Free European History Courses

Several universities are putting complete courses online for free now. Visitors can peruse course materials and watch lectures even if they do not get any academic credit for it. MIT is probably the best known for this but some other schools are as well including Notre Dame and the University of Washington.

Here are three example courses dealing with European history:

The Ancient World: Rome - This MIT course is from 2005. This course elaborates the history of Rome from its humble beginnings to the fifth century A.D. The first half of the course covers Kingship to Republican form; the conquest of Italy; Roman expansion: Pyrrhus, Punic Wars and provinces; classes, courts, and the Roman revolution; Augustus and the formation of empire. The second half of the course covers Virgil to the Vandals; major social, economic, political and religious trends at Rome and in the provinces. Emphasis is placed on the use of primary sources in translation.

The Making of Modern Europe - This is a UC Berkley course from 2008. This introductory course provides essential background to an understanding of Europe today by surveying the elements of its past that went into its making. It begins, roughly, with the "Closing" of Europe to the Islamic world after the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks in 1453. It ends with Europe's Re-opening, in the late 20th and early 21st century, symbolized, in part, by the Balkan conflict in the 1990s. As it covers these five and a half centuries, it will look at major landmarks in Europe's social, political, and intellectual development: the Renaissance, the expansion of Europe into the Americas, the breakup of a single Western Christendom into competing religious communities, the construction of the modern state, the Enlightenment, the European revolutions, industrialization, socialism, nationalism, imperialism, Communism and Nazism, the two World Wars, decolonialization, the Cold War, cultural changes in the post-war period, and the breakup of Communism in Eastern Europe. It will close with the continent's current reconfiguration, as former patterns of migration have moved into reverse and the non-European world expands into Europe.

Nineteenth Century Europe - This is a University of Massachusetts from 2008. The course is a political, social and cultural history of Europe from 1815 to 1900, including the history of each major European nation.

Historical Thinking Matters

Historical Thinking Matters - This site focuses on key topics in U.S. history in order to teach students how to read primary sources critically. It also stresses to students how to critique and construct historical narratives.

It is a project of the Center for History and New Media, George Mason University, and School of Education, Stanford University with support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and additional support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. It was also the winner of the American Historical Association's 2008 James Harvey Robinson Prize for an Outstanding Teaching Aid.

From the site:

Historical Thinking Matters is divided into three key sections that can be accessed from the homepage.

Why Historical Thinking Matters:

This Flash movie presents the pedagogical perspective of the site and introduces the concepts and strategies that students will use as they complete the four modules. This section requires a Macromedia Flash Player plug-in (Download) After clicking on “View Why Historical Thinking Matters,” the movie will launch. Follow the prompts on the screen to view the sections of the movie and to complete the interactive elements of the presentation.

Student Investigations:

HTM includes four student investigations that focus on key topics in the standard post-Civil War U.S. History curriculum, which can be accessed by clicking on the images in the center of the homepage, or through the Student Investigations page. Each investigation is composed of the same five elements.

History Carnival 78

The latest incarnation of the History Carnival is up at http://www.brettschulte.net/CWBlog/2009/07/01/history-carnival-78. The host is Brett Schulte at TOCWOC – A Civil War Blog. The next edition of the History Carnival should appear August 1 at History Today News. Please submit good posts you find this month to the next edition of the History Carnival.

I am Spartacus!

No, I am Spartacus! I love this Pepsi ad using the classic movie based on Roman history and the famous slave revolt lead by Spartacus. I wish more ads made good use of both popular culture and history. Of course, Spartacus died in battle and was never captured by the Romans but...Hat tip to Weird Universe.

The Alfred Russel Wallace Website

Alfred Russell Wallace was an important evolutionary theorist in the 19th century. I found a good site dedicated to him at The Alfred Russel Wallace Website. It has details about Alfred Russel Wallace's life and work. It also includes a unique archive of images, FAQ's debunking some of the many myths surrounding Wallace and Darwin, plus information about the A. R. Wallace Memorial Fund and its projects. This is a nice history of science site worth checking out.

From the site:

Alfred Russel Wallace (1823 - 1913) was one of the 19th century's most remarkable intellectuals. His link to Charles Darwin as the co-discoverer in 1858 of evolution by natural selection would alone have secured his place in history, but he went on to make very many other significant contributions, not just to biology, but to subjects as far-ranging as glaciology, land reform, anthropology, ethnography, epidemiology, and even astrobiology. His pioneering work on evolutionary biogeography led to him becoming recognised as that subject’s ‘father’. Beyond this, Wallace is regarded as the pre-eminent collector and field biologist of tropical regions of the 19th century, and his book The Malay Archipelago (which was Joseph Conrad’s favourite bedside reading) is one of the most celebrated travel writings of that century and has never been out of print. Add to the above that Wallace was deeply committed to and a vocal supporter of spiritualism, socialism, and the rights of the ordinary person, and it quickly becomes apparent that he was a man with an extraordinary breadth of interests who was actively engaged with many of the big questions and important issues of his day.

