डॉ. बी. आर. अम्बेडकर विश्‍वविद्यालय दिल्ली
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar University Delhi
Established by The Government of NCT of Delhi

1. How does the course link with the vision of AUD?

It engages with dialectics of reason, rationality and social justice.

2. How does the course link with the specific programme(s) where it is being offered?

It is one of the courses on non-Indian history or world history within the BA History programme.

3. Does the course connect to, build on or overlap with any other courses offered in AUD?

It builds on the Early Modern World (HS408).

4. Specific requirements on the part of students who can be admitted to this course: No. (Pre-requisites; prior knowledge level; any others – please specify)

5. No. of students to be admitted (with justification if lower than usual cohort size is proposed): 45+5

6. Course scheduling (semester; semester-long/half-semester course; workshop mode; seminar mode; any other – please specify): Monsoon Semester

7. Course Details:
   1. Summary: It focuses on the emergence and progression of the modern and postmodern world. It lays bare the nature of and reasons responsible for the great divergence, as it were, between the north Atlantics and the Asians. It discusses the significance of advancement of modernity– the claim for progress in the shape of formation of a virtuous world on the basis of reason, rationalism, individualism, worldliness, naturalism, common good and economic prosperity. Equally, it considers the germination of postmodernity – the emphasis on perspectivism, personal autonomy, difference and refutation of the modernist claims for seamless progress. Here, modernity and postmodernity are not viewed as a force imposed by the West on ‘The Rest’. Rather, it was something emerging from the new pattern of interactions between commercial-industrial societies of the northern and western hemispheres and the peoples of the East and South, who witnessed a comparatively advanced early modern past, colonial downfall and ex-colonial reconstruction / resurgence.

The economic order of modernity is characterised by the driving concerns for affluence, accelerating consumption, intensification of resource use and sustained (technological) growth. Modern polity is characterised by the nation-state, developmental state, and military fiscalism; characterised by the centrality of citizenship, civic rights and political representation. The changes in social structure involve the identification of persons on the basis of ‘individual’ merit or roles rather than inherited or ascribed status, the collapse of primordial social relationships (‘orders’ of society) and formation of new classes and social categories. The shifts in cultural patterns, occurring in tandem with social changes, include secularisation, the entrenchment of scientific and professional ethics, privatisation of many areas of social life, the establishment of status based on consumption, and more rigorous segregation of leisure from labour/work. By contrast, information accumulation (the function of ICT and service economy as the basis of sustained economic growth) and the preeminence of finance capital characterise the beginning of postmodern world from the third quarter of the 20thc and onwards. A shift from the polity of discipline to that of control and bio-politics

defines its political order. The presence of accentuated inequality, a large proportion of the precariat population in the midst of surfeit, on one side, and the demand for autonomous individuality and difference, and a critique of surveillance and disciplinarian power, on the other, are noticeable in this world. All these issues form the different modules of this course.

1. 2. Objectives: It helps the student to grasp the evolution of the world, as we inhabit it today, and to locate the scenario of their national society, as it was linked to the rest of the world. It equips them with concepts and analytical design useful for comprehending changes and continuities of our world in a comparative context.

1. 3. Expected learning outcomes:

• • • The student will have understood the meaning of modern, post-modern from a simple definition point of view but also a deeper meaning of the same in terms of how societies manage to reach these stages and how some lag behind.
    • A very important theme discussed here is the great divergence and hence how the global north-south divide has come into existence and to what extent it really exists.
    • A deeper understanding of the evolution of the world we live in today considering all parameters of politics and economics.
    • An in-depth understanding of the politics of control through conventional methods but also that of present-day surveillance through excess information generation.

1. 4. Preparing the student to grasp the connected and comparative history of human societies across the globe.

