杏吧论坛

Professor Paul Nolte

This course is available on the MA in Asian and International History (杏吧论坛 and NUS), MA in Modern History, MSc in Empires, Colonialism and Globalisation, MSc in History of International Relations, MSc in International Affairs (杏吧论坛 and Peking University), MSc in International and Asian History, MSc in International and World History (杏吧论坛 & Columbia) and MSc in Theory and History of International Relations. This course is available with permission as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

How do we reconceive modern societies (since, roughly, the 18th century) as agents in an intervention into nature, landscape, and resources? While today’s consequences mostly affect the atmosphere, and are discussed as climate crisis, the roots of mankind making an indissoluble imprint on the planet has mostly been in what this course describes as call “geo-interventions”, and more directly: as projects of digging the soil, drilling the earth, redirecting the waters.

This seminar will introduce M.A. students into the “Anthropocene perspective” in general, and discuss German developments from the 18th century to the present, in particular, albeit not be limited to Germany and Central Europe. Germany may be seen as an exemplary case for a modern society facing the challenge of the Anthropocene. Global approaches and case studies from other countries will be included, while the seminar also aims at a broad, interdisciplinary perspective that should be attractive not just for students of history, but of a variety of social sciences, too.

The first semester will lay conceptual and empirical foundations, with a historical emphasis on the 19th century. In the second semester, the story will be continued for major problems of the 20th century and into the present, and with that, highlight political problems of governance and resistance. The seminar will cover themes such as the history of landscape, infrastructures, and earth interventions over many years.

20 hours of seminars in the AT. 20 hours of seminars in the WT.

There will be a reading week in week 6 of the Autumn and the Winter Terms.

One formative essay of 2000-words, to be submitted in week 6 of the Autumn Term.

• Introduction: Approaches to the History of Space Charles S. Maier, Once Within Borders. Territories of Power, Wealth, and Belonging Since 1500, Cambridge, Mass. 2016, Introduction: A History of Political Space, pp.1-13, 299-303; Teresa Walch, “Editorial: Space and Place in Modern Germany”, in: idem et al. (eds.), Räume der deutschen Geschichte, Göttingen 2022, pp. 7-19
• The Origins of Modern Space: A Global Perspective Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century, Princeton 2014, Ch. III: Space, pp. xxx-xxx
• The Case of Germany: Nation, Order and Landscape in Recent Historiography Helmut Walser Smith, Germany: A Nation in Its Time: Before, During, and After Nationalism, 1500-2000, New York 2020, Ch. 7: Developing Nation (c. 1815-1850), pp. 199-233, 513-521
• Manipulating Rivers: The Case of the Rhine in the 19^th Century David Blackbourn, The Conquest of Nature: Water, Landscape, and the Making of Modern Germany, New York 2006, Ch. 2, pp. 77-119, 378-384
• Nature into Commodities: The Case of the American Prairies. William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, New York 1991, Ch. 5, pp. 207-259, 436-447
• Interlude: Fundamental Reconsiderations: A Current Approach to the History of the Anthropocene Dipesh Chakrabarty, The Climate of History in a Planetary Age, Chicago 2021, Ch. 1: Four Theses, pp. 23-48, 233-239

Essay (30%, 2500 words) and source analysis (30%) in the WT.
Essay (40%, 3000 words) in the ST.