime raises the prospect at least of larger regional instability perhaps even embroiling the United States and China.

Interpretation of Current Events

[18:20]

My purpose though in sort of recapitulating these events is not to suggest that history is just a series of disconnected happenstance. Rather it is to try to probe some of the larger themes to which we might connect particular developments and events in our recent history.

So I'd like to sort of pose the question of how we go about locating the deep origins of these particular crises or flash points. Can we situate the events of our times in a larger historical perspective? Which is to say can we situate them within sort of a larger narrative framework? How do we relate past to present? How do we relate present to past in ways that grants new perspective perhaps even deeper perspective on the stakes and consequences of present day events.

Searching for the deep origins of particular events in the world today will not enable us to predict the future. But it might help us to get some sense of the vectors along which we might proceed as we move forward. Thinking about where we've come from can illuminate the possible paths that we might follow as we move forward. So to try to do this it might be useful to probe a little bit deeper into a least a couple of these episodes to think about how we could situate the events of the present in a larger historical context.

How might history as opposed to economics or political science help us to gain a vantage on the events of our own times?

So let's try to do this for just two of these particular episodes which I've identified here.

Interpretation of European Fiscal Crisis and Brussels Summit

[20:14]

Let's think about the European summit and the larger sort of European financial crisis of which it is part. How might we understand the summit among European heads of state that took place in Brussels last month?

One historical framework which might help us to understand the summit and its significance is of course the history of European integration.

European Integration

[20:43]

The European project as we might characterize it goes back a long way.

The first landmark treaty which sort of created the European economic community as it was at the time was signed all the way back in 1957 in Rome. The Treaty of Rome↗ provided for a single European market and for regulatory harmonization within it. It marked the first really important step in what you might see as a sort of long historical march towards the construction of an integrated European society if not an integrated European state.

There have been other landmarks in this historical progression. The Maastricht Treaty↗ of 1991 transformed the European Economic Community↗ into the European Union↗. It provided for monetary integration in the form of the single currency, the euro↗, which was introduced just before the turn of the millennium.

Thinking about these prior landmarks in the integration of Europe helps to us to see the integration of Europe as an iterative process, as a process in which the Europeans have edged closer and closer to more full and more formal integration of their political and especially economic affairs.

From this vantage point thinking about the history of European integration the Brussels Summit which was convened in response to the fiscal crisis in the Eurozone↗ might appear as simply the latest in a series of landmark episodes which have pushed the Europeans closer and closer towards the creation of a single superstate↗.

Whereas the Maastricht Treaty of 1991 provided for monetary harmonization within the European Union the Brussels Summit provides for a degree of fiscal integration.

It's really the first; well, not quite, but it's the first sort of major effort to require the member states of the European Union to follow sort of coherent and integrated fiscal agenda in their public finances.

So that's one perspective on what happened in Brussels earlier this month. It's just the latest chapter in a long running saga of European integration.

But there are other frameworks within which we might situation events and they offer different vantage points on the significance and consequence of recent episodes.

Globalization

[23:13]

We might see what happened in Brussels last month as an episode in the larger history of globalization.

Globalization↗ after all is a force which has been corrosive of fiscal and monetary sovereignty that is the fiscal and monetary sovereignty of nation-states since at least the 1970s.

A globalization in the form of, particularly the integration of financial markets, has imposed constraints on the deficits that governments can run, on public spending. The advent of globalization has been a somewhat progressive process. The integration of capital markets↗, though it's a story that could be traced back centuries, really begins to accelerate in recent times during the 1970s.

During the 1990s globalization becomes a widely discussed and widely theorized phenomenon. We begin to see the development of what you might characterize as a sort of global public policy prescriptions for a globalizing world in the 1990s. And these dictate that countries that want to participate in globalization need to balance their budgets and cut back public spending.

It's familiar enough. This is a policy prescription which is sometimes characterized usually by its critics as the Washington Consensus↗. And it's applied in 1980s and 1990s primarily to the developing world↗. This is really important.

North Americans and West Europeans don't really feel the constraining impact of globalization in the 1980s and 1990s. They might in fact have been its beneficiaries. You could certainly make that case so far as the United States is concerned.

