Undergraduate Course: The Age of Revolutions in the Mediterranean, ca 1760-1860 (HIST10531)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | This course explores how the Age of Revolutions played out in the Mediterranean world from the 1760s to the 1860s. This was a period during which the region went through moments of profound change: revolutions and revolts, international wars and coups d'état, national uprisings and imperial advances, the emergence of new states and the demise of others. We will follow these changes and what they meant for people in the region through a series of case studies, as well as through the analysis of their global political and ideological entanglements. In doing so, we will move in a space of cross-cultural contact and interaction, stretching from Spain, Portugal, and the Italian peninsula, to Greece, the Middle East, Egypt, and the Maghreb in the southern shores of the Mediterranean. |
| Course description |
The course views the Mediterranean world as both interconnected with broader developments of the revolutionary age, and as possessing a dynamic of its own. It has several objectives: first, it introduces students to the methodology of global history and its implications for the study of the Age of Revolutions, while also critically assessing the Mediterranean as an analytical framework. Second, it draws on the insights of global microhistory in order to bridge the global with the local and the personal, exploring the lives of individuals and groups (such as merchants, captives, soldiers of fortune, intellectuals, exiles, etc.) who navigated between empires, nation-states, protectorates, and state-like entities across the region. Third, while examining specific case studies and their unique contexts (such as Naples, Egypt, and the Greek Revolution of 1821), the course also provides a comparative analysis, identifying shared features and exploring transnational influences.
The course will engage a variety of sources that reflect the region's complex, multicultural realities. It will thus prompt students to develop critical and analytical skills to interpret similarities, differences, and local adaptations of revolutionary phenomena that were global in nature. It will also give them a firm grasp on the history of a region where cultures, religions, political communities, and Europe and the extra-European world met and interacted; a region that is currently at the heart of world-wide crises.
The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: issues related to sexual and racial violence and discrimination, critiques of religious beliefs and practices, and other historically sensitive subjects. While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent. Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Administrator to ensure that a place is available |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Full Year |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
400
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 42,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
350 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:«br /»
2 x 1,500 words book review (each worth 10%) «br /»
2 x 4,000 words research essay (each worth 30%) «br /»
«br /»
Non-Written Skills:«br /»
Presentation with supporting materials (10%) «br /»
Class Participation (10%) |
| Feedback |
Students are expected to discuss their coursework with the Course Organiser at least once prior to submission, and are encouraged to do so more often. Meetings can take place with the Course Organiser during their published office hours or by appointment. Students will also receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a coherent grasp of key political, religious, social and cultural dynamics in the Mediterranean during the Age of Revolutions
- Demonstrate an ability to read, analyse and reflect critically upon relevant scholarship concerning the many interactions that took place in the region, and upon primary source materials concerning the period in a global and comparative perspective
- Appreciate and assess the imperial frameworks in which the revolutionary developments took place in the Mediterranean during this tumultuous age
- Integrate this knowledge into their broader course of study around historical narratives and change over time
- Develop and sustain original scholarly arguments by independently formulating appropriate questions and utilising relevant evidence considered in the course
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Reading List
- R. Clogg, The movement for Greek independence, 1770-1821: A collection of documents, London: Macmillan Press, 1976.
- J. Cowans (ed.), Modern Spain: A Documentary History, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003
- S. Faroqhi (ed.), The Cambridge history of Turkey, vol. 3: The Later Ottoman Empire, 1603-1839, Cambridge University Press, 2006.
- K. Zanou, Transnational patriotism in the Mediterranean: Stammering the nation, 1800-1850, Oxford University Press, 2018.
- M. Isabella, Southern Europe in the Age of Revolutions, Princeton University Press, 2023
- D. Armitage and S. Subrahmanyam, The Age of Revolutions in Global Context, c.1760-1840, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2010
- K. Baker, and D. Edelstein (eds.), Scripting Revolution. A Historical Approach to the Comparative Study of Revolutions, Stanford University Press, 2015
- Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800-1900, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010
- Maurizio Isabella and Konstantina Zanou, (eds), Mediterranean Diasporas: Politics and Ideas in the Long Nineteenth Century, London: Bloomsbury, 2016
- J. Innes and M. Philp (eds.), Re-imagining Democracy in The Mediterranean, 1750-1850, Oxford University Press, 2018
- R. Stites, The Four Horsemen. Riding to Liberty in Post-Napoleonic Europe, Oxford University Press, 2014
- José Alvarez Junco and Adrian Shubert (eds.), Spanish History since 1808, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2000 |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
- approach and analyse a variety of primary and secondary sources, both written evidence and visual material
- learn to reflect and examine critically the history of a region that played a key role in the encounter between Europe and the extra-European world
- learn to appreciate and utilise a number of analytical methods, and to devise independent projects
- navigate through diverse material, and think about how to proceed in analysing this material
- identify and adopt the best approaches to complete a task on the basis of the material at hand
- adopt a curious and global outlook in local and regional phenomena |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Michalis Sotiropoulos
Tel:
Email: msotirop@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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