By the time of his death Wallace was probably the world’s most famous scientist, but since then his intellectual legacy has been almost completely overshadowed by Darwin’s, largely thanks to the “Darwin Industry” of recent decades. This ‘industry’ has led to a highly “Darwinocentric” view of the history of modern biology, and as a result many of the important contributions made by Darwin’s contemporaries, like Wallace, are currently underestimated and undervalued.

Biography of José de San Martín

A well done history site is Biography of José de San Martín. It is by Pablo A Chami and it is on his personal site. That might mean this site vanishes shortly after I link to it here but as it has been around a few years I trust it may remain in place for some time.

The site has a brief summary of San Martin's life with a time line. It also is liberally illustrated with paintings of San Martin. Chami subititles the page, "Short history of the liberator of Argentina, Chile, and Peru."

From the site:

In January of 1814, San Martin takes control of the North Army, from the hands of its former general, Belgrano, that had returned defeated from the Alto Peru -today the republic of Bolivia-, and since then, they establish a long friendship.

Soon after being San Martin in Tucuman, he realized that it was impossible to conquer Lima city, the capital of Peru, that was the center of the Spanish power, by the terrestrial way of the highs of the Andes. He conceived the idea of crossing the mountain range to Chile and to attack the city of Lima by sea way.

A disease forces him to request license and obtains from the government the nomination of Governor of the Cuyo province. He leaves Tucuman for Mendoza, capital of Cuyo, a city that stands at the foot of the mountain range of the Andes. There he recovers and begins to prepare an army to cross the Andes.

In the year 1816 he sends, representing the province of Cuyo, a delegation to the congress that met in Tucuman, with express orders to insist on the declaration of independence. Because of his insistence, the declaration of the independence from the rule of Spain of the Provincias Unidas del Rio de la Plata -that was the primitive name of what now is the Argentine Republic- was acclaimed in that congress the 9 of July of that year.

The Founding of St. Augustine, 1565

While browsing the Modern History Sourcebook, I found an interesting account titled The Founding of St. Augustine, 1565. It was written by Francisco Lopez de Mendoza Grajales.

Here is the beginning of the text:

I. THE LORD having granted us favorable weather from the first, five days' sailing brought us in sight of the Lanzarote Islands and Fuerte Ventura. The following Wednesday, July 5, 1565, we reached the Canary Islands, which are two hundred and fifty leagues from Cadiz, where we stopped three days to lay in a supply of wood and water.

The following Sunday, July 8, our fleet, composed of eight ships, under the direction of our general, left the Canary Islands, and proceeded to the Island of Dominica, which was to be conquered from the Caribbee Indians. Unfortunately, the very evening we set sail, our first galley and a patache became separated from us. For two days we coasted up and down, hoping to rejoin them, but without any success; and our admiral, seeing that we should not be able to accomplish it, gave the order for us to sail directly to Dominica, where we were to await them in case they had not arrived before us. During this voyage a shallop, or boat, commanded by Capt. Francesco Sanchez sprung a leak, and, as it got beyond the control of the crew, he asked assistance from us, but it was impossible to give him any. The pilot wishing to continue to sail with the other vessels until they should arrive at their destination, and have the leak repaired there, the captain and a soldier had recourse to their swords to oblige the pilot to return to port, being fearful lest they should be all drowned. The pilot declared himself unable to do this on account of the rough weather, so they decided to make for the cape on the south-west in order to reach the land as soon as possible.

Thus it happened that we were obliged to leave them, which we did with deep regret and great anxiety as to what would become of them. The five vessels which remained of our fleet had a prosperous voyage the rest of the way, thanks to our Lord and His Blessed Mother. Up to Friday, the 20th, we had very fine weather, but at ten o'clock that day a violent wind arose, which by two in the afternoon had become the most frightful hurricane one could imagine. The sea, which rose to the very clouds, seemed about to swallow us up alive, and such was the fear and apprehension of the pilot and other sailors that I exerted myself to exhort my brethren and companions to repentance. I represented to them the passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, His justice and His mercy, and with so much success that I passed the night in confessing them.

You can read the entire account at the link above if this is of interest to you.