by ProfDave, ©2022 (Jun. 23, 2022) — Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the Cold War – a war in which there was very little fighting, but truly global hostility and ghastly risk such as the human race had never experienced before. Planet earth was in jeopardy of self-destruction. Some have suggested that this […]
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26 – Third Reich
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25 -The Fascist Decades
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Jun. 16, 2022) — [Editor’s Note: See previous world history articles from the author here.] “Fascist” is a word still used in the twenty-first century for people we don’t like – a weapon word. Fascism was the dominant political movement of the two decades following World War I, growing out of the […]
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24 – War as Revolution
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23 – The Long Fuse
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Jun. 9, 2022) — Good morning, ladies and gentlemen! Just as the French Revolution is a textbook case for revolutionaries, with an appendix from the Revolution of 1848, so “the Great War,” World War I, is the textbook case, for diplomats, of crisis mismanagement. But it did not look that way in […]
Posted inEditorials
Mothers’ Day Madness
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Jun. 7, 2022) — [Editor’s Note: This article reflects its composition just after Mothers’ Day 2022.] What is going on? At least four mass shootings over this weekend plus Roe v Wade demonstrations last week (May 8, 2022), war in Europe and human smuggling on our southern border. Is someone or something […]
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21 – The Emperial Mystique
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 31, 2022) — Last term we examined in some detail the remarkable expansion of Western civilization across the globe in the 16th century. We concluded that it rested upon western technological advances, organizational advantages, and the distinctive will to go (a combination of religious and economic optimism) on the one hand […]
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20 – The Rest of the World
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 26, 2022) — [Editor’s Note: The following is the 20th in a series of world history lessons, converted to written form, by Prof. David Heughins. For previous articles in this series, please go here.] Time out! We are a month into our survey of modern World Civilization and we’ve hardly got […]
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The Age of Ideology
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 24, 2022) — The age of reason was followed by the age of ideology in the 19th century. For the most part, the state had given up the effort to suppress religious diversity. Religious dissent had gained a measure of toleration and legality in most places. Religion was still important but […]
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18– Industrial Revolution
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 20, 2022) — Industrialization is an obvious part of our world, and “the Industrial Revolution” is a term that appears in most textbooks, invented by Arnold Toynbee in 1884. What was it? The concept (as elaborated by T.S. Ashton early in the last century) described a gradual series of changes in […]
Posted inPhilosophy & Religion
My Next Life
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17- The Democratic Revolution
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 12, 2022) — Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen! I know it probably isn’t morning for most of you, but let’s pretend. At the end of the 18th century there were a series of upheavals that shook European civilization from the Mississippi to the Volga. It marks the dividing line between early […]
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16 – The Age of Reason
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 10, 2022) — What was early modern Europe like? What were things like in 1648? What were the physical consequences of the Renaissance and Reformation? First, the relative unanimity of thought and belief had been shattered. While people still feared and suspected people with different beliefs, the Prince/King now determined the […]
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15. The End of Christendom
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 5, 2022) — Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen, Christians and heretics, believers and infidels! This week we examine the breakup of Medieval Christendom and the beginning of the modern world – so called. Please note, medieval Christendom and Christianity are not the same thing – far from it. Christianity remained at […]
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14. The Globalization of Europe
by ProfDave, ©2022 (May 3, 2022) — Good Morning, ladies and gentlemen! Welcome to the New World! This week you read about “the creation of a world market.” Talk about spending your day at the Smithsonian in the gift shop! But I’m not sure I can do better. This is a World civilization course, and […]
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13. Renaissance of the West
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Apr. 28, 2022) — The 300 – 350-year period from the 14th to the 17th centuries is the boundary between medieval and modern in Europe called “Renaissance and Reformation.” It encompasses not only the geographic expansion of European influence, but also an exponential expansion of knowledge, of government, and of religion. Although, […]
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12. The Rise and Fall of the Middle Ages
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Apr. 26, 2022) — Sometimes historical writing tells us more about the times in which it is written than the times it purports to describe. So it is with the historians and essayists of the eighteenth century “Enlightenment” when it comes to the “dark ages.” Edward Gibbon and his contemporaries saw themselves […]
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The Three Big Ideas of the Middle Ages
by ProfDave, ©2022 (Apr. 21, 2022) — Good Morning, lords and ladies, peasants and Fathers, Sisters and Brothers! Welcome to the Middle Ages! In last week’s lecture we did a thousand years of China, so it is only fair that we do a thousand years of Europe this week. Super historian, leaping wide centuries in […]
