Great Course - Modern Western History

Foundations of Western Civilization II: A History of the Modern Western World

 Taught By Professor Robert Bucholz, D.Phil., Oxford University, Loyola University Chicago 

I finished yet another long, but very worthwhile course from The Teaching Company.  In Western Civilization II, Dr. Bucholz takes us through the period from the Renaissance to modern day, exploring the major events, people and forces which were involved in the creation of the western civilization we know.  In 48 lectures, the number of topics which were covered is large, but Dr. Bucholz does a fine job of condensing large events into manageable topics, and tying them together in themes.  Here are but a few things which immediately come to mind when thinking about what I learned.

• The nations and borders we think of today are far less permanent than we treat them.  Most of us living today were not around when nations traded their territories like game pieces as the result of wars, but it happened for hundreds of years.  Our post-WW2 sensibilities might find it heard to believe, but "Germany" hasn't really existed as a country with clear borders for very long at all, in the grand scheme of European history (for example.)  

• The Holy Roman Empire was not run by Rome -- it was (if I didn't get lost in all the shifting of territories) Austrian.

• Allegiance to a particular kind of Christianity was tremendously powerful in deciding which states/countries would ally with each other.

• But so was family -- the political marriages and their centuries-long effects are hard to believe.

• The living conditions of the "poorest" members of society were more difficult than we modern people can really imagine for hundreds of years.  Yet, in the early industrial age, they got even worse -- in terms of health and life-expectancy point -- until society broke away from the idea of the Great Chain of Being, which presumed that the lower classes were supposed to be low, and the Enlightenment allowed the idea of true equality of all people to take root in the Western mind.

• Western Civilization was amazingly close to taking an entirely different form when Hitler and his Third Reich were winning the WW2, and yet it was not so much a "new" form -- but rather a more complete, more radical, form of the old ideals -- where people believed it was natural for the weak to be subjugated by the strong. 

Fitting politics and art, religion and geography, economics and science all into a tapestry of understanding, this course shows us how "Civilization" is more a verb than it is a noun.  I recommend this course.  Highly.