Seventeenth-Century Europe
- Course Code
- HIST 0530
- Course Type
- Tutorials
- Subject Credit
- Course Availability
Seventeenth-century Europe saw great violence and destruction, but also intellectual and technological creativity that in many ways laid the foundations of the modern world. Confrontations between Catholicism and various strands of Protestantism culminated in the Thirty Years War, which engulfed Germany, and brought in many other European powers, between 1618 and 1648. France was at the apogee of its political and cultural might under Louis XIV (1643-1715), encapsulated in Baroque art and architecture. Europe engaged with the rest of the world through trade, exploration and colonialism, from the Ottoman Empire, to Spanish America, to the Dutch in south-east Asia. The intellectual sphere saw the scientific revolution and the early enlightenment, as witnessed for instance in the work of Gallileo, Spinoza and Descartes.
Sample topics:
The Thirty Years’ War
Louis XIV
The Scientific Revolution
The Dutch ‘Golden Age’
Trade and imperialism
Europe and the Ottoman Empire
Absolutism and republicanism
Gender and family life