Since the financial crisis of 2008↗ however this ceased to be so clear that the West gets to enjoy the benefits of globalization without subjecting itself to the discipline inherent within the globalization of financial markets.

We might see the Brussels summit, it's a summit which imposes rigid fiscal constraints on the member states of the European Union, as an episode in the larger history of globalization. The significance of which is that it marks the moment at which the West, previously the dominant center of the global economy, itself becomes subject to the rules and constraints that financial globalization implies.

So that's a quite different perspective. The Brussels crisis, not so much as an episode in the history of European integration, but as an episode in the history of globalization.

German Ascendancy

[25:57]

Thus far I've sort of focused on the economic aspects of the summit and their larger significance, but we must alternatively see the Brussel's summit as a sort of geopolitical↗ episode. As an episode whose larger consequences lie ultimately not in the economic relations of nations but in power politics↗.

From a geopolitical perspective, which is say a perspective concerned with power ultimately, with military and political power in world affairs, the German problem has been European's fundamental problem since the 1870s.

Germany of course was unified at the beginning of the 1870s under the guidance of Otto von Bismarck↗. The creation of the German state in the 1870s created a big problem for Europe because, as most of you know, Germany is too big and too powerful for the European system to be able to contain it. Germany twice tried to dominate Europe by military means in the 20th century. In 1914 Kaiser Wilheml II↗ launched Germany's first bid for European mastery. It was defeated but only really through the intervention of the United States, and Great Britain. In 1939 under Adolf Hitler↗ Germany launched a second bid for European mastery. Once again it was defeated, but only because of the intervention of the United States and Great Britain.

If we see the German problem as Europe's sort of fundamental geopolitical dilemma we gain a very different perspective on the Brussel's summit of last month. You might see the summit as less important for its political economic consequences than for its geopolitical ones.

Might the summit have signified the consolidation of German dominance of Europe?

After all German power has resurged since the reunification of Germany in 1990↗. For almost half a century after the Second World War Germany was divided.

The United States and Great Britain and the Soviet Union all maintained troops in Germany in effect keeping the German problem resolved through the expedient solution of division.

Since German reunification Germany has necessarily become more powerful, more influential, and we might see the Brussels summit as marking the sort of consecration of German power within the Eurozone.

Berlin under Chancellor Angela Merkel↗ is the driving force between fiscal discipline as a policy priority within the Eurozone. At the same time Germany has resisted sort of the more generous aspect of fiscal integration which would be the transfer of resources from the Eurozone's richest states to its less affluent states, primarily on the Mediterranean periphery.

[29:08]

One of the consequences of the Brussels summit (it's probably too early to tell) looks to be the creation of a sort of imbalanced system of fiscal integration whereby the peripheral European states, Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain, the pigs, are subjected to harsh fiscal discipline, but do not enjoy the benefit of fiscal transfers from the affluent north.

So we might see the creation of a sort of European fiscal system which serves the interests of Germany at the expense of the European periphery as marking the consolidation, perhaps ultimately the final accomplishment, of German dominance of Europe.

The fact that this domination was achieved peacefully rather than through military means might not deter us from calling it what it is.

I'm not saying that's what it is. I'm just saying that's a perspective. What I wanted to propose is not any ultimate adjudication as to what the larger significance of last month's Brussel's summit is, but rather just three vantage paints.

Conclusion: Interpretation of European Fiscal Crisis and Brussels Summit

[30:19]

We might see this episode as marking the next chapter in the history of European integration, we might see it as a chapter in the history of globalization, or we might see it as another chapter in the long history of Germany's struggle to dominate the European continent.

I don't want to adjudicate as to which of these perspectives is correct. It may be that none of them is. They're all very partial and somewhat superficial. The point is just that by thinking about the particular event from these different historical vantage points we get very different perspectives on the ultimate significance and meaning of particular events.

And we can do this kind of exercises for other crises, other episodes too.

Interpretation of Iran Missile Test in Strait of Hormuz

[31:02]

Let's think briefly about the crisis over the Straits of Hormuz. What's happening in the Persian Gulf today? What is happening in Iran's relations with the West?

Rouge State

[31:14]

Are we simply seeing another episode in which a kind of rogue state↗, a state that refuses to submit to the civilized code of conduct of the international community, is playing up, is making itself a nuisance for its neighbors and for the larger international community?

