The Rise and Fall of European Empires
Why does the modern world look the way it does?
How did a private company in Britain come to rule millions of people in India?
Why did European powers race to claim territory across Africa in the late 1800s?
And how did colonized peoples organize some of the largest resistance and independence movements in world history?
In this course we will ask why so many of the world’s borders, languages, conflicts, and economic inequalities are rooted in decisions made by European empires more than a century ago. Students will explore the rise of European colonial empires in Africa and Asia during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, focusing especially on the British and French Empires. Through vivid case studies including India, the Congo, Algeria, Ghana, and Kenya, we will trace the stories of merchants, soldiers, missionaries, revolutionaries, reformers, and ordinary people whose lives were transformed by imperial rule.
Along the way, students will investigate the scramble for Africa, the growth of industrial capitalism, and the global competition for natural resources and political power. We will examine how empires justified conquest through ideas about race, religion, and “civilization,” and how colonized peoples challenged those ideas through protest movements, journalism, boycotts, armed resistance, and campaigns for independence.
The course will also explore the human side of this history: the extraction of rubber in the Congo, the impact of British rule in India, the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya, the Algerian war for independence, and the global influence of leaders such as Gandhi and other anti-colonial activists. Students will see how struggles against empire in Africa and Asia shaped liberation movements around the world, including the American civil rights movement.
This course is designed to introduce students step-by-step to the major events, ideas, and people of the colonial era, while encouraging connections to the modern world. By the end of the course, students will understand colonialism not as a distant or isolated chapter of history, but as one of the major forces that shaped the political, economic, and cultural world we live in today.
Pre-requisite: 1492 and Colonial America, or by permission.
Instructor: Laura Fokkena
DETAILS:
Suggested age range: 13+
Outside work: Videos and short readings, approximately 2-3 hours/week.
When & where: Fridays on Zoom from 1:30 - 2:30, April 9 - June 25, 2027.
Fee: $300 ungraded/$350 graded, which includes a non-refundable registration fee of $10. We offer discounts for groups, siblings, and students who enroll in multiple classes. (Discount information.) Payment plans available. Fees waived for families with financial need. (Waivers and payment plan information.) Questions about how classes work? Read our course FAQ.
Photo credit: “The East offering its riches to Brittania,” painted by Spiridione Roma for the boardroom of the British East India Company. Wikipedia, CCO.