The Course is based on the study of modern European history, projected
to conquer the world, which provided to transform it irreversibly and to
transmit its fundamental values, which also represented the weapons of
that same conquest: capitalism, the composite State and political and
social pluralism.
The elements to undertake that conquest were some institutions and
power, like the Church, rival of politics; a military ruling class founded on
birth and land ownership, often rebellious; a plurality of urban
organizations, of legal
systems, of conflicting political parties.
The modern age culminates at the end of the nineteenth century, in the
so-called age of imperialism, before the incredible European suicide in
the first half of the twentieth century. Consequently, it is no longer
important to consider the contemporary age as the completion of modern
history, but rather to distinguish modernity from a postmodern time that
opens with world wars and coincides with the end of European dominance
and the failure of its identity.