There would be good reason to see Iran as a rogue state. Iran has after all been providing resources to terrorist organizations for decades, it's a bully in its regional neighborhood, like Germany it seeks to be the dominant regional power. It's clearly working very hard to influence events in Iraq right now. And Iran is also working to build, allegedly working to build a nuclear weapon. This is somewhat more contestable. But there is suggestive evidence that Iran is sort of in the process of trying to develop a nuclear bomb that would greatly enhance its capacity to influence regional and world politics.

If we see Iran as a rogue state, as a state that refuse to act according to the usual customary rules of international conduct, then we gain a certain vantage point on events in the Persian Gulf today, and tomorrow.

We will probably conclude that what we're dealing with is just another episode in a long history of Iranian belligerence which can be resolved perhaps only through the orchestration of some eventual regime change in Tehran.

So that's one perspective on the crisis in the Persian Gulf -- is to see it as just a consequence of Iran -- a rogue state acting out.

Resistance to Western Imperialism

[33:06]

But there are other perspectives too which we might bring to bear on events. It's important to think about how particular events can be understood from a variety of vantage points.

From an Iranian perspective the crisis over the Straits of Hormuz might look like another sort of episode in the long history of Iranian or Middle Eastern resistance to Western imperialism.

After all the West's interests in the Middle East is motivated substantially by oil and this has been the case for a half-century. It would be, you know, just wrong to deny it.

Oil is what gives us as Westerners a sort of direct stake in the geopolitics of the Middle East.

And it's certainly the case that Iran like other Middle Eastern countries has been subject to political meddling even military intervention by Western powers in recent times. In 1953 of course the British intelligence and American intelligence agencies overthrew Mohammad Mosaddegh↗, the elected prime minister of Iran, and the history of British meddling in the region goes back even further than that.

From an Iranian perspective, the West's ... In treaties regarding Iran's nuclear aspirations, the threat of economic sanctions, might look rather like just another episode in a long history of Western meddling in Iranian affairs.

The Iranians might see their rather belligerent response as just another exhibition of anti-imperialism. A regime that defines itself in terms of opposition to the West, in terms of opposition particularly to the United States, since its 1979 coming to power in the Islamic Revolution↗ might well be inclined to locate the sort of present crisis in Iran's relations with the West as just another display of Western imperialism and Iranian resistance.

I don't want to suggest this perspective is right but it's a different perspective on events.

Clash of Civilizations

[35:26]

If we have much longer memories we might incline to see the conflict between Iran and the West over the Straits of Hormuz and Iran's nuclear ambitions as an episode in a long clash of civilizations↗.

Here the most influential theorist was Samuel Huntington↗, a Harvard political scientist who offered a journal article which became a book called The Clash of Civilizations that famously argued, and this was in the mid 1990s, that the most important fault lines in world affairs are not ideological, are not geopolitical even but are civilizational.

The world as Huntington saw it was divided into a number of discrete civilizations. The Western civilization, Orthodox Christian civilization, which is Russia and the post Soviet successor states, Indian civilization, African civilization, and Islamic civilization.

This was Huntington's sort of view of the world, and it's a world view that has been quite influential, particularly on our public discourse in the United States I would suggest.

But is there cause to see you know sort of recent conflicts as simply another episode in a long running clash of civilizations? Can we link disagreements over Iran's nuclear program and the Straits of Hormuz to the Crusades↗ of the 12th and 13th century?

Probably not, but some might be inclined to do so.

We could after all see sort of recent international crisis, the rise of radical Islamism↗ in the Middle East since the 1950s, the Iranian revolution of 1979↗, the rise of Al-Qaeda↗ in the 1990s, the 9/11 attack↗ in 2001, as sort of flash points in a long running clash of civilizations.

My own view is that this would be far too simplistic a framework in which to understand the complex politics of the Middle East.

It's framework that obscures conflict within the Islamic world, profound differences between Shiite↗ Iran and its Sunni↗ neighbors, but it's a perspective that some commentators on the region would nonetheless favor.

So we sort of offer it as an alternative paradigm or vantage point on events.

