Course Description:After almost a century of global economic and then military dominance by the United States (soon to be superseded by
China, India et al?), it may be hard to remember that only a little over a hundred years ago, a small island nation on the periphery
of Europe “ruled” over 1/5 of the world’s population, possessed the largest and most modern navy on the globe,
and still served as the economic epicenter of the western world (though even then rapidly losing that position to the U.S. and Germany),
as it had ever since the Industrial Revolution started there nearly two centuries before.
On the heels of Great Britain’s rise to world power status came the English language itself and British culture more generally,
so that even today, students read Shakespeare, Austen and Dickens in places as wide apart as Adelaide, Australia, Norman, Oklahoma and in fact across Europe as well.
Meanwhile, the influence of all things British, from the monarchy to the Beatles to Arsenal, has continued well beyond the end of the British empire itself,
down to the present day. And though Great Britain now wrestles with many of the same issues facing all the “mature” western democracies, from
deindustrialization to the challenges of transforming itself into a multi-cultural society and now trying to manage the aftermath of Brexit,
it does so against a unique backdrop of great historic depth and complexity. |
