The Rise of European Civilization (to A.D. 1715). This course is a survey of European history from antiquity through the Age of Discovery and to the coming of European colonialism. It examines ideas and events that contributed to the rise of Europe, its political, economic, and social institutions, and, especially, its conceptions of itself. Here the course examines how Europe's drive to colonize and exploit other lands and resources might have been informed by the Europeans' perceptions of their own culture and their special place in the world.
In this regard, the course focuses on European contacts with eastern cultures through the ages in order to determine how Europeans conceived of themselves particularly as a "western" civilization? Thus, the course engages such issues as how did the West perceive the non-West (and act on those notions), and, commensurately, how did the non-West perceive the West? Discussions will include European contacts with the Middle East, Africa, and Asia; invasions by the Mongols, Moors, and Turks, European invasions of the Middle East, Jews living in Europe, and the extent of Arabic knowledge and erudition in Europe in the Middle Ages. As a case in point, the course will consider the Crusades from both the European and Arab perspectives to show how different cultures viewed the same historical processes differently. Through this approach, we seek to understand the extent to which a common European identity derived from a sense of shared values versus entirely different people in other places who did not share those values. Finally, we hope to answer the basic questions: what is Western Civilization, and how did the West become the West?