(d) (i) Module-wise Format with following details for each module: Module [No.] [Module Title] [No. of classes needed]

[Detailed description of module] Module Objective:

Essential readings with page numbers: Suggested readings:

Module 1: Asia and Western Europe in comparison before domination and colonisation efforts of the European; the Agrarian economic changes, Proto-industrialisation and Proto-capitalism in Europe and Asia; and the Slave economy on the plantation in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Module II: the Meaning of Modernity; Tendencies and Geographies of Early Modern World: the Humanist Revolution: renaissance, reformation, the Copernican revolution.

Module III: Strands of enlightenment thoughts and practices; Political strives for liberty, equality, fraternity, happiness, prosperity, and utilitarianism in the 19thc.

Module IV: Strands of enhanced-modernity and Postmodernity; Political strives for freedom, equality, peace, happiness, social justice in the 20thc and 21stc; conflicts between secularism and religious matters; prosperity and fragility of the eco-system.

Module V: The first Industrial revolution; ‘modern industrialisation path’; social problems of the industrialising society in the 18^th and 19thc.

Module VI: The second industrial revolution; new geographies of late industrialisation; protectionism or import substitution; human resource development and R&D; Fordism; scientific management (Taylorism); the great depression; social life in the late-19thc and early-20thc.

Module VII: Economic life and its philosophies in the 19^th and 20thc: Capitalism, Utilitarianism, Colonialism/Imperialism and Socialism/Communism; Underdevelopment, De-colonization and ex-colonial resurgence; Information accumulation and postmodernisation of the economy; Postmodernism; Multiculturalism.

Module VIII: A case of the Islamicate world: the Ottoman Empire, its predicament, breakdown and reorganisation.

Reading List

Acemoglu, Daron and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, New York: Crown, 2012.

Allen, RC. An Introduction to the Global Economic History, 2011. Heuman, G. and T. Burnard, The History of Slavery, Oxen: Routledge, 2011

Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment, a Reinterpretation: The Science of Freedom, 1976. [essential]

Pomeranz, K, The Great Divergence: Western Europe, China and Japan and the Making of Modern World Economy, 2002. [essential]

Arrighi, G, The Resurgence of East Asia: Perspectives of 1000, 500, 100, and 50 years, 2003.

Clark, G, Farewell to Alms: A brief economic history of the world, Princeton University Press, 2007.

Allen, Robert C, The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective, Cambridge, 2009. [four chapters: essential]

Parthasarathi, Prasannan. Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not: Global Economic Divergence, 1600-1850, Cambridge, 2011.

Nayyar, Deepak. Catch Up: Developing Countries in the World Economy, 2013. [last three chapters: essential]

Piketty, Thomas, Capital of the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Arrighi, Giovani. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times, 1994.

Braudel, Fernand. Civilisation and Capitalism, vol. III: the perspective of the world, 1984. [chapters – 4, 5, 6.]

Hardt and Negri, Empire, Harvard University Press, 2000. [essential] Foucault, Michel. The Order of Things, 1966. [essential]

Bayly, C.A. The Birth of Modern World, 1780-1914, 2009. [chapters on the political revolutions, the 2^nd Industrial Wave, the Ottoman Empire]

Hobsbawm, EJ. The Age of Extremes, 1914-91. [chapters on the USSR and the Arabs:

essential]

de Vries, Jean. The Industrious Revolution: Consumer Behaviour and the Household Economy from 1650 to the Present, 2008.

Maddison, A. Monitoring the World Economy, 1820-1992. Wallerstein, Immanuel. The Decline of American Power, 2003.

Wallerstein, I. The Modern World System vol. III: the second great expansion of the capitalist world-economy 1730-1840s, 1989.

Wallerstein, I. The Modern World System vol. IV: the triumphant of centrist liberalism, 1789-1914, 2011.

Historical documents

Paine, Tom, The Rights of Man, 1790; Common Sense, 1774.

de Gouges, Olympe, The Declaration of the Rights of Women, 1791. List, F. The System of National Economy, 1885.

Nehru, J. The Discovery of India, 1946; Glimpses of World History, 1935/2003. Fanon, F. The Wretched of the Earth, 1961.

Mandela, N. A Long Walk to Freedom, 2006.