In the 6 CFU module, after an introduction on chronology and periodisation, the history of the modern age will be critically reviewed through the treatment of events arranged according to a chronological path that also establishes a succession of themes and far-reaching problems.
16th century: Geographical discoveries, empires and global history; European states and Italian wars in the Renaissance; Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-reformation; Europe from the age of Philip II to the Thirty Years' War: from the Mediterranean to northern Europe (England of the Tudor, France of religious wars, independence of Holland, the Ottoman Empire)
17th century: Economy and society between the 16th and 17th centuries; global trade; England and the revolutions of the 17th century; French absolutism from Henry IV to Louis XIV; Central and Eastern Europe: Russia, Poland, Empire, Prussia
18th century: Wars of Succession and New European and Italian Balances; French-English Global Conflict; Enlightenment; Enlightened Absolutism in Europe and Italy; Industrial Revolution; American Revolution; French Revolution; Napoleonic Period; Restoration Age.
In the 3 CFU module there will be a monograph analysis on Spain as a global imperial power from the age of the Catholic Kings to the end of the Habsburg dynasty. In addition to following the rise and decline of the great Spanish power, the course will focus on some specific points that see the protagonist and forerunner of the Catholic Monarchy: religious intolerance and racist prejudice based on the "purity of blood" that is articulated against the different and the Other: the Jew, the Heretic, the "savage" American. We We are at the origin of European expansion in the various parts of the world and, at the same time, of the oppression of peoples inside and outside Europe. The latter is described in the most famous book of denunciation of the time, the Brevissima relazione della distruzione delle Indie by Bartolomé de las Casas, whose critical reading will complete the module.