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• Postgraduate study:
• Courses
• Apply now
• Fees and funding
• Accommodation
• Open Events
• Work placement
• Study resources
• Student support
• Research
• Campuses
• Choose Kingston
• Disability and mental health support

Patterns of Power: International History 1815-1999

• Module code: HS7006
• Year: 2018/9
• Level: 7
• Credits: 30
• Pre-requisites: None
• Co-requisites: None

Summary

This interdisciplinary postgraduate option module focuses on the history of international relations from the early nineteenth century almost to the end of the twentieth century. It examines historical forces and factors that have influenced relations between empires, states and nations over a period of almost two centuries. Focusing in part on Europe and the US and also on key events in parts of the Middle East, Africa and Asia, the module critically analyses and evaluates the role of governments, state agencies and non-state transnational organisations. It enquires critically into phenomena such as imperialism, internationalism and anticolonialism. From a variety of historical perspectives and interpretations and through the use of case studies, it scrutinises the historic course of international relations in terms of power and politics, diplomacy and statecraft, empire and race.

Aims

• To facilitate critical appreciation of the historical background to and context of international affairs;

• To familiarise students with empirical and theoretical approaches to postgraduate-level historical study of international relations;

• To equip students with the skills to evaluate to a high level historical interpretations, methodologies and sources and to communicate their findings clearly and analytically;

• To facilitate comparative and effective understanding of power, continuity and change in international affairs through research and analysis of key historical case studies.

Learning outcomes

• Critically evaluate and analyse historical processes of change in international relations;

• Demonstrate sophisticated historical knowledge and understanding of state and non-state agencies and institutions in international affairs;

• Reflect critically on historiographical and theoretical developments in the history of international relations; 

• Demonstrate skill in the interpretation of primary source materials relating to historical events and ideas in international affairs;

• Compare and contrast critically, through case studies, the significance of power, continuity and change in the history of international relations.

Curriculum content

• Studying international history and the history of international relations
• The Congress of Vienna and the Concert of Europe
• Diplomacy, statecraft, war and power in mid-to-late nineteenth century Europe
• Late nineteenth century European expansion and imperialism
• Imperial and international rivalry to 1914
• Non-western transnational movements: Pan-Africanism, Pan-Arabism, Pan-Islam
• Internationalism and the League of Nations
• Nationalism and anticolonialism between the wars
• The origins and establishment of the UN
• Making new states: from British Empire to British Commonwealth
• The Non-Aligned movement
• International relations in the Cold War era and beyond

Examples of case studies (not all will be offered each year)

• International affairs after Napoleon: the Congress of Vienna and Concert of Europe
• Bismarckian diplomacy
• Re-examining ‘the Great Game' in nineteenth century central Asia
• The origins of the First World War: a hundred-year debate
• Crises of internationalism in the 1930s: Manchuria and Abyssinia
• From Atlantic Charter to UN Charter
• Transnational rhetoric and resistance: key examples of anticolonialism
• International affairs and decolonization
• Interpreting the Cold War: Bipolar or Global?
• Espionage, surveillance and international relations

Teaching and learning strategy

The  module will be delivered through weekly two-hour sessions combining lecture and seminar. The first teaching block will focus on theoretical and empirical approaches to the history of international relations and of international organisations and institutions.

The second teaching block will explore, through close reading and interpretation of primary and secondary sources relating to selected case studies, significant events in the history of international relations.  

Breakdown of Teaching and Learning Hours

Assessment strategy

Summative assessment is by means of essays. Students write two 1,500 word essays in the first teaching block, one midway and one at the end. Students write a further 3000 word essay, focused on a case study of their choice, at the end of the second teaching block. Formative assessment includes feedback and feed forward on essays and on student participation and oral presentations in seminars. 

Mapping of Learning Outcomes to Assessment Strategy (Indicative)

Elements of Assessment

Achieving a pass

It IS NOT a requirement that any major assessment category is passed separately in order to achieve an overall pass for the module.

Bibliography core texts

Best, Antony, Jussi N. Hanhimäki, Joseph A. Maiolo and Kirsten E. Schulze, International History of the Twentieth Century and Beyond, 3^rd edition (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014). 

Buzan, Barry, and George Lawson, The Global Transformation: History, Modernity and the Making of International Relations (Cambridge University Press, 2015).

Bibliography recommended reading

Burbank, Jane, and Frederick Cooper, Empires in World History: Power and the Politics of Difference (Princeton University Press, 2010).

James, Leslie, and Elizabeth Leake (eds.), Decolonization and the Cold War: Negotiating Independence (London: Bloomsbury, 2015).

Manela, Erez, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 

Mazower, Mark, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Princeton University Press, 2009).

Osterhammel, Jürgen,The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton University Press, 2014).

Pedersen, Susan, The Guardians: The League of Nations and the Crisis of Empire (Oxford University Press, 2015).

Schroeder, Paul W., The Transformation of European Politics, 1763-1848 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994).

Sergeev, Evgeny, The Great Game, 1856-1907: Russo-British Relations in Central and East Asia, 1856-1907 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Vick, Brian E., The Congress of Vienna: Power and Politics after Napoleon (Harvard University Press, 2014).

Vitalis, Robert, White World Order, Black Power Politics: The Birth of American International Relations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

Westad, Odd Arne,The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of our Times (Cambridge University Press, 2006).