Conclusion: Interpretation of Iran Missile Test in Strait of Hormuz

[37:51]

Here we have once again sort of three different perspectives. Do we see the friction that exists between Iran and the United States today as a rogue state acting out? As a consequence of the West's hegemonic aspirations? Or as the manifestation of a civilizational clash that is perhaps over a millennium old. So three different perspectives.

I'm not going to tell you which is correct. Probably none of them is correct as a singular construct.

Conclusion: Interpretation of Current Events

[38:27]

But thinking about how events look from different perspective helps us to get a handle on the range of possible interpretations. And that's really important. Because not everybody sees events in the same way. The Iranians may see the conflict over the Straits of Hormuz in very different terms from those in which we see them. And it's important for us to think about the historical reference points that Iranian leaders might use to comprehend an existing crisis.

Utility of Interpretation

[38:57]

So what then is the sort of utility for historians of the kinds of explanatory narrative that I've just constructed?

By linking particular events to sort of larger frameworks of meaning what do we accomplish?

I think the first thing we do is we connect the present to the past in ways that help us to sort of comprehend the deeper significance of particular events. We get a vantage point -- some sense of the larger stakes -- and perhaps also of the larger consequences.

We should also be aware that different narrative interpretations of events, different kinds of frameworks, such as those which I've proposed, carry quite different political implications.

There are stakes in how we comprehend particular events. The larger frameworks of meaning within which we locate them are often very loaded ones. Let's think about this for a moment.

Implications of Different Interpretations: European Fiscal Crisis and Brussels Summit

[40:07]

Let's think just about the European case.

Do we think about the Brussels summit as fundamentally an accomplishment in the history of European integration?

Liberals who are in favor of globalization, and here I use the world liberal↗ in sort of the more classical sense↗, might be inclined to do this, insofar as liberals have welcomed the European project as a project that has made Europe more peaceful, perhaps more prosperous, that has expanded the domain of markets. What we saw last month in Brussels might look very positive from that perspective. It might look simply to be the most recent episode in a long running history of progressive integration.

On the other hand people who sort of self-define as critics and opponents of globalization, who see globalization as a voracious force that undermines and erodes the sovereignty of nation-states, and in the process undercuts public well-being might be really wary of what happened in Brussels. They might adhere to a sort of view of events which emphasizes the corrosive and destructive consequences of globalization and sees the outcome of the Brussel's summit as sort of confirming the influence of global forces on nation-states -- insofar and it sort of qualifies the autonomy of governments to run fiscal deficits, and to spend to provide public welfare programs.

People who see themselves as foreign policy realists↗, sort of a dying breed, but there are some still out there, might conversely want to emphasize the geopolitical aspects of the Brussels summit last month. They might emphasize the narrative of sort of German hegemony↗ which I sketched out a few minutes ago.

And there are political stakes to each of these interpretations. I don't have to tell you. You know what they are. I think it's already clear enough.

Conclusion: Utility of Interpretation

[42:13]

Still with that caution, that the way in which we frame events is always to some extent political, I want to really emphasize the point that explanatory narratives such as these are very useful. They're useful because they help us to situate events within larger frameworks of meaning.

And ultimately doing that is what enables us to connect the past to the present. It's what enables us to see particular conflagrations or crises in the present moment as the construction of past circumstance.

It may even help us to make intelligent predictions as to where things might go in the future. At least as to what the consequences of particular developments in the future might be.

One of the great values of historical training I would suggest is that it helps to equip us with the skills necessary to locate particular events and crises within larger frameworks. And doing this, being able to segue between the particular and the profound, helps us to gain some vantage point on the larger stakes -- on the larger significance of events.

And that is in a sense what this class aspires to teach you to do. It's not a class in contemporary ... you know, it's not a class in the history of the present moment as such. We're going to be delving fairly deep into the past, into the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s. We're not going to be talking about current affairs. But by talking about the history of the world in the second half of the twentieth century I hope that we'll be able to gain the ability to link events in ways that suggest the larger stakes and the larger consequences of particular episodes and crises. I think the ability to do this is one of the most valuable things that historical training can offer.

And if you come out of this class feeling that you are better able to link the particular to the cosmic then I will feel that I have done my job.

We could talk more about events in the world today but doing so would not necessarily give you a clear sense of what this semester's lecture class is about.

