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Dec 22, 2024
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2021-2022 Graduate Catalog [ARCHIVED CATALOG]
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HS 580 Dangerous Continent: Europe 1945-2005
Examining Europe’s main events and processes during the years from 1945 to 2005. Coming after a disastrous half-century of the Great Depression, political extremism, and two world wars, Europe’s history after World War II is often seen as less momentous and essentially peaceful. In fact, this view is something of an illusion. While there were no world wars or great economic disasters between 1945 and 2005 Europe continued to be a key flashpoint for crucial, sometimes truly historic, developments – from the beginnings of the Cold War to the European powers’ loss of their vast overseas empires, from the fall of communism in the miraculous revolutions of 1989-91 to the disastrous disintegration of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s, from the sudden, unexpected presence of a large Muslim minority and all the tensions and dilemmas this presented to the al-Qaeda attacks of 2004 and 2005 in Madrid and London and the riots by youths of Muslim African heritage across France, in 2005. The first date allows us to see how Europe attempted to begin anew, after the worst war in history, where Europe was one of the main theaters of operations. The latter dates allow us to see, in stark relief, how Europe had changed over the subsequent six decades and how it is now grappling with its new, unexpected religious and ethnic diversity.
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