杏吧论坛

Dr Gagan D. S. Sood SAR 2.07

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (杏吧论坛 and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (杏吧论坛 and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (杏吧论坛 & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is about the developments that led to the emergence of our modern world. A variety of conditions have been highlighted by historians as responsible for this, including government reform, agricultural practices, empirical rationality, consumption patterns, military conflict, property rights, family arrangements, territorial conquest, revenue administration, and sheer accident. Although scholarly consensus on the leading-edge conditions still eludes us, there is broad agreement that the polities of northwestern Europe, eastern China and northern India played critical roles, and that the fateful step change occurred between the late sixteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

We examine these polities and the relations between them from two distinct but complementary perspectives. These perspectives define the two terms of the course. One is historiographical and centres on received interpretive frameworks, the other is historical and builds on our best current knowledge of Eurasia in the period. In Michaelmas Term, we study the most influential paradigms and narratives which have been elaborated by historians to make sense of the early modern step change which transformed the capacities of human endeavour. Each crystallises a specific set of structures and gives primacy to different polities of Eurasia, with a particular stress on Early Modern England and the English Atlantic, Late Ming and High Qing China, and Mughal and post-Mughal India. In studying these frameworks, we gain familiarity with the most significant attributes of these polities, and how they have been interpreted by scholars. In Lent Term, we study the ways in which the individual polities of the three regions addressed the near-universal problems marking all complex states and societies. The solutions to these problems - grouped under the rubric of ‘centralised institutions & ideology of rule’, ‘indirect rule & political economy’, and ‘plurality, them & us’ - powerfully shaped their future trajectories, and had a direct bearing on relations between Europe, China and India. By recovering the most consequential structures and solutions over the two terms of this course, we thereby seek to apprehend the genesis of the modern world.

The School aims to run in-person seminars, subject to circumstances, with some online provision if and where necessary. There will be a reading week in the MT and the LT.

As no prior knowledge of the course’s subject is either assumed or required, it is essential for students to do the set readings and assignments, attend the seminars and engage actively in discussion. It is also strongly recommended that students meet informally outside the class setting to compare notes and learn from each other.