Course Overview

[44:39]

So in having sort of given you a sense of what I want to accomplish in terms of the larger pedagogic objectives in this class I would like to sort of take you through the nuts and bolts of the class so that you know exactly what we're going to be doing over the course of the semester ahead.

Questions Allowed During the Lecture

[44:57]

I should also say, particularly at this point, now that we're going through the specifics, if you have any questions, please do interrupt. And that goes for the entire semester. If you have any questions at any point, if anything is unclear, just raise your hand and I'll be glad to field questions. I don't want you to think that have to wait until the end of the lecture to field questions.

Have any of you been in lecture classes with me before? Okay.

So you know that I can run like right to the end of the allotted session, so if you save your questions to the end, you might not get to ask them, so raise your hands, and you know interrupt and I'll be happy.

Course Content

[45:31]

Okay, what are we going to be doing in this lecture theater this semester? What is this class all about?

How are we going to accomplish what I've just promised to do?

Well, the class is really about the postwar world, so sort of the history since 1945.

It's not a comprehensive history since 1945. There is a great deal that is left out. It would be impossible in a single semester to do a total history of the modern world.

Rather than tell you what I've left out, you'll figure that out as we go along, let me tell you about what the class focuses on. What are our priorities for the semester?

The class is most interested in big international themes. In geopolitics, the clash of great power rivalries, in the march of decolonization↗, the transformation of relations between the world's most affluent minority, the Global North↗, and its impoverished majority, the Global South↗.

And in what we might call global economics↗ or geoeconomics↗.

The march of globalization and its implications for international relations will be a sort of central concern.

So if there are two sort of narrative strands that run most boldly through the lecture series ahead they are I would suggest sort of geopolitics or sort of great power conflicts and global political economy.

Sort of the thinking about the changing organization of the world economy and the distribution of resources within it.

This course is fundamentally interested in the international panorama that it is with dealing with the world as a whole.

Of course comprehending complex events in world history requires us to pay careful attention to the interior histories of nation-states.

But we won't be focusing on just one or two nation-states, rather we'll be shifting our focus as the global panorama requires us to do.

Besides emphasizing sort of big international themes in the world's politics and economics we'll be attentive to what we might call structural developments in the history of international society.

Demography↗, for example, this is not a class about demography, but it's impossible to deal with the postwar world without thinking really carefully about the ways in which demographic change produces other kinds of transformation and development and that's something that we'll be doing.

We're also going to pay attention to the ways in which technological innovation afflicts larger international economic and political events.

We'll pay attention to cultural developments too. Particularly insofar as they have political and economic consequences for the affairs of the world.

So this is a course that is really focused on the sort of the big international themes but it's my conviction that being attentive to big international themes requires us to pay careful attention to a whole variety of historical topics and problems.

Besides being a course in the history of the world since 1945 this is of course a course in contemporary history.

As I've been explaining through the first part of today's session one of my overriding purposes in teaching this class is to help all of you to situate your own present circumstances in some larger historical context.

I believe that studying the history of recent world affairs will help you to do that. Where necessary we will delve deeper into the past than 1945. 1945 is a sort of crude point of departure and where the comprehension of the present requires us to go back beyond 1945 we will do so.

Organizing Narratives

[49:56]

So what are the sort of major organizing narratives that we're going to be dealing with? I've just presented for you a series of organizing narratives that could be used to comprehend a couple of episodes in the present. So it would be appropriate to tell you a little bit more about the organizing narratives that we're going to be dealing with in the course of the semester ahead.

The Cold War

[50:18]

One of the most obvious ones is the Cold War↗. The Cold War is the central geopolitical conflict of the postwar world (at least of the postwar world until the 1990s).

So we'll be paying careful attention to the history of the Cold War in this lecture class.

Decolonization

[50:36]

No less important, and I might suggest even more important, than the history of the Cold War is the history of decolonization↗.

Remind yourselves that in 1945 many human beings in many parts of the world still inhabit colonial empires. That is to say they're the subjects of distant European colonial powers.

By the mid 1970s nobody really lives in a colony anymore. There are a few cases in which you might argue colonialism survives but they're the exception and not the rule. Comprehending how decolonization comes about is one of the really really big you know sort of historical challenges for anybody who wants to understand the postwar world. And it's a theme to which I'll draw substantial attention in the semester ahead.

