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DEGREE REGULATIONS & PROGRAMMES OF STUDY 2024/2025

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DRPS : Course Catalogue : School of History, Classics and Archaeology : Postgraduate (History, Classics and Archaeology)

Postgraduate Course: Theories of Empire in the Early Modern Period (online) (PGHC11442)

Course Outline
SchoolSchool of History, Classics and Archaeology CollegeCollege of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
Credit level (Normal year taken)SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate)
Course typeOnline Distance Learning AvailabilityNot available to visiting students
SCQF Credits20 ECTS Credits10
SummaryThis course looks at the development and meaning of the concept(s) of 'empire' from the late sixteenth until the early seventeenth centuries, using the Stuart ideas of empire as its starting point.
Course description This course looks at the development and meaning of the concept(s) of 'empire' and its intellectual and theoretical underpinnings. Taking the Stuart ideas of empire as its focal point, it addresses the concepts and theories on which these drew and which they further developed. Moreover, they will be studied within the wider comparative context of the Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Dutch empires. Finally, we will look at the historiography and finish with a critical 21st century assessment of the sins the Stuart empire.
Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites Co-requisites
Prohibited Combinations Other requirements None
Course Delivery Information
Academic year 2024/25, Not available to visiting students (SS1) Quota:  19
Course Start Semester 1
Course Start Date 16/09/2024
Timetable Timetable
Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) Total Hours: 200 ( Online Activities 22, Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4, Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours 174 )
Assessment (Further Info) Written Exam 0 %, Coursework 100 %, Practical Exam 0 %
Additional Information (Assessment) 3,000 word essay (80%)
750 word research report (10%)
Forum posts (10%)
Feedback Students will receive extensive written feedback on their essays. They will also have ample opportunity to go over that feedback with the course organiser in their designated office hours (over Skype) or by email.

Regular feedback will also be provided by the course organiser through the moderation of the course's asynchronous seminars.
No Exam Information
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
  1. Demonstrate in research reports and essays a detailed and critical command of the body of knowledge concerning the theories of empires
  2. Demonstrate in research reports and essays an ability to analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship concerning the history of the theories of empires and their comparative context, primary source materials concerning conquest, domination and acquisition of empires and conceptual discussions about intellectual history
  3. Demonstrate in research reports and seminar participation, an ability to understand and apply specialised research or professional skills, techniques and practices considered in the course
  4. Demonstrate the ability to develop and sustain original scholarly arguments in oral and written form in seminar discussions, presentations, research reports and essays by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
  5. Demonstrate in seminar discussions, presentations, research reports and essays originality and independence of mind and initiative; intellectual integrity and maturity; an ability to evaluate the work of others, including peers; and a considerable degree of autonomy
Reading List
Armitage, David, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge, 2000)

Canny, Nicholas, 'The Ideology of English Colonization: from Ireland to America', William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 30 (1973), 575-98

Games, Alison, The Web of Empire: English Cosmopolitans in an Age of Expansion, 1560-1660 (Oxford, 2008)

Kidd, Colin, The Forging of Races: Race and Scripture in the Protestant Atlantic World, 1600-2000 (Cambridge, 2006)

Kupperman, Karen, 'The Beehive as a Model for Colonial Design', in: Idem (ed.), America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750 (Williamsburg, 1995), 272-295

Morgan, Philip, 'Virginia's Other Prototype: The Caribbean', in: Philip P. Boucher, The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624 (North Carolina, 2007)

Ohlmeyer, Jane, ''Civilizinge of those rude partes': Colonization within Britain and Ireland, 1580s-1640s', in: Nicholas Canny (ed), The Oxford History of Empire. Vol I. The Origins of Empire. British Overseas Enterprise to the Close of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1998), 124-147

Pagden, Anthony, Lords of All the World: Ideologies of Empire in Spain, Britain and France, c. 1500-c.1800 (London, 1995)

Pestana, Carla Gardina, The English Conquest of Jamaica: Oliver Cromwell's Bid for Empire. (Cambridge, 2017)

Swingen, Abigail L., Competing Visions of Empire. Labor, Slavery, and the Origins of the British Atlantic Empire (New Haven & London, 2015)

Robin W. Winks, The Oxford history of the British Empire. Volume 5, Historiography (Oxford, 1999)
Additional Information
Graduate Attributes and Skills Not entered
KeywordsTheories of Empire,Early Modern Period
Contacts
Course organiserDr Esther Mijers
Tel: (0131 6)50 3756
Email: E.Mijers@ed.ac.uk
Course secretaryMrs Lindsay Scott
Tel: (0131 6)50 9948
Email: Lindsay.Scott@ed.ac.uk
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