Date: Fri, 26 May 1995 16:54:22 -0500
FROM: Dan Segal, Pitzer College
dsegal@bernard.pitzer.edu

A few weeks ago, I posted the final examination to an introductory modern world history course that I co-teach with Lora Wildenthal (lwilden@pitzer.edu) here at Pitzer. Around the same time, I was also writing examination questions for history honors candidates at Swarthmore College, which relies on outside examiners for its honors programs. The following questions were written for the examination in a field titled "Europeans and Others Since 1750"; the Swarthmore students had studied this field with Pieter Judson (pjudson1@cc.swarthmore.edu). As before, I think these examination questions encapsulate what I regard as important themes, issues, and problems in modern world history.

The students had three hours to provide written answers for any three of the following six questions.

1. Your course of study has been titled "European and Others Since 1750." In this title, we find a dichotomy between "the West" and "the rest." Thus, a more established and canonical Eurocentric history is being contested by a dichotomy that has itself been identified by many as Eurocentric. Discuss the strengths and limitations of contesting Eurocentric history through such a dichotomy. To support and extend your general comments on this issue, you should consider in detail the use, or rejection, of this dichotomy in the works of three of the authors you have read. In your answer, you may want to consider some of the following questions. To what extent, do you see this dichotomy as accurately reflecting the effects of colonialism, i.e., to what extent did colonialism produce a world divided between "European" and "Others"? To what extent, and in what ways, do particular authors use this dichotomy ironically and/or subversively? If you find the use of this dichotomy problematic in particular readings--or in general in this course--what would you propose as an alternative?

2. The field you have prepared is entitled "Europeans and Others Since 1750." What important transformations have occurred in the relationship between "Europeans" and "Others" during the time period you have covered? What continuities have there been? What periodization scheme, if any, would be useful for organizing the history of "Europeans and Others" since 1750? What reason(s) are there (if any) for treating the time around 1750 as a historical baseline, or contingent beginning, for the study of "Europeans and Others"?

3. In 1750, Europe by and large consisted of a number of monarchal realms. Some of these had colonies and others did not. Generally speaking, these monarchal realms gave way to states that were legitimated as "nation-states." In some cases, these "nation-states" had borders much like those of the earlier monarchal realms and in other cases they had strikingly new borders. Some of these "nation-states" had colonies and others did not. Consider both the case of European monarchal realms and the case of Europe's subsequent nation-states: in what ways, if any, did having colonies matter? In answering this question, it is important that you offer a clear definition of "colony."

4. A recently published world history textbook (authored by a trio of prominent historians) provided a multipage narrative of the French Revolution, while saying of the Haitian Revolution only that it "was really an extension of the French Revolution." Assess and then either defend or criticize this representation of the two revolutions and their relationship.

5. The seminar you have taken is entitled "Europeans and Others Since 1750." Select three authors whose work focuses on either different historical moments or different sites, and critically discuss how their work approaches relations with external Others, on the one hand, and internal Others, on the other. What connections do the authors succeed in making between the positioning and experiences of internal Others and the positioning and experiences of external Others? To what extent, does the analysis of Europe's internal Others and the analysis of Europe's external Others diverge? Why?

6. At least since Marx, it has been common to analyze industrial capitalism in terms of "classes," that is, in terms of differentiated positions in the mode of production. How has the historical construction of "Others" vis-a-vis "Europeans" since 1750 shaped (a) the formation of class positions, and (b) the formation, or absence, of class identities. In your answer, you should consider the construction of "Others" in terms of gender, race, sexuality, class and geography.

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