Economic Development

[51:25]

We're also going to think a little bit about the history, or think quite a lot about the history of development -- economic development that is.

The world in 2012 is certainly more affluent than it was in 1950. Yet there have been changes in the distribution of affluence.

To put it most crudely the inequality within societies across the world has increased since 1945 while inequality between societies has decreased. Once poor countries like China have caught up considerably to the affluent West. Meanwhile within the West inequalities have widened.

So we're thinking about the history of economic development in terms that are sort of sensitive to the big global vectors. That's one major narrative strand that I want to emphasize.

Globalization

[52:25]

And the last is globalization. Globalization is distinct from development insofar as it is the history of integration. Thinking about the history of development does not necessarily require us to be particularly attentive to the relationships among the world's economies. Thinking about the history of globalization does.

At the beginning of the postwar era in 1945 the world's major economic units, which are the world's major nation-states, are relatively self-contained, relatively autonomous, certainly by comparison with their relations today.

So understanding how the global economy becomes more integrated and reflecting upon the sort of political and international consequences of that integration, which is to say globalization, will be a central priority for this course.

Learning Objectives

[53:20]

What are you going to learn through all of this?

Besides gaining an overview of recent world history, which I presume is the reason that most of you are here, I hope that you are going to learn to be adept consumers of history. I'm not going to teach you everything you need to know about the recent past and nor is anybody else.

If you can come away from this class with a sense of the landscape and with the skills necessary to drill down into particular historical details, and to particular historical narratives, as your needs in the future require you to do then I will have done my job.

This is a course that doesn't aspire to teach you everything about history. That would be impossible. Even if we had two semesters. Rather what I want to do is to give you a sense of the historical landscape and to equip you with the skills and the tools that will enable you as you require and see fit to probe more deeply into events in your own time and on your own terms.

Schedule and Syllabus

[54:24]

How are we going to do this?

Well, at this point a walk through the syllabus might help.

Does anybody not have a copy of the syllabus by the way?

Okay, where are the remaining syllabi? Is there a pile of them somewhere?

Okay, maybe we could send one to the back and...

The syllabus is available on the bSpace website by the way so if you don't have a copy in front of you then you can easily acquire one.

The syllabus will just give you a basic overview of the sort of narrative progression of this lecture course.

• We're going to start off the substance on Thursday talking about the world crisis of the 1930s and 1940s. How did the Second World War and its resolution foreground the history of the postwar world?

• Next we'll talk about the Cold War in the second week or the origins of the Cold War.

• Week three we're going to talk about the creation of new nation-states in the Global South↗ and the consolidation of welfare states in the Global North↗.

• Week four we'll make comparisons between the political economy of the socialist↗ world and the managed capitalism↗ of the West in the 1950s and 1960s.

• We'll deal with decolonization as a sort of political rather than economic theme. In the fifth week of the course we'll look at the struggles that the European colonial powers waged to retain control of their empires and we'll think about the relationship between the Cold War as one big conflict and decolonization as another sort of historical macro narrative.

• In the sixth week we'll sort of think about why the Cold War was so stable as it was. We'll look at the efforts that political leaders made to stabilize the Cold War, and we will inquire as to who pushed against the sort of stability of the Cold War system as it came to be in the 1960s and 1970s and with what consequences.

• The seventh week looks at what I characterize as sort of a crisis of the Cold War international order in the 1970s.

• Week eight takes us through the oil crisis, a really important turning point in the relations between the Global North and Global South and the resurgence of the Cold War towards the end of the 70s.

• Week nine focuses on what I would characterize as the resurgence of globalization from the 70s. We look at the rise of free market economics in the West particularly in the United States and Great Britain and then the global dissemination of free market solutions in the 1980s and thereafter.

• Week ten will focus on the end of the Cold War.

• Week eleven on sort of the international relations of the 1990s.

• Week twelve we'll explore some of the tensions within the globalizing world of what we might by this point define loosely as the present -- including one lecture which will focus more carefully on the experiences of China -- arguably the world's rising superpower↗.

