EFTA02350817.pdf

From: The Modem World Global History since 1760 Course Team Sent: Sunday, February 24, 2013 7:20 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Starting Week 7 Dear Jeffrey epstein, Welcome, again, to the hundreds of students who joined the class in the pas= week. You can certainly catch up. The upcoming week, Week 7, will wrap up the first half of the course. By t=e time you finish we will have surveyed a period of about one hundred and =ifty years of world history, from the mid-1700s into the early 1900s. Weeks 1, 2, and 3 set the stage for great change. Weeks 4, 5, and 6 descri=e the resulting transformation of the world. Week 7 is a major pivot pain.. It focuses on a period between about 1890 and 1910 of a "great accelera=ion." In effect, the first wave of changes have been experienced and dige=ted, for better or worse. A new situation has arisen. Then came a further period of transition, which I tend to locate in the 187=s and 1880s, out of which emerges a series of new choices that — t=ken together — strongly define the contours of the world we can re=ognize today. The principal political ideas turn into ideologies, which t=rn into mass political parties. Almost all the major political movements =nd parties we recognize today take their characteristic form in the period=coming out of that transition and becoming fully fledged by the 1890s. The principal institutions of modern commerce and economic life — f=om standardized money to large corporations — also take form durin= this period. The same is true for the principal kinds of educational ins=itutions — government-built primary schools, many more universitie=, the rise of specialized higher education (doctoral degree programs). The principal discoveries and advances in applying many of the more Invisi=le' sciences — chemistry, biology (including germs and genes), ele=tricity — also are traceable to this period. All this seemed to thoughtful observers at the time — from Henry Ad=ms to Vladimir Lenin — to amount to a kind of "great acceleration.= So Week 7 is an important week. Not just about more change, but about the =omentum of change on a global scale. And the great intensification of all=these forces will produce a series of monumental struggles — even =uestions, for the first time, about whether humanity itself could cope wit= the forces it was setting in motion, trying to wield. If you have seen i=, by the end of the week you may recall (in a more light-hearted spirit) t=e Disney cartoon (ca. 1940, from the movie "Fantasia") in which Mickey Mou=e is the sorcerer's apprentice. Best wishes, Philip Zelikow The Modern World: Global History since 1760 Course Team You are receiving this email because jeeproject@=ahoo.com is enrolled in The Modern World: Global History since 1760 <https://class.coursera.org/modernworld-.012- 001/class/index> . To stop receiving similar future emails from this class, please cl=ck here <https://class.coursera.org/modernworld-2012- EFTA_R1_01328575 EFTA02350817 001/authistop_em=ils?data=Q0OrCLGj2KzxlofdH9rBUImNy816Id%2FNmkZce%2BttmAJKozhfd82HOiXr0WA=r6gxJaWIW3 S%2Byva0BNHgxp6dUA%3D%3D%7CSIeEdM6je0D73x3fPHo7pnFOO8UkU%2BrOKYt=u2kF7dmpUb98fq%2F.I46186RPO8j esu69sRF4RRs%28oiV94T4gkHlIgygsEz7UMyzaAk2rVL8=tYnEr4289z4YH7YP3t0ShK6tbRTyPjVMXAI3888Ng7j1jq02rQGU WaTjsX5taa8mZ1NjuMr7Gtik=2FC%2FIvROEnQwVW> . Please do not reply directly to this email. If you have any questions or feedback, please post on the class di=cussion forums. For general questions, please visit our support =ite <http://help.coursera.orgf> . date-last-viewed 0.0 date-received 1361733600 flags 8623750145 original-mailbox imap://[email protected]/%SBGmail%SD/AII%20Mail remote-id 278402 2 EFTA_R1_01328576 EFTA02350818