European history and European lives, 1715-1914

Description

Professor Jonathan Steinberg uses individual lives to explain a great historical transformation. Examines the development of the modern world with a focus on the Industrial Revolution and its explosion of science and technology. Also examines the birth of modern democracy. Abstract: Professor Jonathan Steinberg uses individual lives to explain a great historical transformation. Examines the development of the modern world with a focus on the Industrial Revolution and its explosion of science and technology. Also examines the birth of modern democracy Content: Lecture 1. History as a "soft" science -- lecture 2. Augustus the Strong, princely consumption -- lecture 3. Robert Walpole, politics of corruption -- lecture 4. Frederick the Great, absolute absolutist -- lecture 5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a modern self -- lecture 6. Samuel Johnson, the "harmless drudge" -- lecture 7. Maria Theresa, mother of the empire -- lecture 8. David Hume, the cheerful skeptic -- lecture 9. C.P.E. Bach, selling the arts -- lecture 10. Catherine the Great, Russian reformer -- lecture 11. Joseph II, the rational emperor -- lecture 12. Goethe, the artist as work of art -- lecture 13. Adam Smith, the wealth of nations -- lecture 14. Marie Antoinette, queen beheaded -- lecture 15. Edmund Burke, the new conservatism -- lecture 16. Robespierre, the democrat as terrorist -- lecture 17. Mary Wollstonecraft, the rights of women -- lecture 18. Napoleon, the revolutionary emperor -- lecture 19. Metternich, the spider and the web -- lecture 20. N.M. Rothschild, financier to the world -- lecture 21. Goya, the painter as social critic -- lecture 22. Giuseppe Mazzini, idealist of the nation -- lecture 23. George Eliot, a scandalous woman -- lecture 24. The Irish starve, the great famine -- lecture 25. Napoleon III, the empire of the boulevards -- lecture 26. Pius IX, the infallible pope -- lecture 27. Richard Wagner, revolution in music -- lecture 28. Marx and Engels, the perfect collaboration -- lecture 29. Otto von Bismarck, blood and iron -- lecture 30. Charles Darwin, origin of species -- lecture 31. Queen Victoria, "We are not amused" -- lecture 32. Friedrich Krupp, the new plutocracy -- lecture 33. Louis Pasteur, modern laboratory science -- lecture 34. Count Leo Tolstoy, lord and serf -- lecture 35. Alfred Dreyfus, first act in the Holocaust -- lecture 36. David Lloyd George, champion of the poor.