• Finally we'll conclude by thinking about the world since the 2008 financial crisis↗. This is really recent history. But what I want to do in the last couple of lectures is to try to locate the economic malaise of the West since 2008 in a larger history of economic change since the Second World War. And to pose the question of whether the West may ultimately be in the throes of historical decline vis-à-vis the rest of the world.

So that's a very succinct overview I don't want to belabor this because I'll be belaboring it over the next thirteen weeks.

Student Assignments and Exams

[58:45]

So that's what I'm going to do. What are you going to do?

What I have here is a table that identifies the basic assignments that we're going to use to grade you for want of a gentler verb.

This is a, you know, upper division lecture class. The nature of the assignments and the weighting assignments is fairly typical one for a class of this nature.

We do have sections they'll be a little bit more on sections to come. Section participation is worth 10% of your overall grade.

Response Papers

[59:29]

We also have response papers. There are going to be three response papers due during the course of the semester. Rather than have weekly responses, which can be rather pro forma↗, I'd prefer to have slightly more substantive response papers and to require fewer of them.

So you're going to do three response papers and the best two grades will count.

I think that that's written out in the syllabus.

If you're happy with the grades for your first two response papers you don't have to submit a third.

So you could end up submitting two response papers if you do well enough on the first two.

The topic of the response papers will be sort of determined by your graduate student instructors.

They'll talk more about the particular assignments in your first section meetings.

Final Paper

[60:20]

There's also going to be a final paper. This is worth a quarter of the overall grade. It's a fairly succinct final paper. Just six or seven pages.

I'll talk much more about the final paper as we get closer to it. But I'll simply say at this point that insofar as one of my objectives for this course is to help you develop a sort of historical perspective or a historian's perspective on present day events you will have the option in the final paper of writing a historically informed policy brief on some issue of present day importance.

We'll talk more as we get closer to the final paper as about what exactly that might look like.

Exams

[61:05]

The examinations -- the best part of the course -- what are they going to look like?

There's a midterm exam. It's only worth 10% of the grade on Thursday, March 1st.

In an unusual display of generosity I decided to give you the Tuesday before the midterm off so that you can prepare for it.

The midterm will be a take-home midterm which I hope makes it a little bit easier for you to deal with.

Finally the final exam which is worth 30% of the grade will take place on Wednesday, May 9th.

It will cover the entirety of the course readings and course materials.

Are there any questions about the assignments or does this look sensible enough to all of you?

(Student Question)

It's not.

I would like for it to be but there are regulations at the level of the College of Letters and Sciences that restrict whether final exams can be take-home or not.

If those restrictions, if those regulations change, during the semester ahead then I will make it take-home.

So if any of you have any political influence then you could use it to accomplish that end.

Course Readings

[62:25]

Alright, what about the course readings? What are you going to be reading during the course of this semester that lies ahead of us?

This is a reading list that has been assembled with a great deal of sensitivity to the feedback that I have gotten from students in semesters past on the evaluation forms that are passed out at the end of the semester.

One of the concerns I always get on those evaluation forms is that there's too much reading in my lecture classes.

I think that this is probably true of history classes in general though there may be anomalous historians who were gentler in the readings they assign.

But this semester's I have really really tried hard to circumscribe the reading list. I think the last time I taught this course there were eight or nine books assigned. Seriously. I can circulate the syllabus if you don't believe me.

This semester we just have four books that are assigned.

These are books that are intended to provide a sort of comprehensive historical overview. The first two books, David Reynolds↗, One World Divisible, Daniel Yergin↗'s The Commanding Heights, together offer, you know pretty comprehensive perspective on postwar international and in Yergin's case sort of economic history.

The other two books, Menzie Chinn↗ and Jeff Frieden's Lost Decades, and Jeff Engel's edited volume on the fall of the Berlin Wall. Fairly short books that are germane only to particular weeks of the syllabus.

Besides being shorter than in weeks past I hope that this semester's reading list is also a little bit cheaper than has been the case ... I always try to be sensitive to the costs of readings, but by assigning fewer books I hope that I've also been able to reduce the overall expenditure for all of you.

The total price of these books, I looked it up on Amazon, and I was really considerate, ranges from about $45 to about $70, depending on whether you buy the books used or new.

That's probably cheaper than the textbook layout for most of your classes is. At least I hope that I'm doing better than the chemistry and physics departments with their heavy textbooks.

If the cost is a concern my advice would be that the key texts to acquire are Reynolds and Yergin.

The others you'll find it easier to make due within the library. But I think you'll find it really useful to have the first two texts because those are utilized in multiple weeks readings.

There are other readings besides the four books that are recommended for purchase in the syllabus. These will all be available via bSpace. So you don't have to worry about buying copies of anything beyond the textbooks.

I very much hope that the readings are manageable. The reading load has been designed to be manageable. There may be two weeks in which you're expected to read an entire book. No more than that. And some weeks it's just a couple of chapters. If you have problems with the readings come talk to me, go talk to your GSI, and we can probably give you some counsel on how to read historical texts.

Look reading history is different from reading literature. The purpose in most of our readings is not to read every word of every sentence. Rather you need to sort of read for gist, you need to read so as to acquire some sense of what the really important events are, and of what the author's line of interpretation might happen to be.

But you're not reading this sort of to appreciate the prose. And if you find that you're struggling with the readings then I would humbly suggest that you might be reading in the wrong way for a course of this nature, and we can sort of talk about how you might do things a little differently.

Okay.

Sections and Section Attendance

[66:39]

The most important part of the class is not the, not the lectures, but the sections. That's where the real teaching and learning occurs.

I'm delighted that the history department was able to provide section meetings for this class. And I hope that you're as excited about them as I am.

We've two terrific GSIs who are going to be teaching the class. Maybe could I ask David and Brian to stand up.

(silence)

Okay, maybe I'll ask you each to introduce yourselves.

(inaudible)

Great. And Brian?

(silence)

Great. Thank you.

Let me simply reinforce the point. The sections serve a vital pedagogical purpose. They are where you learn what you need to know. The GSIs, not me, are really the ones who are going to be teaching you.

As an administrative point section participation really is mandatory. It's not optional. You can't download the lecture. You can't download the section on Itunes and listen to it. If you miss the section, you miss the section, and you've missed a great deal. As a way of enforcing section participation, which I hate to say, you're all adults you know what the deal is, but we need to have some you know kind of regulatory mechanism to enforce section participation if necessary and I believe that what is written in the syllabus is that if you miss three or more sections, or maybe more than three sections without a good explanation then you're in danger of failing the course.

So that's you know just important to remember. That we really do expect you to be present for section meetings. If you anticipate any problems with the section schedule please do get in contact with your GSI right away because you know we have ways in which we can resolve those kinds of dilemmas. But don't bring up the issue unless it's a real scheduling conflict. You know the fact that you know the eleven o'clock section coincides with Oprah is not ... Is Oprah still on? Or, no?

Okay, well, then in that case that won't be a problem for anybody.

That's why we're able to schedule sections at eleven now.

So if you're not enrolled in section ... You should all be enrolled in a section because I believe that ... What is the registrar's electronic system called? Is it Tele-BEARS? I believe that Tele-BEARS required you to sign up for a section when you signed up for the class. Is that correct?

Okay, so you should all be enrolled already in a section. If you're not then get in contact with us and we'll try to figure that out.

Okay, I think that's all that I wanted to cover in terms of the nuts and bolts of the course.

Student Questions

[70:13]

So let me ask if you have any questions. What can I tell you about the semester ahead?

If any of you are sitting on the fence about whether to take the class or not if there's information that I can provide that would help you make your mind up one way or the other?

(inaudible)

Yeah.

I prefer essay questions. Historically I have not utilized ID sections I think I did in the first lecture class that I taught at this institution. But you can just expect three essays.

Are there any other questions?

Office Hours

[70:51]

Okay, good. The last point that I wanted to make then is: I don't think that I included this in the slideshow but it is on the syllabus. I have office hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays which are also the days in which we meet for the lectures. The office hours run from eleven to noon. And please do come along and introduce yourselves even if you don't have particular questions then I'd be really glad to have the chance to meet all of you.

If you want to stop by and those office hours are not convenient for you because I understand that you have other classes then just send me an email and we can schedule some alternative time to meet.

But with that I think that I may have finished the section a little earlier for possibly the first time. So let's hope that's an omen for the rest of the semester.